Show Us Your Iray Renders. Part IV
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Most uses of mesh lights aren't physically accurate. There are very few wall-size light panel in everyday use. That makes the light quality from them unexpected to viewers. A bunch of these meshes used to light a scene might give a certain look for a certain type of scene, but you can't then expect other aspects of that scene to model real-life lighting conditions. So no fair then complaining "it doesn't look real."
Our brains are conditioned to expect certain qualities in lighting as cues to realism. Those cues come from familiar and common light sources. When we intentionally don't use these types of light, we have to expect a different psychological reaction to the rendered scene than we may have anticipated. That includes not only any human figures, but the whole scene. Mesh lights don't cast ground shadows* for instance, Shadows on the ground, when there are shadows elsewhere, ar a cue our brains expect to see in order to believe the pictures. This is known to artists for centuries.
There is plenty of room in art, 3D and otherwise, to bend the rules and create "non-realistic" pictures (that doesn't necessarily mean human characters don't look real, just that lighting and other aspects are not based on realistic elements). Rules are meant to be broken, but it's always best to first understand the rules before you break them.
I use mesh lights as scene lighting in some renders, but I use them carefully, knowing their limitations. Sometimes those limitations are positives and help the scene in some creative way; sometimes they get in the way and I have to compensate to make the scene look more plaustible. There are always tradeoffs.
*On edit: I re-reading my post I see a potential cause for confusion that I should clear up now -- I mean ground catcher shadows, using the virtual Iray Environment ground. Shadows are cast with all light sources, including emissive meshes, when the ground is composed of geometry. The shadow catcher ground respects shadows from sun/sky, HDRi's, and distant light, but not from the point or area lights. Emissive meshes are a type of area light, as are the disc and rectangle shapes for the spotlight.
Personally, I've just stopped using the term meshlight because it's too confusing to figure out what people think I mean, what other people mean by it, etc. I'll just say 'Iray point light/spot light with geometry' or 'emission object' or 'UberAreaLight with 3DL' or whatever.
Indeed it is, but, for how much longer will we reap the benefits for free!?
CHEERS!
Yeah, very nice!
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Here we have another old Mec4D texture, Magda from the Natasza for V4 set but used on V6. This has skin already optimised for HDR's and Iray really likes her. Cath was really ahead of the game with what she did with HDR's in Poser, the Natasza set came out in 2010, and what she did translates nicely to Iray. To me, PA's making textures need to split between Iray and 3DL as ones that are supposed work for both just don't. I really hope that Mec4D will show DS users the way just as she did with Poser. Iray needs textures that work well with it and that means that they have to be designed specifically with it in mind. I hate to say it, but, I can see 3Delight's days in DS being numbered...
The first render below was done with the HDR that Natasza came with and the second was done with the Pixar Campus
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...what I'm referring to is having to place a lot of spot and point lights in a scene where there are modellled "light sources" like a lamps or candles. For example Jack Tomalin's Library set has a number of floor lamps and other lights. In 3DL one would have to place a point light in each one of the lamps and increase the ray depth so they shine though the glass of the bulb and shade which increases render time. The other option would be to use the Uber Area light turning the bulbs in the lamps into light sources but again at the expense of extremely long render times as well as setting the samples & brightness properly. I often found I had to use ridiculous brightness settings in the 100s or even 1000s just to get the effect to look like that of a normal 60 W bulb.
I imagine it will remain free for as long as folks like us continue to spend a couple hundred every month for content. By giving us the program for free, they pull in a lot of people who otherwise would never get started in 3D art. And after using the free program, we go on to spend, spend, spend, in order to create. I shudder to think how much money I've spent in the past year, since I downloaded and installed 4.6... And I'm wondering where I'll get the money to feed this new habit in the future...
Hey, sometimes you can make money doing this! I've made $20 so far!
Yes, total, not net.
sigh
:)
Experimenting with atmocam, a free rain obj from Sharecg (I think), and a few other things.
Pretty true, you pay about $249 for Poser, but, on the other hand, think how much Daz content that $249 can buy you. It'll be interesting to see what the future will hold for Poser. I heard that they are getting a PBR for the next version, akin to Cycles from Blender. Thing is though, what decent figures can they use it with!? Smith Micro rested on their laurels thinking Daz would cover that, but that can't happen now and there's only so much longer they can stretch Gen4.
I'm so happy that I came back to DS, it was DSON that did it for me, it was always going to be a compromise. DS was easy to get back to as I already had a vast library of content, I just imported it from Poser and installed the DS versions from my Product Library for the stuff that needed it.
The future is DS and it gets rosier...
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Not bad, though a little too dull. You need an overcast sky and matching lighting in there. You can do the rain in Photoshop.
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Well, there's a cloudy sky, but it's not very dramatic. And light is mainly from the camera 'flash.'
I suppose it depends on whether I want to capture 'rain in a cemetary' or 'someone taking a picture in a rainy cemetary'
Thanks to a tip from J Cade, earlier Skycar scene with a proper HDRI from a Carrara render.
Neither Tobor or I have suggested using Spotlights, pointlights, etc for these purposes. These are the types of things I meant by "in-scene" lighting, as opposed to general area lighting.
Your Darius's head looks distorted, like it has another character dialed in as well. I tried a test with him too, removing all Normal maps first, and I believe that the problem is not with how Iray handles HD, but that the Darius HD morphs are disappointingly subtle. Here's an Iray render I posted a day or two ago of Boris and Boris HD which should hopefully prove that HD works just fine in Iray. Here also are a couple of comparisons of Darius and Darius HD. In the close up of the head, the only real (just barely) noticable difference is in the lips. In the torso shot, the shoulders and upper arms are definitely more realistic in the HD version, and shaped quite differently. I think we expect more for our money than that with HD morph packages though, and I'm kind of annoyed now to see that Darius HD is so similar to non-HD. But this isn't an Iray problem. HD works just as well in Iray as it does in 3DL. Try removing the Normal maps and rendering Darius with and without HD in 3DL, and it should be the same very subtle level of added detail as what you're getting in Iray.
(Also check to see if any other stray head or character morphs got loaded in with your Darius, because comparing your renders with the Darius promo pics and with what I get when I load Darius, it looks like something is off with yours. I've had a similar problem with G3F ever since I installed Karen. Half of the time when I load a G3F character, the Karen morphs load too on top of it, creating distortion, and I have to go and dial them down to zero. It's very annoying, and DAZ customer service told me they've reported it to the PA but most likely nothing can be done about it.)
My Darius images didn't seem to attach properly in that last comment, but here they are.
I see what you mean, and I know what is happening. For some reason, by default, when you load a character like Darius, M6 gets loaded in as well. When you check to see what is dialled in, M6 is dialled in at 100% as well as Darius. I thought this was how it was supposed to be, but it appears not. I'll go back, dial out M6 and see what is what.
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This made me laugh out loud.
I have the similar problem with Savannah and G2F figures, but it only shows up when I reload the scene. Everything looks normal when I create the scene, and it renders just fine. And if I've fixed the problem and saved the file, the next time I reload Savannah isn't there. But as you say, it's really annoying. I finally got around to reporting it to tech support on Friday. After what you said, I'm not feeling too optimistic. lol
Edit: Here's an example of what Savannah does to my G2F figures. (We should all be reporting these. If enough customers complain, maybe DAZ will see to it the problem gets fixed.)
Yeah, seeing how much this error is popping up sporadically with other people, and the way DAZ customer service responded to it makes me think that this maybe isn't the PA's error, but something wrong with G3F or the DS software. Even if I load a character who shouldn''t have any Karen but has Karen dialed up to 100%, and then dial Karen back down to 0% and resave the character this way - somethimes that "fixed" character will still load up with Karen again. I seems very random and that there is no solution except to dial Karen away when this comes up, or possibly to remove Karen from my runtime (which I don't want to do because I like the model and I paid money for Karen and Karen HD).
I've been dealing with this issue for quite some time, and at first, I would dial the unexpected character down to 0% and save the file. I want to say the problem was still there when I reopened the file, but I'm not positive. I do know the character isn't there after saving now, but at this point, I don't dial the value down to 0%. Instead, I open the parameter settings, (see the image in my previous message,) and change the default value from 100% to 0% and save my changes to the parameter. Then I save the file. If you haven't already, give that a try. See if it makes any difference for you. It's still annoying, but if you can limit having to fix it to only once per file, that would be an improvement.
I've now corrected Darius, and have saved the corrected version so I get what I should get every time. Interestingly, Boris had M6 dialled into him as well, so, I dialled that out and saved it so I have a pure Boris. Why either of them had M6 dialled into them is a mystery to me. What I was trying to do with my 'older' Darius was dial in the Boris HD details over his own. This created an interesting effect in 3Delight and I'm still not sure it's carried over to Iray. I can see the HD detail on Darius more than I could, but I'm still not sure if the Boris details are there on the other one. The subD is dialled to 4.
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Hmm, just thinking, I had taken out the normal maps on them. Could it be that one set of HD is cancelling out the other!?
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...oh?
Ok, here is Boris HD, SubD at 4, no normal maps, and yet, where is the detail!? What is it I'm missing!?
@Pearbear: What are your render and tone mapping settings!?
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I have the Iray render and tone mapping settings at their defaults (I've never really experimented with changing them). Rendering in Photoreal mode. The only thing I can think of is to check that the Boris HD Head morphs are on too, in addition to Boris HD Body, and that the figure in addition to being set to SubD 4 is also set to High Resolution rather than Base Resolution. I was using the Iray sun for light, rather than an HDRI, to give sharper shadows and help the HD details stand out.
Are you increasing the gamma value for achieve realistic skin?
btw, I'm playing still with emitters.
Looks very fine already - I've made the experience that for screens or emitting background images (I often use those) it is good to put the diffuse map in to the Emission color AND Luminance channel - requiers a few more "0"s for the amount, but the screen doesn't fade out in white that much anymore. :)
great tip!, I was only insert the map on Emission, not, Luminance, going to try that, thanks Jepe!
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