Newbie lights and shadows question

Nosiferret

Ok, I am using DimensionTheory's iray light presets on a scene. And I can't help but notice the lack of shadows. There are no shadows around the feet, no real shadows around where the clothing and skin meet. Or the biggest yet, if the character is wearing a necklace, there isn't any shading going on around it.  I am using a backdrop and I can just see a figure shadow on it but it's very faint...not that I'm looking for a strong shadows there. The render is almost like I rendered the backdrop separately from the figure and then pasted them together in PS and forgot about adding some shadows. 

How do I go about fixing that? What would I need to look for in Studio? Add to the scene? Thanks in advance :) 

Novica

I would experiment with increasing contrast for your figure, not sure if this is correct though regarding shadows so someone can hop in and help. Perhaps try the Crush Blacks in the Tone Mapping section,(under Render Settings)  increase that to .40 

Which light presets exactly are you using? 

Novica

Using Dome and Scene, with Finite Sphere, Draw Dome Off, using Real World the Maui E lights, and getting a good shadow.

Novica

Aha, Crush Blacks does indeed increase the darkness of shadows too. I am doing a second render for you, with.20 compared to .50 and you can see it. It will be a few minutes.

Novica

The first is with Crush Blacks at .20 and the second is at .50. These are only to show you the effects, they're not "good" renders.

So again, which set are you using and having trouble with? They are working okay for me.

fastbike1

Need more info. Are you using HDRIs for the lighting? If so, do you have Draw Ground turned on? With IRay it's pretty hard NOT to get shadows. How about a pic of your render and maybe your render settings.

Nosiferret

Thanks Novica!! I will try the crush black and see how that changes things. One thing I did discover was the headlamp was on and that lit up everything. When I turned it off, I saw a lot more shadowing, so that might have been it. 

Fastbike, I am using iRadiance - HDR Mesh Lights for Iray one of the presets, which one I can't remember. All stats are defaulted, Draw Ground is turned on. 

Another off topic situation. Have you rendered in Iray where it reads 65% completed at 1 hr 37 min and then within 23 minutes it's done? I feel like either Studio got lazy and just didn't want to finish it or something got hung up? Now I'm battling grainy results. I've tried turning the noise degrain on, filtering at 1 and it rendered the same way took forever to make it to 60+% and then bam it's done. And the image is still as grainy as it was before I did the changes. I'm going to try ISO next. 

KurzonDax

You should pretty much never need to mess with the noise filter.  Noisy images and the scenario you are describing of renders abruptly finishing are pretty characteristic of two possible causes. One is inadequate lighting in the scene, and/or two, the tone mapping settings not being correct.  If you aren't familiar with what shutter speed, apeture, or ISO do on a real camera, Google around and you will very easily find info.  There are three major differences between how those settings work on a camera and in Studio to be aware of though:

1. Low shutter speeds won't cause motion blur
2. The apeture setting in tone mapping has no affect on depth of field
3. You can use a ridiculously high ISO without inducing digital noise (though if you're having to use a really high ISO for a typical scene, you should possibly look at your lighting)

Note that if there is not enough light in the scene to start with, you can push the tone mapping settings all over the place and still end up with a noisy render.

Nosiferret

Thanks Kurzon, it is probably my lighting. Or a bit of both but I think it might be easier to just mess with the lighting some over those settings and see how that goes. 

Novica

Did you somehow manage to change the amount of time it can render (max time seconds) or the max samples? If you increased those or decreased them while putzing, it would change how long it got rendered. You can increase both of those and hit "Resume" and see if it continues on. They're in Render Settings under Progressive Rendering.

KA1

Nosiferret said:

Thanks Novica!! I will try the crush black and see how that changes things. One thing I did discover was the headlamp was on and that lit up everything. When I turned it off, I saw a lot more shadowing, so that might have been it. 

Fastbike, I am using iRadiance - HDR Mesh Lights for Iray one of the presets, which one I can't remember. All stats are defaulted, Draw Ground is turned on. 

Another off topic situation. Have you rendered in Iray where it reads 65% completed at 1 hr 37 min and then within 23 minutes it's done? I feel like either Studio got lazy and just didn't want to finish it or something got hung up? Now I'm battling grainy results. I've tried turning the noise degrain on, filtering at 1 and it rendered the same way took forever to make it to 60+% and then bam it's done. And the image is still as grainy as it was before I did the changes. I'm going to try ISO next. 

That adds up to 2 hours which is iRay default max render time, you can adjust the render time in the progressive tab, I always max it out as a matter of course and will also very often increase the itirations past their default max as well.

Nosiferret

Ok, I will look for the Max Render time in the progressive tab area....When I start looking and I see all these tabs and everything involved I'm like "uh...umm..." I guess deer in headlights :) Thanks for the help!!