Render of Inside Scene
TheRetiredSailor
Posts: 269
I debated if I should post this because I wasn't sure if it would interest anyone.
Most of what I create (Lightwave 3D for model creation and render in DAZ Studio) is interior scenes. One of the challenges with an interior scene is lighting. I've tried making closed rooms with light fixtures which have an emissive surface. I can make this work but it requires a lot of fiddling around with it. In many cases the multiple lighting sources make the render times lengthy.
In the case of the attached images I have created a vignette using (what I understand is) the movie and television philosophy. The walls are tall, in this case scale height is 12 feet. Then there's a crown molding at the height the ceiling would be to alert the camera operator that their camera framing is too high. In the case of this model the top of the crown molding is at 9 feet.
There are four light sources. The lamps on the night stands are obviously two. The glass in the window is the third as the glass is actually an emissive surface for the purpose of simulating light coming through the Roman shades.
The fourth and main lighting source is the Iray dome. Lacking a true HDRI that was a single color (not a landscape or interior scene) I created a 4:3 file in Photoshop elements and filled with the RGB value for 5000K light. Before anyone jumps on me, I realize this IS NOT how you create a real HDRI. I'm simply trying to provide an even, not directional light source.
If this interests anyone then please feel free to comment. The objects were all created by me. Shout out to Khory for their Decorator Kit Neutral for Iray product which was the starting point for many of these shader presets. For reference on the true color vs rendered color (because color temperature impacts the color you see in the render just like in real life) the RGB setting for the walls is from Sherwin Williams Creamy SW7012 and the trim is Sherwin Williams Snowbound SW7004.
Thanks for listening and have a great day!
Edited: Opps, originally put HDMI when the correct term should be HDRI. Fixed the text above. For clarification, the faux HDRI was used as an Environment Map under Render Settings > Environment.
Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
7533 S Center View Ct #4664
West Jordan, UT 84084
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2025 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
Thanks for sharing. It's always nice to see other ideas and concepts.
You're welcome and I agree. When it comes to my 3D hobby I'm pretty much in a bubble.
That's clever and solves so many problems! I would definitely be interested in the HDMI.
Opps, originally put HDMI in my original post when the correct term should be HDRI. Fixed the text above.
Heh... I was a little confused, but figured it was probably some aspect of DAZ I just hadn't figured out yet.
For closed rooms where you can't disable the walls, or where you want to render from a special angle, you can use an Iray Section Plane Node:
As for single color HDRIs, @Horo has an app "UniHDRI"which can generate these:
https://horo.ch/docs/progs/light_en.html
Great OP, @TheRetiredSailor- an interesting way of doing what I'd also do with tweaking-lights ... and a useful (and previously unknown!) widget posted by @Taoz
"We" should do more posts like these... The Rembrandt post has also been a great read
Thank you! This is the type of app I was looking for before I resorted to Photoshop. Much appreciated.
Thank you. I agree, the widget is very useful.
I've got a little bit of a photography background, and one thing I've noticed in Daz is that lighting is actually realistic. Some tutorials I was watching had mentioned about setting the light source to like 100,000+ lumens. I can't imagine IRL how blinding that would be. A lot of pre-generated interior scenes are using real world lighting.
The issue comes with the default camera settings in Daz. IRL, we have light meters and automatic sensors that do a lot of the work for us to make a photograph come out bright enough, but in Daz, we are in 100% manual mode. So, we need to set the F/stop, shutter speed, aperture, and ISO manually instead of allowing the camera to do it for us.
So what happens if you set your shutter speed to, say 1/20th of a second, your ISO to 400, and your F/stop to 4? Surprisingly, you get a very bright and well-lit image. One thing we don't tinker with either in Daz is the use of the camera's headlamp, often turning it off. But, IRL, there are times when I will use the camera's flash, particularly in low light settings, and with a hotshoe flash, I can adjust it's angle, and using diffusers etc I can adjust it's intensity...and all that can also be adjusted in Daz as well. If you have a low/bright ceiling, instead of turning headlamp off rotate it so it's pointing straight up, so the light from it will bounce off the ceiling and illuminate the scene.
I've been trying to move away from HDRIs, personally, using sun/sky along with ambient lighting and camera flash where necessary.
As my user name would indicate, I am older (in my 60s) and I can relate to much of what you are saying. My first camera was a Minolta SRT101 that I saved up for while in high school. Totally manual but at least it had a light meter in it. My career after I retired from the Navy was in IT at a lighting manufacturer. I was excited when DAZ Studio surface settings for emissive surfaces actually had a lumens setting. Then I was disappoited when I realized that they were nowhere like real life lumens.
Your point about using the headlamp is spot on (at least in my opinion).
While I agree with your points, I am exploring alternatives. Having options to choose from is a good thing.
Thank you for sharing.
Poly Haven
+ has many HDRI s - worth looking at + Thanx
https://polyhaven.com/hdris