August 2026 - DAZ 3D New User Challenge - Open Render Challenge
ann0314
Posts: 2,909
New User's Challenge - August 2026
Sponsored by Daz 3D
Are you new to the 3D World? Are you at the beginning stages of learning 3D rendering? Have you been around for a little bit but feel you could benefit from some feedback or instruction? Have you been around awhile and would like to help other members start their creative journey? Well then come and join the fun as we host our newest render challenge!
Back by popular demand (or well because we think it went well LOL), we are breaking down each month into 2 different challenges:
A Beginner Challenge and then also an Intermediate Challenge.
So which "Challenge" should you choose?
Follow the Beginner Challenge if you are:
- New to the New User Challenges
- New to Daz Studio
- Newer to 3D Rendering in General
- Or if you have not participated in the Previous Month's Composition Challenge
Follow the Intermediate Challenge if you have:
- Participated in the New User Challenge for awhile
- Know the basics of Daz Studio and would like to learn more in depth topics
- Been using 3D Rendering Applications for awhile and feel comfortable with learning Intermediate Topics
- Or if you have all ready been spotlighted in the January Composition Challenge
*Please be sure to list in your post which Challenge you are participating in!!*
Check out Daz3D's Free Masterclasses on Daz Studio from Jay Versluis! It's a great series for everyone from the Newest User to the OG's of Studio!!
Closing date for the Open Render Challenges are both Midnight Daz Time on August 31st 2025!
For a list of the current challenge rules, please see this thread: Challenge Rules
They apply for both versions of the challenge!
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"Open Render Challenge"
The Open Render Challenge is also referred to as a "free" month, where you can concentrate on using and combining the skills you learned in past challenges. You can focus on one skill you want to experiment with more or you can combine the things you've learned. Whatever you would like.
If you would like to review the previous topics and information you can find the topics/threads here:
- Beginner/Intermediate : Composition/Instancing & Duplication
- Beginner/Intermediate : Lighting/Light Effects
- Beginner/Intermediate : Posing and Puppeteer/PowerPose
- Beginner/Intermediate : Using Props and Push Modifiers/Deformers
- Beginner/Intermediate : Scenes, Landscapes, and Working Modularly
- Beginner/Intermediate : Portrait Rendering and L.I.E.
Let the Party Begin!!!
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Comments
Sticking with beginner for the moment as there's still loads to learn. All Daz products and put together in 4.24. No post work.
I've put this one together using bits from various sets and using what I have available. https://www.daz3d.com/moonshine-s-drive-in-movie-theatre with background buildings from https://www.daz3d.com/1920-city-street. A modified FM Easy Environments Road To Nowhere skydome and various period vehicles. I think it's entirely feasible that a drive in movie theatre could have been put up on wasteland opposite buildings some 30+ years older. I've set this around 1953/54 using a shot from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.
I tried making the lights on top of the screen illuminate but haven't quite figured that out yet. Separate lights looked wrong as I couldn't get them to diffuse onto the screen properly.
So this is titled "Now Showing".
Looking good so far. Is it possible to give the picture itself some emissive value? I don't think I have ever done that myself, but it might be easier to see if possible.
As I have mentioned before, I am terrible at making time for Daz until August, when I have significant time off and headspace to think about these things. I have participated in quite a few challenges in the past, but it is almost a year since I opened Daz, so happy to play along if possible. Either way, I want to add a few more posts to the month, as I still say these contests are great for testing things out.
If so, it would be intermediate and I am heading to my cyber happy space for the first part of the month.
(I don't have that product, so I can't comment on how the surfaces were set)
Did you apply Iray Uber on the various surfaces you wanted to change?
If you didn't, you should.
As an example, if what's shown on the screen is controlled by a specific surface, you can use the Base Color map as the Emission Color map, and set the Emission Color to something else than black (some people like to use a blue-ish colour to mimick the blue-ish light usually emitted by TV, but I don't know if it's movie screens act the same). Then you can control the emission level as you would usually do, raising the luminosity value.
Here's an example with a TV, with Iray preview done in Scene Only mode. As show on the Surface tab, the screen has its own surface in this case.
Default materials, converted by Daz Studio:
Default materials, after applying Iray Uber on them and copying the Base Color map into the Emission Color slot:
Funnily enough, I was just playing with the same idea. I got the 2D picture from the film and made it an emissive surface with a grey colour, which seemed to mimic the greyscale. It worked until I added a backround environment and then didn't seem to show up as an emission. I may need to play a little more later.
So, I had a little extra play. It does depend on what the surfaces are. Don't know if this will help, but I created a flat plane for where the screen would be, as I didn't have a specific screen there. (a little tweaking to get it into place, so if your cinema screen has a surface that would be easier!) I added the image to the base colour, as mentioned by Elor. Where I went wrong earlier was not adding the image to the emission colour as well (also mentioned by Elor - wish I had read that before playing earlier!). Therefore, my emission was not doing anything. In the image below, the left image was added only into base colour and the right into emissive colour as well. Looks like it made some difference. I thought it worth uploading, as it shows a different way of the surfaces appearing in the pane.
Hmmm. I can't pretend I understand all of that but I'd have a play later. The screen asset doesn't have a separate screen though, I had to modify the whole texture file which includes the frame and stand.
Hi,
Mine didn't have a screen either. Therefore I added a flat plane to be the screen: Go to Create > New Primitive, select Plane. I created a 1m square plane and adjusted it to fit just in front of the screen - lots of fiddly tweaking under perspective view and x and z scaling... I then applied the picture by using the triangle to the left of base and emissive colour options. (Browse to where the picture is on your computer) Clicking on the coloured part of emissive colour tab (see image) brings up the options to make it emissive. Choosing any colour then opens the options seen above with luminance.
Thanks. Like I said, I have lots to learn.
You'll have to create a new picture for the emissive slot then where everything except the screen will be black (so non-emissive).
If the screen texture is the following one:
The emission map will be this one:
Picture used for the screen: https://unsplash.com/photos/silhouette-of-man-and-woman-kissing-on-beach-during-sunset-p0vZplFhKYI
You have two methods to achieve that result:
Second way offer the benefit of being able to re-use the mask in another set, with the slight disadvantage of having to set everything in Daz Studio at least once (it's possible to save the change as Layered Image preset).
I'm calling it a mask, but from the point of view of Daz Studio LIE, it's a layer on top of the emission map, with that layer's blend mode set to Multiply.
The mask look like that:
And because it's likely easier to see it in action, I attached the scene subset I used to see how everything could be set, in a zip archive.
My advice is to add a temporary Base directory, to unzip the archive here, the scene subset (saved without any render preset) and the Layered Image preset (if you want to use another base color in the test scene to check if it's working as intended, you'll have of course to save your own Layered Image preset for the Moonshin screen is you want to use the second method) are in Prop/Elor/Emissive Screen, the three textures are in Runtime/Textures/Elor/Drive-in.
Thank you, that is most helpful. Currently sat with sore gums after dentist visit so I won't be doing anything on it today.
Pulled an old set peace out for this one. Need to decide on a character or two to be coming from the fog, and do some more texture work.