How to do "This" in Reality: Learn useful techniques for your art [Commercial]
pciccone
Posts: 661
Hi.
I often see requests on how to do something specific using Reality ( http://www.daz3d.com/pret-a-3d ), so I thought that it was high time for a "how to" thread where to collect useful techniques and have it in one of the best places for sharing 3D-related information.
For example, we will see specific techniques on lighting, like how to easily point a light, how to control lights for best results, how to use light emitting materials, and so on. We will see how to create procedural textures easily, how to take advantage of the physics-based properties of material, how to streamline your workflow with automatic presets.
If anybody feels like posting tutorials or just a quick Reality tip, please do it here, so that we can share it with the community at large.
Also, if you would like to get an answer on how to do something with Reality, please post here, and I will do my best to provide an answer.
Cheers!
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Comments
Let's start with a lighting tip.
Lighting is 80% of your scene. I'm not kidding. Have a scene with excellent lighting and mediocre textures and you will wow the audience. Use excellent textures with bad lighting and your scene will look bad.
It follows that we need to be able to control our lights if we want to obtain a good result. Here is a great example of a character that is almost cartoonish but which is enveloped by excellent light, giving us a stunning picture:
Image by saywhonow, http://www.daz3d.com/gallery/images/130076/
When it comes to lighting, the Reality Mesh Light is generally the most flattering, flexible light that you can use in your scene. The issue is, it does not emit light in Studio or Poser, because the programs don't provide that feature, and so people often find themselves at odds with the light fixture. They don't see how they can point it effectively. Here is how.
If we look at the Mesh Light parameters, either in Studio or Poser, we see that there is a Morph group and in there we can find a "Handle Length" parameter. If we increase the value for that parameter the handle of the light will extend as a "laser pointer", showing us exactly where the light will fall:
It's that easy. Now you can point the Reality Mesh Light with dead-on accuracy. Couple it with simple shape change, using the Scale parameters and you can get very focused, sculpted lighting. To top it off, use the Snoot control to avoid light spillage. The handle is never renderer so it does not matter if it's visible in the frame.
You can see all this in action in a video tutorial on YouTube:
Hope this helps.
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Here is another tips, not on something specific, but on how to change the look of your image to give it that luxurious "film look." Digital images are a bit artificial, a bit too perfect or too even. You could use Photoshop to do some adjustment, or you can simply click on the "Gamma + Film Response" group in LuxRender and chose among a few dozen film emulations.
Those film emulations are, like everything else in Lux, dead-on accurate. They have been created from actual measured data and will shift the tone of the image right in fron tof your eyes, while the render runs.
One of my favorites is the AgfaColor Optima II 200. It adjusts the gamma a little bit, it gives the image that film look, but without altering the colors. It also helps in exposing the highlights, so that the bright areas of the image are not overexposed. The AgfaColor Vista 800 is similar but with warmer tones. Also nice is the Fujifilm Cine FCI. Try some of them and see what effect you get. The result can give a big improvement in the dramatic effect of the image and it just gives you that extra professional look that would be missing otherwise. And you don't have to do any post-process at all.
There are some B&W film emulations that will give you that fantastic "noir" look with not effort at all. Like the other presets, the B&W film looks are based on actual B&W film stock.
If you find yourself using a certain film emulation over and over again, you can set that directly from the Camera tab of Reality.
Hope this helps.
I will have to follow this thread!!!
Thanks. I already learned something new about the handle lenght parameter.from your post. May sound simple but sure is a hande tip. I find that the faces of most of my figures looks more plastic while the body looks realistic. Any tips on how to create more realistic skin. I do use Reality's presets but sometimes it just feels as if something is missing.
Nice thread Paolo! I am hoping for some ideas I haven't yet tried or thought off. Nice to know about the handles. I have been using the snoot length in the same way as the handles, to point the direction of the light.
I am partial to the AgfaColor Vista 400 myself.
BTW finally got a new PC with Win 10 and I am loving being able to use the latest version of Reality and Lux!!
Thank you CajunBeauty.
Henrico, glad that you found the tip useful. Faces are tough, that's why, when I make a preset, I start with the face. If I get that right, then the rest will be easy. I generally create a Camera just for the face, usually with a 180/200mm lens (focal length), and place two mesh lights: one in front and one above. I then go to work. Skin is very reflective, so the specular color needs to be fairly bright, 64:64:64 if you are using a solid color, is a good starting point. If you have a specular map then that's better.
While the skin is highly reflective, it is not very polished, so the glossiness strength should be failry low. A set of values of 6500H/7000V could be a good starting point. Next I work on the bump map. It has to be strong enough to break the shine of the skin, but not so strong to look like granite. That is something that will generally take some trying because every bump map is different. To make things faster to render I render via the face cam and hide all the other parts of the body. I just keep the face, lips, cornea, iris, sclera e eyelashes visible. Do that by Shify-Clicking on all the materials, hold the shift and then click on the Hidden checkbox. That will hide all materials. Then uncheck the box for the materials that you want to see. That will make exporting and rendering much faster. Once you get the face materials right it's just a matter of using the Sync feature to copy the settings to the rest of the body.
Here is an example, using the Victoria 7 preset:
Hope this helps.
Hey FSMCDesigns, good to see you again. I always liked your work and I hope to see some new material soon.
Cheers.
Definitely following this thread, :)
Welcome aboard Fobok. Let me know if there is any special topic that you would like to see explained.
Here is a little tip. Have you ever been working on an image and wanted to look something up in the user guide but couldn't remember where it was? In the Reality, UI click on Help. There you can access the Reality User Guide (RUG) as well as video tutorials created by Paolo as well as other options.
Very handy tips, thank you!
Thanks. I am certainly following this thread. A very useful and informative thread so far.
Jack
Thank you Jack and Simon, glad that you like it.
Since we mentioned the snoot for the Mesh Light, lets' talk about how this feature can be useful. As far as I know, the Reality Mesh Light is the only light fixture that provide a built-in snoot and gobo (more on the Gobo later). These are controls that mimic what we can find on professional-grade photographer's lights.
Lighting is not about illumination. Lighting is about vision and artistic expression. We are captivated by an image, most of the times, because of the subject, the story, and the lighting. Many times, lighting is what tells the story.
To get lighting done right we need to control the light. This means to be able to:
The last issue is extremely important. If we place three lights in the scene and they bleed over each other, we might not get the effect that we want. In many cases the bleeding will result in areas of the scene double- or triple-lit, with the result of making it very hard to have the correct exposure throughout the scene. Some parts will be too dark, some parts will be too bright.
To control the light we need a way of blocking where it goes. This can be achieved by placing black planes, called "flags", in strategic parts of the scene. Another way is to extend the Snoot of the Reality Mesh Light.
The snoot, as we can see from the image, "boxes" the light inside and prevents it from spilling until the opening is reached. This can be very valuable for artistic lighting and it's a snap to use by dialing the "Snooth Length" parameter in the Morph section, either in Studio or Poser.
You can see how this works in the following video tutorial:
When used in conjunction with the Handle Length morph that we saw before, the Snoot can be a very easy, very quick, way of controlling the light. Try it with a few test renderts to get a taste of what it can do for you.
Cheers.
Thanks for the feedback. I will surely put it to the test.
Bookmarked!
Good stuff Paolo, thanks!
Hey gederix, glad that you found it.
Cheers.
Paolo, I am also assumimg that the size of the mesh light still affects the softness/harshness of the shadows, smaller for sharp and larger for softer, correct?
Yes, nothign has changed there. Reality uses Lux, which is phsically-accurate. In real life the size of a light affects the softness of the light so the same is with Reality & Lux.
Cheers.
BTW, the snoot in Reality 4 has also a width control, which was not present in previous versions. With that you can change the width of the aperture of the snoot, so that you can create a snoot with a truncated piramyd shape. That can be used to create a sharp light, small area, but with a controlled "funnel" of light that illuminates a wide area.
Going to be following this closely.
How to get volumetric effects
"God rays" or "Spotlight beams" are examples of volumetric effects. In the real world these effects are caused by light following a constrained path and the hitting particles suspended in the air.
In the case of "God rays" the sun light finds some openings in the clouds and it gets scattered by the atmosphere particles. For a spotlight beam we have a light confined in a canister, the spotlight, exiting the canister and then hitting the dust suspended in the air.
In 3D, a volume is a special type of material that simulates the particles in the atmosphere. In Reality we create the volume using the Volumes tab. You can find the details in the Reality User's Guide (aka the RUG), included in Reality. See the Help menu.
Once you create a volume you need to put it somewhere. That is easily done:
Now you have a volume that can scatter light and it has the size, position, and shape of the object that encloses it. If you shine a very narrow, about 7 degrees of spotlight cone, light on that volume, you will get a beam of light in your scene.
If you use the DAZ Studio cube to try this experiment be aware that that primitive has errors in the geometry. One of the sides has wrong surface normals, pointing inside, instead of outside. The result is that the beam will not be visible. If that's the case simply rotate the cube so that the worng face is resting on the floor.
You can see a full tutorial on how to make this work here:
DAZ Studio version
Poser Version
Have fun with volumes!
Hey Sonja, good to see you here. Thank you for stopping by.
How to easily convert the gain values in LuxRender to Reality
As Reality users, we are all used (spoiled?) to the fact that we can change the light intensity of each light while rendering.
LuxRender actually doesn’t adjust the intensity (gain) of each light. What it does is to increase or decrease the intensity of a group of lights. Each light, in Reality, is associated with a group. If you give a different name to each light, then you will be able to adjust each light individually inside LuxRender. But the program is actually acting on a group of lights. This is an important distinction to keep in mind.
Let’s assume that we have a scene with three lights in it. We call those lightsLight-A, Light-B and Light-C. Let’s assume that Light-A and Light–B are assigned to group Front. The other light is assigned to a group called Top. Let’s also assume that Light-A has been given a gain, in Reality, of 0.5, or half intensity. Light-B has been given as an intensity of 0.7 (70% of normal intensity). Light-C has been given an intensity of 1.5.
Whenever we render, we end up with setting the gain for the group calledFront to 1.25. The group called Top has been adjusted to have a gain of 0.8. Now our lighting is perfect as we want. The problem is, the scene is not finished, and we will need to do some more testing renders before we’re done with it. Obviously, we don’t want to repeat those of light adjustments every time we render. Ideally, we would be able to instruct Reality to use those values. So, how can we do that?
The simple solution is to remember that the gain of value in LuxRender is a multiplier for the gain in Reality. Let’s see how it works.
We will start with the lights in group Front. That group was adjusted in LuxRender to a gain of 1.25. That means that we will have to multiply each light in that group by 1.25. So, Light-A had an original volume of 0.5, times 1.25 it gives us 0.625. That will be there body of that we have to enter in Reality. Light-B had an original value 0.7. Multiply that value by 1.25 and we get 0.875. So we set Light-B to have a gain of that value in Reality.
Finally, Light-C was set to 1.5, but the group that it belong to, Top, had its gain adjusted to 0.8. So we multiply 1.5 by 0.8 and obtain 1.2. Let’s set the gain for Light-C in Reality to 1.2 and we are all set. From now on, whenever we render this scene we will get exactly the same lighting without having to adjust anything in LuxRender anymore.
Water-Ripples in DAZ with the D-Former
Here is a very good tutorial by Daniel Wright on creating water ripples using only Daz Stuidos and Reality.
http://www.barnick.de/daz/tutorials/RipplesTutorial.pdf
Hi Kim.
Thank you very much for posting the useful tips. I remember seeing the ripples tutorial before I lost track of it. Very cool!
Thanks Kim and Paolo for the tips/tutorials. I revisited the volumetric effects tutorial a few days back and I must admit I'm very impressed on how easy it is to obtain such great results. The water-ripples was fun to try also and you don't have to use the exact look from the tut - create you're own style of ripple with D-Former than bring it to life with Reality.
Cheers
Here is a new question. When I load Reality's mesh lights, Luxrender automatically groups them together. Is there a way I can seperate the lights?