how are Iray lights different from normal lights in Daz4?
Toobis
Posts: 993
I have not really used them but I wanted to know how they might be considered different than normal lighting packs and such. Are Iray lights more realistic providing you can use Iray. What is it about them that makes them different compared to normal lights. If someone could give me a picture difference I would like that a lot.
Post edited by Toobis on
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Iray is a pbr render. 3Delight is a biased render so the lights are different can only be used in their respective renders.
jh
but how are they different when you see them in finished renders? I assume Iray is better somehow than regular 3Delight.
The operative word is "different"; the 3Delight lights do not work in a predictable fashion in IRay and vice versa..... In general, the IRay lights work like real lights... a single light bulb in a big room produces a tiny bit of light in the scene evenif you can barely detect it; the 3Delight bulb is more like the light in a painting with a very defined fall off, for example. To paraphrase a famous saying, it is like comparing a fish to a bicycle.
depends on the style of render you are doing. if you want realistic you use iray, if you want something toon like, you'd use 3Delight.
That's... a bit misleading. 3Delight lights behave in all sorts of ways, and you have a lot of range of what kinds of lighting you use. This makes it harder to make realistic lighting because there are a lot of options and you have to REALLY understand what's going on. On the flip side, you have easy options that are hard or impossible in Iray.
For example, with uberarealight, I can place a lightsource that behaves fairly realistically, if I want. I can also decide this light doesn't cast shadows. Or casts pink shadows. Or casts antishadows. Or I can decide a given object is the only object that doesn't cast shadows. Or it DOES cast shadows, but it's invisible. I can also have a very realistic-looking woman whose leg happens to be a cartoon leg. And she has a ghost head.
Is the lightsource completely realistic? No. But if you know what you are doing, nobody will be able to tell.
I like Iray a lot, don't get me wrong, but a lot of people sell 3DL short mainly because it's a lot harder to get certain results they want.
Most basically, in 3delight it takes extra efforrt to make things behave in a phisically plausible way. In Iray it takes effort to make them not.
Specifically to lights, In Iray light will bounce by default, Its very hard to get ugly black shadows, Yay! Also, its really easy to make a light have size rather than just being a point; Its much easier to get soft lighting with just a few lights in Iray.
Its hard to do a straight one to one comparison but I'll see what I can whip up.
The other thing worth noting is that 3DL shaders are wildly variable, and that can have a huge impact on the effect of light.
Also wildly variable in how well — if at all — they convert into Iray materials. Usually you can get at least a close(ish) first approximation, but sometimes there's nothing you can do except study the 3Delight settings and manually reverse-engineer them into something that works in Iray.
Alright down to specifics. Iray has light bounce, decay, and area, built in by default 3delight also has these things, but it takes more fiddling to get them up and going.
The default Iray spotlight with tweaked settings and nothing else (I set the spotlight angle up above 100, the strength (lumens) way up set the geometry to rectangle and geometry area to 40x40)
The default 3delight spotlight with tweaked settings (set the spotlight angly up above 100, same as iray and the shadow softness up to 500%, there aren't a lot of other settings to change, I should have set up the light decay if I were trying to make things properly realistic, but I don't actually know what settings to use there. In Iray light decay is automatic and unchanging)
With the default spotlight in 3delight there: will be harsh shadows, notice how hard the transition is between lit and unlit.
Now a more fair comparison, because it is perfectly possible to get something similar to Iray. But, its not going to be done with just 1 light.
Here's something set up to mimic the Iray render the main difference is the lack of light decay, which, again, I could have set up, but it is really kind of a pain to.
It has 3 lights: an area light (omUberArea appliied to a plane primative, which I think comes with studio now?) UberEnvironment2 (definitely does) set to bounce, and a default spotlight lined up the area light and set to specular only, because for some reason uberenvironment kills the specular from the area light.
There are probably more effective ways to do this (theres that whole 3delight thread doing all sorts of stuff), but this was me going from a quick roll your own using default not to complex things perspective.
And that is the key for me, Iray's lights are realistic by default, minimal tweaking and you're good to go
Regarding 3DL falloff: The falloff setting should be 2 for natural settings, and then there's a falloff distance, which I find a little more confusing -- it's the distance at which light attenuates to nothing. I'm not sure if realistic, there, means 'infinity' or you should guesstimate or what.
Iray lights ARE "normal" lights in 4.8 and above. Iray is now the default renderer, so default scene loads anticipate you'll be working with Iray.
When adding lights from the D|S menus, the selection of the renderer automatically switches the functionality of the lamps to suit that renderer. Because the renderers take fundamentally different approaches, the options for the lamps are also different, with more options to set for 3Delight. Iray is intentionally designed to provide "pushbutton" rendering, so the mechanics of the lighting are built-in and standardized. Many people find this easier to work with, as there are fewer controls to fiddle, and because the behavior of the light (more or less) follows real-life, is more predictable.
You asked about *light sets* -- assuming these are ones you buy. Lights sets for 3DL are designed for that renderer, and may not even produce light in Iray. The differences can be too numerous to mention, and suffice it to say, you should opt for the pre-made lighting rigs that are intended for the renderer you plan to use.
It depends on your skill with lights. Iray is easier I think for beginners to get nice results quickly 3delight requires skill and knowledge to achieve a nice result. Both have their pros and cons. Textures seem more optimized for Iray at present especially for new characters. Older characters are mostly designed for 3delight and require texturing to work properly with Iray.
You can see in the gallery some examples of Iray vs 3delight.
My preference is for 3delight but I tend to like stuff that is less mainstream.
My arc was 3DL -> Iray -> 3DL. I'm finding, returning to 3DL, that a greater understanding of what's going on gives me a lot of options that include most of what I could do in Iray.
Though Iray still makes certain things much easier. (some subtleties of transparency/refraction, for example)
So here's ghost-head cartoon leg woman.
This is what I've done as well. Although I do like both, I like complex scenes, and I tend to prefer rendering those in 3delight. Iray has some limitations for me, too in interior lighting and look and feel which I don't always like.
I'm finding it easier to get details to pop in 3DL than in Iray, too.
It's like... going from 0-80% quality is hugely easier in Iray than 3DL. But getting from 80-95% quality is then a lot easier in 3DL, while Iray leaves people floundering trying to get lighting and contrast and whatnot.
The last 5%, I dunno, man, wizards or something.
That is well articulated Timmins. I agre about the details. I never thought to put it that way.
So with my 'second wave' 3DL, for example, consider: http://willbear.deviantart.com/art/Ninive-6-lightwall-closeup-589094361
I never did anything that good ~6 months ago when I was last wrangling with 3DL. I suspect it's a combination of better hardware, being more tolerant of longer renders due to Iray (heh), being more tolerant of longer renders because I know I can do a much faster-rendering toon, better skill and understanding.
Nicely done Timmins.William. That is really coming along. It may be that taking a break from 3DL was great for you.
It was a great learning experience. Iray made a lot of basic stuff easier which let me be happier and develop skills and understanding of what's going on, then when I pushed to try to get better, I started figuring out lighting and so on. I also got a better computer, which doesn't hurt.