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Let's be fair here, DAZ has provided some documentation.
I mean they took the existing Carrara documentation from two owners previous and changed the cover and gave us a few updates. That was OK because they really hadn't changed much in the software after they'd bought it anyway at that time. 
Then at one time they had a half decent Studio manual that was two versions old when it finally came out but it was the type of manual that said things like "This is the PLAY button. It causes the animation to play when you press it." 
(Thank you Captain Obvious) And still left out many of the controls in the deep menus and by time the manual was out, some of them had been moved to other control areas anyway leading to inevitable confusion. 
(A persistent problem with video tutorials also).
But over the years of persistent kvetching. I've come to the conclusion that documentation is not DAZ's strongest skill.
I can understand the logic of not concentrating on documents. Documents are mill stones around your neck forcing you to have a stable design plan, engineers who follow the plan, experienced tech writers to create the document, and a product that stays with the plan long enough for the document to develop a readership that trusts it. But that is apparently an outdated 20th century concept, lamented and moaned about by retired 20th century engineers who have trouble operating a modern phone. 
As a newbie to Daz Studio I've found there is quite a challenge when it comes to learning lighting. People don't want to spend days or weeks learning how to light scenes - at least most people. Most people don't want to spend an hour or two setting up scenes and lighting before they even get down to rendering. What people want are quick settings like "Noon/Sunny" "Noon/Partly Cloudy" "Dawn" "Dusk" "Dim Indoor" "Bright Indoor" etc. User friendly presets that properly light scenes would be awesome. However, due to Daz Studio being a free program, I can't really complain.
I actually purchased a product that came with day/time/location presets for the sun, but that was something I was sort of figuring out on my own by experimenting with random times. I tried the product once on one setting, and so far so good, but I can't remember its name or the PA. But still 9:00 AM on March 13th 2015 in Australia or whatever is not giving you much information about the actual lighting..
A thought-- I bet if Daz did create a manual like I described and charged for it, I bet they would make more sales on that than any single product ever sold! They should seriously consider it!
I found lighting in 3delight more intuitive for me. I don't actually enjoy lighting in iray that much.
For lighting, it may be easier (and they render much faster) to buy DimensionTheory's HDRI packs. You can click on the presets and find something that will work for you. His promo shots are huge clues as to how things will look and may help you choose which pack to start with. I've always found DAZ Studio to be much easier to understand than the other software packages, even easier than Poser. Learn a little at a time and you'll be amazed at how much you've learned in practically no time. The neat thing about Iray is that it renders so fast, it doesn't take forever to see if you are getting things the way you want to see them.
I tend to render indoor scenes and I don't really care for HDRI for indoor scenes that much.
Serene, try these http://www.daz3d.com/iradiance-studio-hdris-for-iray and http://www.daz3d.com/iradiance-hdr-mesh-lights-for-iray
I found a site that has free HDR samples to download but I really like more dramatic lighting, bright sunlight streaming through windows, lamps emitting lights and cool sci-fi light emitters. I bought some sets for light emitters but couldn't get them to work correctly. I have to try again, I think it was my first week with DS. I'm really hoping to get those sci-fi special fx to work. I'm assuming they do or they would have been updated or pulled from the store. I guess there's more to it than just sticking them in a scene...
This really is a big wall for many people. For somebody who has never used a program like Daz before, opening it up and seeing all the stuff in it is absolutely over whelming.
I've looked at all kinds of tutorials, and to be frank, the vast majority of them SUCK. I'm sorry, but they do. Nearly every single tutorial makes assumptions that the person reading already knows certain basics. This is MADDENING. So now I gotta go google a tutorial...for a tutorial. Many of the people who have used Daz for years do not understand this at all. They grew up with Daz, and had the chance to soke in these new features over time. But somebody going into Daz now does not, they get exposed to everything, all at once.
I am a very visual person, and that includes learning. Reading a tutorial just doesn't work so well for me. It is hard for an old dog to learn new tricks. I need pictures. Or videos. Something. But not just a list of words.
I watched a number of tutorial videos by i13 that I bought here in a package, and I learned more from those than anything else this site has ever offered me. I highly recommend those. She spoke plainly and clearly and visually showed you what she was doing. We need stuff like this for Daz 4.9.XXX.
Changing the what?
So do I. I imagine people with a background in real-world lighting (photography, cinematography, stage lighting) probably find Iray easier, and the tricks they know are mostly transferable, but for me 3delight lighting and surfaces make much more sense. Render time isn't really an issue, it's setup time. I can barely find time to create anything some months; it would take me years to be able to do anything in Iray besides point-and-click. Whenever I've tried to do anything that would really benefit from a PBR, I've eventually given up and done it in 3DL.
In the Render Settings tab, click on Tone Mapping. The parameters for Shutter Speed, F/Stop and Film ISO work exactly like the controls on a manual camera (except in D|S you never need to worry about things like blurring from camera shake at low shutter speeds). The default settings work fairly well with the default Environment light.
Ok, so this new light set that triggers the sales looks interesting to me but then I read:
"Need some cool Iray mesh emitter lights but "real" world lights don't cut it? Here are forty four preset shaders you apply to your mesh surface settings. They are true lights that emit light from your models."
They look beautiful, but what is a mesh surface setting, and how do I apply it? Besides asking in the forums, how are we supposed to know this information?
mesh lights are shaders that make a surface emit light. ie, select the object in the scene tab, open the surface tab, find the surface group on that object, select that, then just double-click on the preset that you want to use.
for clarification, if you had a glass light bulb in your scene, you would select that in scenetab, then find its material group for the glass, in the surface tab. select trhat also, then just apply the preset of your choice to that material group.
:))
Oh, OK, thanks. I've already done that but didn't know it was called a mesh light. I thought I was just applying an emitter shader to a surface. (I once applied one to the floor out of curiosity.) So there is no actual object called a mesh light that you have to add to the scene?
It seems to me that if someone wants things just to be simple, then stick with 3Delight. The implentation is pretty good with Daz Studio, It works pretty much WYSIWG with reards to lights...you put a spotlight in, and change it's intensity and it brightens the view port screen accordingly.
Iray is just flat out more complex.
The OP brings up an interesting point... Striking a balance between "fun" and "professionally complicated".
Keeping it too simple, you don't attract people who want a professional-like software with all the bells and whistles to render their scenes... Too complicated and you drive off people who just want to have fun without having to have a PhD in lighting and shader correlation theory.
To be honest, I think "professional-like" is okay... Provided you have well thought out documentation of terminology and method... And that really does not mean everything is a half hour YouTube or Vimeo video. One of the biggest reasons I still rely on Poser so much is I have several Books about it, made out of actual paper from real trees that were brutally murdered and flattened into neat sheets and printed on with real toxic inks.... When I forget how to do something, I can look it up instead of waiting to get to the point in the video where the person briefly mentions what I wanted to know and then have keep playing it back and forth until I either actually understand what they said, because that was the moment their tongue fell out while they glossed over that point or I just can't seem to move the slider to the actual part where they said what I waited fifteen minutes for them to get to the point with.... Or I fall asleep during the whole mess (I was actually using several 3D Coat tutorials as sleep aids... Seriously.) I don't expect an actual DAZ book, ("Avatars, Characters and Whatnot a guide to making stuff in DAZ Studio" no longer counts as useful since it no longer has the content disk... That and the actual book was pretty lame and useless), although a well made one would be worth at least $60-70 to me if it was on the level of real guides and textbooks. I appreciate when individuals take the time to make a tutorial, but when the company that makes the software (really, it's almost everyone these days) only provides the most basic and cursory written information and relies on videos or the community to provide further instructions, it gets "uncomfortable" from there on... I only have feedback from three people I know (in real life) who do CGI and none of them like videos... But in any other field or hobby, people (many, dozens perhaps) I've talked to despise most video tutorials as either boring, unclear, difficult to follow or just plain annoying... To quote my friend "It's like they got all the worst most disorganized teachers in the world and refined them into this guy". To boil down what I mean... Learning is a bit of a mess now. I suppose when you start out, if it's a really well made video on the first run, if it's well presented and the person talking is clear and has a human personality, it's probably informative... But the moment the veiwer misses something or doesn't get something or has to go back or find something... That's where it all goes to hell. And that's a barrier... To enjoyment and learning. Since this is still mostly hobby based, FUN should be well considered... Because most of us don't like when FUN becomes WORK... We get paid for work, we pay for fun... It really shouldn't be we pay for work and the fun takes a hike.... It's not a sustainable way of keeping people engaged and happy. Some people like pushing buttons and experimenting, but most just want to get down to making stuff with a reasonable learning curve.
But it is what it is and not likely to change... My feeling is as time goes on this will be less hobby oriented and more geared to game makers and professional studios or in the very least, those who have gone to school for CGI or at least taken some classes in it. Before DAZ there was Zygote and they sold professional medical models... Unless I'm wrong, DAZ spun off from them... It's seems slowly there is some desire to go back to a professional base and perhaps not to deal with complications of dealing with hobbyists and nonprofessionals.
when i saw the changes to the render tab in 4.8. i kinda just threw up my hands, said 'mercy' and gave up on ds.
g3 generation crashes carrara.
Yeah McGyver, I wouldn't blink at that price for that book. And I would accept an e version that if I so desired I could print my own manuals onto real paper made from real trees that were brutally murdred and flattened... and bound up in a neat folder of petrochemical construction with a clear cover so I can see at a glance the contents of said manual. I have AOA's lights and camera manuals in that format (actually they're just stapled in the corner) and I literally have the information at my fingertips. I can constantly refernece it without having to switch away from what I'm working on to rewind that bit of the video and watch it again. It's better even than switching back and forward to reference a pdf or document. More conducive to effective, efficient and enjoyable learning.
I would be prepared to pay for a version of Daz Studio that came with that book if the book was comprehensive enough. I gess studio is studio so just sell the book. I'm coming from the perspective of a rank newbie, not just to cg art, but to computers as well. At some point, even I am going to get to the point where I really want and need to get a bit more technical with things. Having the manual means my learning processes are far less interrupted by the necessity to glean that information from other varied, widespread, difficult to find sources that so often only have a limited amount of the detail you need covered. I keep thanking the people who contribute in that manner to these forums because I'm at where I'm at because of them. And wouldn't their contribution be that much easier and ultimately more valuable if there was an efficient and effective means to search the forums from inside the forums.
I'm sure that one time I delved into some documentation somewhere on this site and reached a point where it said I didn't have the rights required to proceed further. Now I'm reminded I meant to enquire as to wether those rights are actually obtainable, hopefully by means other than virgin sacrifices and valerous quests for holy grails and such. If Daz Studio is going to be in any way professionally oriented, that information information allows me as a hobbyist to learn how to use it regardless. Even how to use it professionally. If I'm a hobbyist the Daz 3D shop becomes much more important to me if I can use studio the fullest extent I end up requiring from it. If I can become a professional who uses studio and touts it to other proffessionals as a solution for their workflow, that income generating manual becomes an investment.
I had a dream where Daz Studio 5 was released and it had blenders modeling, sculpting and animation tools fully integrated along with the entire physical and particle simulation suite and a bridge to gimp. There was a shaft of Dazzling light shining down from somewhere on high and descending that shaft of light was a sacred text in the form of a book.... . Is valerous even a word?
Information information? I'm a professional proffessional.
Just for the benefit of anyone who is struggling to learn who might be put off by the idea this is too hard. Large swathes of Studio are point and click and its just a matter of learning where the buttons are and what they do and maybe how they relate to other buttons and... . For the rest of it, that a lot of us aren't going to figure out on our own, the information is all out there you just have to find it. If you happen to be new to the forums you probably found about the best source there is. There's even backup and support. Daz 3D seems to be putting out some better youtube videos and there are threads with links to....all over the place. So life is about having to do alot of the leg work yourself? Who's bright idea was that?
All of those things... "dim," "bright," etc, are completely subjective, though.
Do this as a test to illustrate what I mean:
So what the heck is going on here? Cameras in Iray work the way real physical cameras do. Real physical cameras are designed to mimic the functions of the human eye (although the human eye, and the brain attached to it, are far superior). Your eye allows light to pass into it and fall on your retina, which encodes that light information and passes it along the optic nerve to your brain. If the room is dark, your pupils get bigger. If someone shines a light in your face, your pupils get smaller. If you've ever walked into a dark house after being outside on a very sunny day (especially a sunny day with snow on the ground!), you know that you're practically blind. But in a minute or two, you can see just fine, even without any lights on. Your eyes automatically adjust their "Exposure Value" by making your pupils bigger.
With cameras, the lens focuses light onto the film or the CCD, which translates and/or stores that information. Light is allowed to pass through the lens by a shutter, which has an aperture size. The aperture is like the pupil in your eyes. When you adjust the Exposure Value on the camera to a smaller number, it is (perhaps unintuitively) opening that aperture wider. When you adjust the Exposure Value to a bigger number, it is closing that aperture to a smaller opening. Bigger aperture = more light gets through. Smaller aperture = less light gets through.
Back to what I was saying about how our eyes are superior to cameras in the way they process light. On a sunny day, grab your phone or camera, and stand in a room of your house that the sun is not shining directly into, with the lights off. Look out a window. You should be able to see everything in the room perfectly well, and everything outside perfectly well. Inside will be a little dimmer, but everything is clear. Now take a picture from the same position while looking out the same window, with the camera's flash turned off. You'll see one of two things. Either everything outside will be perfect, and the room in front of you will be so dark you can't make anything out; or, everything in the room will be perfect, but you can't see anything outside because the light in the window is so bright. Your eye and your brain process varying levels of light in a very sophisticated manner that samples the world around you at multiple exposure values simultaneously. A lot of it is just your brain making stuff up and stitching together a composite image from the information your eye is giving it. Cameras can't do that in a single click. If the aperture of the camera is closed enough to make the outside light "normal," then the lower level of light inside the room will be nearly black. If the camera aperture is open wide enough to show the inside normally, then everything outside will be so bright it's blinding.
Lighting a scene in Iray is therefore like lighting the set of a movie. Even when a movie is being shot outdoors in broad daylight, there are often still very bright lights put on the actors. Why? The variance in light levels from the sky behind the actors and the amount of light hitting their faces. Opening the aperture to capture the actor's faces causes the sky behind them to be too bright. When you light a scene in Iray, you'll either choose an exposure value and then add lights, or increase their brightness, until your scene is visible; or, you'll add the lights you want to use, at the level you want to use them, and adjust the exposure value until your scene is correctly lit.
There's no magic to it, but it does take practice. Try using HDRI skydomes to light outside scenes. For a daylight skydome, an Exposure Value of 13 or 14 is usually pretty good. You can find free HDRIs all over the internet, or even buy some very nice ones from the Daz3d shop. For inside scenes, I like to place omni lights where I know there would be lightbulbs, and set them to the intensity of actual lightbulbs. I can then use spotlights as key lights to illuminate my character, and adjust the exposure value as needed until the scene is as bright or as dark as I like it.
Added bonus information: shooting an outdoor night scene can be extremely challenging. Not because it is dark, but because if you adjust the camera aperture to allow your characters to be visible, the sky behind them is going to be a very bright gray, and not look like "night time" at all. Night scenes outdoors have to have extremely bright lights on the actors, so the aperture can be closed, and show a dark sky behind them. The lights also have to be aimed very carefully to create shadows only where you want them to fall.
There is a lot to experiment with, but it's not hard! More light = higher Exposure Value. Less light = lower Exposure Value!
Hope that help!
OK... this is the best, and most clear post I've read in a long time! I love the real life examples and the "try this". Thank you, Collective3D. :)
If you get tired of building houses, tutorials can be in your future! I'd be first in line for them. :)
Glad you find it helpful. I am indeed looking into the software and tech I need to assemble in order to put together a series of video tutorials. I miss teaching sometimes :)
Basically Daz 3d is like a lot of other things in life. It can be as simple, or as difficult as you wish to make it. You can get decent renders not knowing anything above a layman's knowledge of the software. There are a ton of settings and sliders that you never have to touch. However; for those that do wish to take it to the next level, the learning resources on what those bells and whistles do is tedious to suss out, and it would "really" be helpful to have a few in depth books (and videos) on different aspects of the program.
The advice to "just play with the dials" may be fun and you may figure out some things, but that is really the long way to go about figuring out stuff that people have already figured out. There are artists out there who do use Daz3d as a professional tool, and there are probably many more that would use it as such if the proper manuals were available and stayed updated with each new version of the software. Many of the available videos now are for earlier versions of the program,and the layout has changed considerably to the point that following them is simply frustrating.
A lot of editing and creation software are weak on documentation. Even 3ds Max, which has an extensive knowledgebase, can be very frustrating to learn from that information alone. Most 3d packages, along with software like Photoshop, are often best learned through a combination of watching tutorials and screwing around with those tutorials to see how each step does what it does. I used to build detailed tutorials for my students and then tell them if they followed my steps, they failed the assignment. Along the way you have to go off the rails and make it your own, it's the best way to learn.
I do agree that Daz's documentation (or critical lack thereof in certain cases) can be frustrating. Remember, though, that the key to learning is not just being presented with what a software can do. You have to first identify, as specifically as possible, what you want to do with it. For instance, it's much easier to help someone if they know they want to light a scene a certain way and can't figure out how to shoot it correctly, than it is if someone just says, "I don't know how to use this at all, just show me." I learned how to tile texture maps independently of each other using the image editor in Iray, simply because I knew specifically that is what I needed to know, but couldn't figure it out on my own.
I certainly don't know everything -- I doubt there is even any single developer at Daz who does know everything about the software -- but I'm happy to help when and where I can. The best way to reach me is always by email: [email protected].
Well iRay has definitely complicated the Studio experience. Not only technically but hardwarewise as well. Not only are prices of content rising, so are the hardware requirements. This avocation has become quite expensive.
And, seriously, 'photoreal' is a sham. Oh, the software follows the light rays whereever they go so the image ends up more 'real'. Well, golly gee, yes I've seen some gobsmacking iRay renders but then I've seen gobsmacking renders out of 3Delight as well. I guess it depends on your definition of 'gobsmacking'.
And what I'd like to know is, if following light rays makes images 'look like a photo' why are so many tricks necessary? Oh, I know about the importance of materials and SSS, but please, those light rays themselves have to be coaxed and coddled then forced into submission before they're worth following.
And all for 'photoreal'. Yeah, I realize some people love it and that's fine. I'm not one of them really. I've gotten in 'trouble' for saying this but I much prefer Poser's SSS to anything Studio offers. Yes, it's less 'real' but it has an artistic quality and inner glow to it that you ain't gonna get even with the hours and hours of labor and fiddling and faddling over skin in iRay. Does that make it 'better'? No but....artistic.
Edited to add: I've never actually USED Poser's SSS, I've just seen others' renders. I've been with Studio since before version 1 but was Poser before that.
Yeah, photoreal is highly overrated! Watercolors can be amazing!
But if real is all that is important, then the entire last century of art would evaporate. (Which might not be a bad thing) 
If you have to explain it to me it ain't art.
No one program can be all things to all people -- and either remain cheap, and or good. One of the things that prevented me from buying , or even messing around with Poser back in the day was all the photos and animations out there that look like early CGI. Later I started seeing really good work both photo-realistic and more artistic being done with the program, but by then I'd already heavily invested in Daz3d.
As it stands the PA's for the most part eventually develop what I'm looking for, but when I get to that level that it's worth my time to do so, I'll have to step up my game and start learning modeling and simply build the assets I need. For the moment, I really can't complain about anything. The documentation on the program could be a bit more organized and up to date, but you can find it. Looking at the work some people are putting out, obviously it's not impossible to learn it.