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...actually they do,you just have to adjust the softeness value.
...the one really nice feature Daz has is being able to view through a light as if it were a camera. . That would have saved me a lot of scary climbs
...but by the same token it means I don't have to drop 700$ to 1,200$ on a "state of the" art GPU.
Hair gets rather time consuming to render in 3DL, because of all the shadows it throws. That's why it's good if you "flag" it for less rendering samples, in case you own the AOA lights.
True, but the poster I was replying to seemed to imply that you can render 3DL with GPU-power of any Graphic Card (at least that is what I understood from reading the post), which is why I mentioned that that isn't the case. It would be rather misleading otherwise.
...exactly, because 3DL in Daz is only CPU based. That is why my system only has a GPU with 1 GB of memory as when I built it, 3DL ad Reality/Lux were the only render engines available and neither had a GPU render mode.
I think you and I talk about totally different aspects of this particular subject, and my English isn't really good enough to react to your post, without either coming across as arrogant or as an idiot... or both.
I thought I would give you and example using UberSurface. I put this together quickly and didn't do a lot of tweaking of the lights.
This is my simple Light, a cone with a rod for a bulb:
The Surface of the lamp is Base with color Black. The Bulb is the rod in the center and I applied the Florescent 120 Watt from the Real Lights for Daz Studio Iray -- for the Iray surface -- and in 3Delight I applied the !UberAreaLight base (which come with Daz Stuido**) to the Bulb. There are no other light sources in the Scene.
The surfaces are Angela's Stone Tile Merchant Resource - Set 1 taken through CrazyBump to produce DIFF/AO/NORM/SPEC/DISP maps and applied to various surfaces. The wall on the right is HSS.
Here is the 3Delight Render under 1 minute 46 seconds on an i5 4670K.
You can see the light bouncing as it reflects off the walls and actually illuminateds the area behind the lights, like a physical light would.
There are also settings for Falloff and Decay. Falloff is not active in this render.
This next one Falloff is active. This will set the point where the light ceases to illuminate anything, thus we get the dark corner. there is no light getting there.
Here is the Iray Renter 36 minutes 42 Seconds on at Zotac GeForce GTX 960 Amp! 4GB
I just converted to Surfaces and changed the surface of the Bulb.
Hope that helps.
** Had the Wrong Product, the AreaLight Base I used could with Studio and can be found in "Default Recources for DAZ Studio" not omAreaLight Light Shader for Daz Studio.
Hmm like that thanks !!!
One more here I've added two Fireplaces and torches and took away the Lights. Render Time was 2 minutes 17 seconds.
The logs on the right are using just Ambient Color and Strength setting.
The Logs on the left are have the !UberAreaLight Base applied and falloff set active and adjusted to it does light up the whole space.
The wall Torches the one in the back left is the Real Torch the others are instances. The Candles in the middle the flames.
Notice the Circle on the floor from the Candles and the Left hand fire.
Again there are no other lights in the scene and no post work.
The fire place is from Rosemill Moor. The Torches are from DM's Wicked Places and the Candles from DM's Circular Shrine 2
I did this one by finding all the candle flames and fireplace, swapping the flames for Arealight, and then tweaking it appropriately. I think I plugged the flame diffuse map into the Color channel, so that it casts appropriately varied/colored light.
I also had a distant light shining in through the windows and ambient light to add a little pseudo-bounced light throughout the place.
http://willbear.deviantart.com/art/Scriptorium-3DL-2-635058741
Those are good examples. It prompts a few questions on how you did it:
1- When applying the light to an object, you selected the surface and then added the light? I loaded a test scene. selected the surface of a lightbulb and (from the Smart Content/Default Resources/Lights) double-clikced on !UberAreaLightBase. It took a minutes, but I think I figured out that it put the light controls inside the surface editor for the bulb. Does that sound right?
2- How do you get the light to shine 'through' a lamp shade? The opacity kills it, but to drop the opacity will make the shade look unreal.
3- How does Falloff work? Does Falloff Start mean the light is full until that point, then Falloff End means the light stops at that point? If so, how does Falloff Decay work with that? If you set the Falloff End at a certain point, but set the Falloff Decay wrong, would that cause the light to stop before where End was set?
1. Yes, that is correct. The emission controls are now a surface property.
2. Using proper construction techniques and translucency. Opacity shouldn't be used for translucent effects...
3. Falloff makes the light behave more realistically...Start and End set the limits for where the falloff begins/ends...before/after that, if the light hasn't diminished to next to nothing it's 'constant', like if there were no falloff. To mimic 'real' lights falloff should be 2.
1 - yes, The shader will act like the Iray Base and copy the existing Images into the correct locations for you. They you have to make adjustments to the Surface/Light.
2 - My making the Light Shade Translucent.
3 - Think of Falloff as two Rings and you adjust them to get your results. Falloff Start is where you want the Light to Stop being 100 Percent. Falloff End is where you want the light to be at 0%. Fall Off Decay is the Rate of Decay across that diatance and MJC1016 is correct 2 is the Natural Decay of light.
The best way to lean how this works is to use a Candle set on a Flat Plane. (Like the Candle in the middle of the scene)
Set up the Candle Flame as a Light, then Make adjustments to it and render, The renders shoudl be well under 2 minutes. As you make various adjustments you will see how far the light goes out and how it respond to the adjustments.
Then you have to use your eye to decide how it looks in the scene. Fires, Candles and the like only give off so much light naturally and that light will only extend so far into the darkness. I will say the Uber Light does do Low Light renders very nicely.
Inane Glory has a few lamp and light sets that use the UberArealight Base shader for the lights but also have good settings for the shades so that the light does show through.
this one for example
http://www.daz3d.com/inaneglory-s-lights-and-lamps-1-table-lamps
Looking at the shade surface settings for the lamp I'm using as an example, I don't see a setting for Translucence. Could it be named something else and I'm just not seeing it?
You need to apply the omUberSurface to the shade. Translucence is not a property of the Default shade.
Ah, ok. That would make sense.
Ok, so I applied the UberSurface to the lamp shade. From the testing I did it would seem that the higher the % the more light comes through it. But it still seems pretty dark to me. Is there anything else I should be adjusting? I tried dropping the Opacity of the shade about 25% from stock 100%... but it didn't make a huge difference. I wonder if bumping up the light intensity would help? I put it at 200%
OK, somebody said something about hair being easier/better in 3DL. I would love to hear more about this because I've been doing an experiment rendering the same picture (see avatar) in 3DL and Iray (with material swaps) and I cannot get Seema Hair to look like anything but sheer cotton fluff no matter what sliders I adjust. Is it only certain kinds of hair?
If it is a shade that has modelled 'thickness' translucency is going to be a pain...you can try 'overdriving' SSS, but then you have color shifts.
That could be the result of the transparency map...select one (repeat for multiple maps) of the hair surfaces, drill down to the opacity map (cutout opacity) and click it...then select Image Editor (not LIE). Then set the gamma to 1.
You can also open the opacity maps in an image editor (GIMP, Photoshop) and set them to Greyscale...most likely they are Color/RGB.
Ok, this has me adding it to my cart, with the aoa bundle. Yeh, Ive been getting terrible grass in Iray. Thank you for this.
I like Iray, and like most of my results these days, but think the 3DL one looks much better; maybe needs more light, but the overall image looks more believeable.
For me, believeability trumps real every time.
There's this weird artistic pseudorealism that 3DL can hit that is very appealing, that's somewhat 'apart' from what Iray shoots for.
For example, this:
http://willbear.deviantart.com/art/TD3-3DL-Grasslands-631478443
And I think the important thing is that it's not 'cartoonish bad 90s CGI vs. photorealism'
"Faking it" - getting near-photorealism from a render engine that isn't designed for it - is really an art unto itself ;).
Laurie
A few Corrections here:
Okay, I know some people know this, but 3Delight is base on Renderman and is Renderman Complient (RSL 2.0). Renderman has a rich history. Yes, the Pixar crew created it while at Lucus Films and Pixar and Disney uses it to make animated movies, but it has also been used in the latest Star Wars movies and others films, which I would call photo realistic. Besides Renderman's history, 3Delight's own histroy isn't to shabby with films like the Harry Potter Series, X-Men Origins and others, which would call for Photo Realism.
Iray is Real World Physic's based render engine that makes use of the GPU; while Renderman/3Delight does not make use of GPU, but there is some real Physics in it's programing, what it does not do is present the settings in Real World numbers like Watts and Lumens.
But 3Delight can do some amazing things for not being a real world Physics based Render Engine.
So what makes Iray "Photo Realistic" and 3Delight "Non Photo Realistic"?
Is it the Surfaces, how they are based on Photo Based Rendering (PBR)? Well hang on there, you can do PBR shaders in 3Delight, if you take the time and use the tools to create the various Maps it requires.
Is it that the way the Light will Bounce around and you can control the Candle power of the Light?
There is a reason for people believe 3Delight is not Photo Realistic and it has nothing to do with 3Delight.
It is due to the large amount of the materials for models, we use in Daz Studio, were made for Poser and some people, either the content creators or artists, don't take the time to tweak the surfaces so they work properly in Daz Studio. Everything in the world is not Plastic, yet when you pull a Poser materials into Daz Studio, it is placed in the Plastic Lighting model because Poser Materials do not have a setting for Lighting model. If you render Denim, which is a matte surface, using the Plastic Lighting Model, it is not going to look like Denim, if you don't add the Normal, Bump, or Displacement Maps it is going to look flat. If you don't add the Specularity Map, you won't get highlights.
So My questions is: "Why is Iray 'Photo Realistic Render Engine' and 3Delight 'Not Photo Realistic Render Engine'?"
May I ask what you mean by "believeability"?
...I like to use the phrase "has more visual consistency".
For example in most Iray scenes characters often stand out from the rest of the scene, looking more like rubber dolls in comparison to the more "photoreal" appearance of sets, surrounding props, and HDRI backgrounds. This is because Iray still doesn't interpret skin realistically enough (even with Iray optimised shaders) without requiring a good deal of tedious adjustment. Hair is also something that often "sticks out" as well since most hair content uses transmapped layers. and strip format shaders instead of being actual meshes.
In 3DL it is simpler to get characters to look like they are an actual part of the scene.
Personally, I would use the characters as background extras as though they were low poly models even though they are V3 M3 V4 M4 G123. Skin texture such as what you see from vendor SecondCircle is amazing. I still prefer the models as background extras especially if animating them in movies. They render faster when they are smaller. My machines (PCs) are old and so the background rendered first. Then characters rendered one at a time over that with shadow catcher. They are alpha key so drop in nicely onto the backgrounds in photoshop or after effects or final cut pro during the editing process. I add a live actor who was greenscreened in the foreground. Then add an adjustment layer on top of all those other layers to even out (blend or color correct) all layers to match the the scene.