Searching for a tutorial
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I want to start using iray instead of Reality as much. But I am hung up on one problem. In Reality, I can some very real looking candles. From the flames to the way the wax glows but isn't shiny. I can't seem to figure out how to do the same in iRay. I tried emissive shaders on the flame. I tried wax shader on the candle. The flame... meh. It's okay. It's not as good as Reality but it's okay. I can probably tweak it in post work. But the wax looks either shiny or just flat out bad. Any tutorial suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Most of my render requests lately involve candles.
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No ideas? :(
I haven't rendered candles in awhile, or if the sets have candles I just basically leave them alone. Keep in mind, it's not just the candle surfaces, it's the lights you use. One light set may make the wax surface look flat, while another pulls out the glossy. A good start would be to tell people what candles you are using and what lighting product. The default Iray lights are a bit blue, some people don't use those at all. Everyone has their favorite sets for lighting. Let us know your setup, and perhaps show us a render. :)
Unfortunately I'm not aware of any tutorials for this off hand. My only Iray work with surfaces has used shader presets from others as a starting point. This one covers a lot more than wax, but I think https://www.daz3d.com/subsurface-workshop-sss-shaders-for-iray has some nice wax looks, both soft and hard.
And in a similar vein to what Novica said, if you had some examples of the results you are getting currently, people here or in the Daz Studio or Art Studio sections of the forums might be able to give tips on the surface settings to adjust to get the desired effect. I don't know enough myself yet to be a lot of help there though.
If there is a flame .jpg for the candle then put that in the Emissive channel and then tone down the Luminous Intensity, try 1 to start with, until the image is visible. If you don't the light will just wash it out and it wont be seen.
For the wax I would try either SSS, Refraction 1.442-1.448, or Translucency, try 1 and work back.
This tutorial isn't for Iray bit if you scroll down he explains about using SSS for the wax.
https://evermotion.org/tutorials/show/7829/candle-tutorial
Bless all of you. As soon as stuff calms down here at home I will be sure to try some of these, and see if I can't get a couple examples of what I have done and what I am aiming for :) Thanks guys.
Here is a quick one using a random candle from my runtime. All it is for the wax is the Uber Base and then the Wax shader on the wax Refraction Index set to 1.44. The flame set to Emissive, Luminance at 0.5 cd/cm^2; Tone Mapping set at 30:4.00:400; Environment Intensity at 0.010 Dome and Scene.