Light Kits
OminousAutumn
Posts: 388
What is the best light kit i can get on Daz that combines a professional look with ease of use? Opinions? I am not having much luck finding a good tutorial to follow to learn how to do my own emissive shader lighting. Thanks. THis is for Iray.
Post edited by OminousAutumn on
Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
224 S 200 W, Suite #250
Salt Lake City, UT 84101
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2024 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
You need to be a bit more specific, as there are different ligh sets for different purposes.
Indoor or outdoor?
Portrait? Scene lights?
I did a very basic emissive light tut which can be found here: https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/1537206/#Comment_1537206
There are so many lights in the store, and you will get many opinions. Also, lights are made for either 3Delight or Iray, as they are not interchangeable. Here are a couple links to forum threads primarily for Iray lights, but some of the artists make lights for both render engines.
Thread1
Thread2
Some of my favorites for Iray:
Painter's Lights
PRO-Studio HDR Lighting System
BOSS Pro Light Set for Portraits & Promos
Scintillant Portrait Lights for Iray
Rim Light Rig Iray
For 3Delight, Reflective Radiance for 3Delight is one of the more recent sets that I really like.
I mean specifically for lighting people and skin well. I will check out the tutorial thanks!
Well, yes, but in an indoor environment (like a scene), or for a portrait type of image?
The images below are rendered with the Sun-Sky environment render setting (which has excellent lights),
a mixture of Distant and emissive light,
A hdri lightdome,
and emissive lightplanes/"lightbulbs" only.
And then, there are great portrait light sets, like
Though IDG has a lot of really great portrait sets.
Here is tutorial that shows how to make emissve lights and ghost lights:
Wow, thanks for all the links and images! I'm not the original poster, but I'm still learning lights and all this was very helpful.
There is a great free one from second circle that I've been using a lot recently for promos
https://second-circle.deviantart.com/art/Freebie-Daz-iRay-Studio-Lights-V2-615920853
There is also https://hdrihaven.com/hdris/
My favorite hdri is this one https://www.daz3d.com/ultrahd-iray-hdri-with-dof-sunny-beaches-pack-1
With dorm turned off its one of the best outdoor hdri's.
I also like this one for indoors https://www.daz3d.com/studio-light-pro-iray-hdri-soft-light . You might have to change the materials of the walls etc. and make them a bit darker or they will look too bright.
I recently got this character https://www.daz3d.com/blanca-for-victoria-7 and she came with a few render setting for lights, but what I really like is the mesh lights she came with. These are for Iray, but I've been using the mesh lights on just about everything since I got her. They seam to look a lot better to me then the spotlights, and cast some really nice shadows. I used the mesh lights in both these pictures.
Wow thanks for the all great comments!
Below is an example of what I want, and then an example of one i did...what kind of lights give that kind of detail on the skin? how do you get that detail that I clearly fail at?
Did you use a camera for your render, and if so did you turn off the headlamp? It looks your scene lighting is getting blown out by the headlamp (if you are using the "perspective view" you should add a camera to the scene, and use that to render, as the "perspective camera" doesn't allow you to turn off the camera headlamp). Sorry if I was wrong, I'm just guessing here.
Can you post a screenshot of your light array? It looks a bit as if you have too much light and at wrong angles.
The other light set looks like a classic light setup with 5 or so lights. There's the main light from right/slightly top, the fill light from left, a light from the bottom that lights the chin, and a light from the back (rimlight), plus a HDRI to give some soft overall light...
Also, what skin are you using? Is it an Iray skin, 3DL with default conversion? A portrait depends a lot on right skin texture settings.
I'd guess the skin was made with https://www.daz3d.com/n-g-s-anagenessis-2-revolution
there seems to be a hair/rim light on the left and a key light. There is also a fill light/HDRI to make the shadows softer.
i have 3. ghost filling the front and spot acting as a distant light and a spot light from the side. not the best lighting which I know for sure, but i have done very nice and dynamic lighting before. basically i understand that dynamic lighting is essential to good looking skin/anything, but i have done dynamic lighting and the skin still does not show pours and detail like that. i thought maybe it was the type of lights + skin settings. I am using iRay Pale Skin which has awesome body detail but the face is always just smooth regardless of my lighting.
This is what I expected someone to show me! Does this come for G8 yet?
Have you checked your camera, if the headlamp is on? I don't have the Iray pale skin product, so I can't replicate your problem, but like I said, it looks like you are throwing too much light into the scene, and the only light that creates shadow is coming from a weird angle.
I'd suggest the following - try each light on its own and see what effect is has. Maybe that helps tracking down the problem you have with the light.
Anagenesis is no "perfect solution". You might have to adjust maps to give you the best result, because of the way it works. As for G8, there isn't a version out yet, but the Pa is working on Anagenesis 3, which is totally reworked and looks really amazing in the previews.
But another product has really good results: https://www.daz3d.com/altern8--skin-shader-system-for-genesis-8
ok so working with and understanding maps is my real issue. i can figure out how to light well if i am confident i have "good enough" lights to achieve detail and realism. that being said the maps. i understand effectively what they are and how they work but not how to correctly optimize its parameters to get the most realistic results is another thing. also thank you.
Couldn't agree more! I held off getting anagenesis 2 for awhile and whern I finally did, I wasn't that impressed. it semed more like a generic iray fix than anything. Ihe results i am getting with Altern8 are fantastic.
Double Post
Maybe you want to wait for NGS 3. I think its coming soon...
NGS 2 dosen't work with all characters from the start, some characters look just horrible with it.
I made a comparision render for a different thread a while ago, but it might give you an idea just how much of a difference you have when using conversions etc: https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/2979716/#Comment_2979716
No, you are misunderstanding what I said. The lights are also a part of the problem, which is why I suggested you use them one at a time and see when the render/colour goes sour. In your render, there was definitely too much light, because the details were washed out. That is why we asked about if your camera headlamp (select you camera in the scene tab, go to Parameter tab, go to headlamp, switcj "Off"), and in Render Settings, in "General" Go to "Auto Headlamp" and set it to "Never".
Also, if you are banking on Scene Lights only, make sure that you have selcted "Scene only" in the Environment settings of the Render settings, because otherwise it will use whatever HDRI or Sun-Sky setting you have and throw extra light into the scene.
As for the skin, the settings there will add to realism. Things like subsurface scattering, transparency and other stuff is decided there. Getting a skin to look good can take a long time, i.e. when you work with converting 3DL settings to Iray.
Hi friend, from my experience best way to learn lighting is to experiment with lights that comes with DS. Purchasing light kits, do make life easier, but every scene require different style lighting. Not all lighting presets are one click miracle, surfaces can have a major impact on how light illuminates, etc..... person still has to have decent knowledge of lighting concept.
The way I learned, which is very tedious and time consuming is, lighting a primitive cube, changing cube surfaces, observing how the light(s) react to surface, changing parameters and note what happens, etc.... adding lights, removing lights, etc.... Majority of my renders now are done using HDRi and my go to light kit is Iray ghost lights, to enhance character, scenes, interior etc.... Good luck.
Agreed. I mean, it's up to you how you want to enjoy your hobby. But I think you'll get better results (and have more fun) by learning to light scenes yourself.
If all else fails, turn off all lights in your scene. Make sure it's totally black. Then start adding lights back in and adjusting each one properly before you add another.
I do this a lot !! Very good suggestion
While I use the PRO-Studio HDR Lighting System product for most of my portrait style lighting these days, I also wrote a fairly lengthy tutorial on setting up standard 3-light photoshoot style lighting. It's a little dated now and was written using 3Delight, but the concepts still apply if you want to use mesh lights and Iray.
Thanks Jonny, any tutorial is beneficial, old and new, will certainly read material
what is the best way (parameters wise) for a quick (least slow) render preview?
I don't know much about parameters, but I can tell you what works best for me:
Open scenes with hdri environments will render faster than enclosed spaces or rooms. Just think, for every pixel, the renderer has to calculate the path that beam of light takes, bouncing off walls or people or refracting through glass until it reaches a light source or goes off into infinity (open sky). So rendering something inside a room will take longer just because of all the extra light bouncing around.
In my opinion, mesh lights work better than point lights or spot lights. Physically based renderers (like Iray) are supposed to simulate the actual physics of light, but a point light is supposed to be light rays coming from an infinitely small point - how is that realistic? So just like in the real world, the bigger a light is and the wider it can spread it's light, the more efficient it will be. That's why I like mesh lights.
Obviously clothes will add time to a render. If you're running short on VRAM, you can go through the figure (person) and hide everything that's covered by clothing anyway. No point loading geometry and textures for something that isn't visible in the final render. Sometimes I'll go a step further and hide buildings, trees, furniture or anything that's not visible to the camera. But you may need to leave some things in if they need to cast a reflection or shadow into your scene. If VRAM is really tight, you may need to save your scene and restart DS because it won't automatically clear that stuff from VRAM otherwise.
I look forward to seeing what other people have to add. I learn something new every day on this forum.
Render Throttle Iray is a very helpful tool that has 3 optimized viewport presets, 3 render presets, and a reset. Iray basically kicks in faster, especially with the low preset. There is a video tutorial on the product page too.
what are and how do i create a mesh light(s)?