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Iray Ghost Light Kit 2: Render and Support Thread [Commercial]

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  • IceDragonArtIceDragonArt Posts: 12,548

    Honestly, this is a huge time saver when lighting interior spaces evenly.  Very quick to set up and easy to use, I have all three of the ghost light kits and use them all almost every day. Yes, I could do it myself but why? The time it saves me alone is worth it. 

  • FrankTheTankFrankTheTank Posts: 1,131
    KindredArts said:
    NSFW said:

    I finally bought the first Ghost Light Kit, and I like it a lot. They are great for animation and though I was making my own ghost lights manually before, the presets save a lot of time and are well worth it.

    Now, I'm wondering though about this second set. I'm on the fence on whether it would benefit me. I already have several iray light light shader sets for quickly turning existing light bulbs, lamps, etc into emissives. And those seem to work really well. Is this set essentially another variation on that but with some included props? Or are there some tricks involved that make these render faster than the traditional way of turning existing bulb/prop etc into emissive? (Sorry i haven't read all the pages if this has been asked already)

    IGLK 2 comes with some extra primitives and tools that the first set doesn't contain, but the main focus is on the light props. I tried to make the props as optimized as i possibly could but using as few polygons as possible on the bulbs (each poly is counted as a light source), and the shades are emissives rather than translucent. What bothered me about the first set is that there wasn't any sources for reflection on the lights, they were purely diffuse, and i wanted to correct that in the most optimized way possible, because that's the whole point of the set.

    However! I would not want to sell you something you didn't need. If you're happy setting up your own fixtures with your favorite props, and they perform well enough, you're not missing out. If you don't really need an extended range of primitives, you're not missing out. My light sets go on sale a lot so there's no hurry if you're not sure.

    Thanks for the info, so I'm seeing the big benefit to me would be the optimized lower poly props as opposed to just taking a conventional prop, which without looking at the mesh, may (or may not) have a lot more polys. Good stuff to know. I learn more about lighting every day.  I imagine I will be picking up the 2nd set before the end of this Christmas sale, I'm curious to run render speed comparison tests. Every second saved per frame is a big deal when rendering 2,100+ frames a week.

  • KindredArtsKindredArts Posts: 1,229
    NSFW said:
    KindredArts said:
    NSFW said:

    I finally bought the first Ghost Light Kit, and I like it a lot. They are great for animation and though I was making my own ghost lights manually before, the presets save a lot of time and are well worth it.

    Now, I'm wondering though about this second set. I'm on the fence on whether it would benefit me. I already have several iray light light shader sets for quickly turning existing light bulbs, lamps, etc into emissives. And those seem to work really well. Is this set essentially another variation on that but with some included props? Or are there some tricks involved that make these render faster than the traditional way of turning existing bulb/prop etc into emissive? (Sorry i haven't read all the pages if this has been asked already)

    IGLK 2 comes with some extra primitives and tools that the first set doesn't contain, but the main focus is on the light props. I tried to make the props as optimized as i possibly could but using as few polygons as possible on the bulbs (each poly is counted as a light source), and the shades are emissives rather than translucent. What bothered me about the first set is that there wasn't any sources for reflection on the lights, they were purely diffuse, and i wanted to correct that in the most optimized way possible, because that's the whole point of the set.

    However! I would not want to sell you something you didn't need. If you're happy setting up your own fixtures with your favorite props, and they perform well enough, you're not missing out. If you don't really need an extended range of primitives, you're not missing out. My light sets go on sale a lot so there's no hurry if you're not sure.

    Thanks for the info, so I'm seeing the big benefit to me would be the optimized lower poly props as opposed to just taking a conventional prop, which without looking at the mesh, may (or may not) have a lot more polys. Good stuff to know. I learn more about lighting every day.  I imagine I will be picking up the 2nd set before the end of this Christmas sale, I'm curious to run render speed comparison tests. Every second saved per frame is a big deal when rendering 2,100+ frames a week.

    Well, i wanted it to be a middle ground really. See, when i released the first set, i came across a lot of people only using GL's. Now that's fine if you know what you're doing, but i think a lot of people were using them because it was quick and easy. IGLK is supposed to be a middle ground between raw performance and quality, so people don't have to overthink the scene and just drag in whatever preset props sound good. If you want blazing speed, choose ghost lights, if you want quality, choose emissives+HDRI - if you want something in between, IGLK2 is your best bet. You can do all of this yourself of course, you just have to tread carefully on the polycount of your emissives. 

  • FlortaleFlortale Posts: 611
    edited July 2018

    Are these lights supposed to be used with HDRI?

    What enviroment mode & render settings do ghost lights prefer?

    Post edited by Flortale on
  • IllidanstormIllidanstorm Posts: 655
    No they are not necessarily supposed to be used with a hdri since interiors won't be affected that much by hdris because the walls block out the hdri.
  • BeeMKayBeeMKay Posts: 6,987

    They can be used very well with HDRI, for outdoor and indoor scenes. It depends, of course, on the specific setup of the scene (in a no-window-indoor scenario, HDRI isn't usefull unless you go to finite dome mode...).

    As for the modes, a Ghostlight is a meshlight, and as such works in Dome&Scene and Scene only. 

  • HavosHavos Posts: 5,306
    BeeMKay said:

    They can be used very well with HDRI, for outdoor and indoor scenes. It depends, of course, on the specific setup of the scene (in a no-window-indoor scenario, HDRI isn't usefull unless you go to finite dome mode...).

    As for the modes, a Ghostlight is a meshlight, and as such works in Dome&Scene and Scene only. 

    Mesh lights also work in Sun/Sky mode

  • KindredArtsKindredArts Posts: 1,229
    liplin901 said:

    Are these lights supposed to be used with HDRI?

    What enviroment mode & render settings do ghost lights prefer?

    This really depends on what you're trying to do. I designed the set simply to boost interior window emission, whether it be from an HDRI or emissive glass. People seem to use them for anything and everything now though, generally when they need an invisible light with no reflection. They really work in any mode, but if you're stuck on something particular, i'm sure myself and other GL users can help, just let us know.

  • nicsttnicstt Posts: 11,714

    Agreed, although I avoid spheres, when I use them I make them low polly; sometimes, there is no avoiding them.

  • sapatsapat Posts: 1,735

    I guess I have an easier time with Ghost Light (the original) because they're big flat panels that I can resize, move around and position more easily.  For whatever reason, I just didn't catch on to the Ghost Light 2.  Maybe I haven't spent enought time with them.  But the fact that they're dome shaped light ceiling lights or pendant lights, I thought they were more for use with table lamps or indoor overhead lighting.  Wasn't quite sure.  My computer is dead right now (graphics card and power supply are both caput), so I can't work in them right now.  But any tips, hints, helpful info would be appreciated.  I guess I don't learn at the same rate as others, or grasp things as quickly,  Thanks.

  • john_antkowiakjohn_antkowiak Posts: 334
    edited August 2018

    Hi, @KindredArts. May I ask you to elaborate on something you said earlier? "Are you using a Nvidia card? If so, it might be worth checking if it's enabled in the render tab. A fresh re-install might have defaulted you back to CPU."

    This is a detail I learned so long ago that I forgot I knew it once. I've just upgraded from DS 4.9 and my render times in my current scene are riving me nuts. It's a complex interior (Egypt Exhibit) with most of the off-camera props removed, and scene lights off. Added an iRadiance night skydome. It's supposed to be a night scene with - theoretically - dramatic lighting. The center of the scene is a large case with its own set of small IGL2 inverted-dome lights on the contents. A Light Ball in the hallway behind the figure, and a Mod Box overhead. But no matter what I adjust, the renders always turn out pretty much the same, lighting-wise. And they take hours!

    I thought it was the Mod Box emitting red light that shouldn't have been there, but it wasn't. It's the skydome somehow. (And it's way too high an intensity so it floods everything else. Now I know where to start fixing.) But I had to isolate and test each light source with no others, in order to find the culprit. And here's the point of all of this:

    The first render used the Light Ball only. It took an hour and a half before the first iteration was painted on the canvas for me to see. The second was the Mod Box only. Almost two hours. The third was the skydome only. THREE HOURS! I have no idea why it's behaving like this. Here's a shot of my Advanced Render Settings. CPU is checked, but I don't know what unchecking it will do. There are no alternatives shown.

    I know of at least one surface that has SSS settings, so I'm prepared for it to take a while. But that should affect all render times equally, I would've thought. Why it's getting progressively longer from one to the next has me stumped. What am I doing wrong?

    (My other render settings are pretty much the same in every scene I've done, so they don't account for this behavior. The CPU setting might.)

    Render Settings Advanced.jpg
    411 x 463 - 35K
    Post edited by john_antkowiak on
  • 3DRenderBoy3DRenderBoy Posts: 31

    I know this thread is too old but I would like to know how to use Iray Ghost Light Kit 2 lights into my scenes.
    On product's page (on Daz3D) it says I have to add the "setup" first BEFORE adding "Presets" of the product.

    I have added figures, scenes (default DAZ3D Iray scenes) with lights and camaeras.  But when I double click the "setup" file in Content Library folder, it says errors happened.

    I would know how to use the product properly (step-by-step help would be nice because I am just a new 3D graphic editor).
    What do I need to do exactly to light up my scenes? (I am having VERY big problems with interior and exteriors lightings.

    My scenes are often extremely dark (when rendering with Iray) even so when I add default (sun) lights into my scenes. Nothing works properly - especailly when I render an interior scene (like Level 19 DS)   So I wanted use this product because it says it lights up the secene without heavy memory/rendering usage.).

    Thank you.

    By the way, I really love DAZ3D's software that gives MANY MANY products in one package and for free. It has almost everything I need for my "first steps".
     

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