Light Dome PRO-R Official Render / Questions Thread [COMMERCIAL]

BruceBroussard · September 2013

The 'Add LDP-R' icon is not the same as in the videos.
What I have loads a desert scene.

Dreamlight · October 2013

It should do that. The desert scene is the default LDP-R background. However, if the icon image itself got mixed up, it might be an update issue.

You can download the real icon here:
http://www.dream-lounge.com/Add LDP-R.duf.png

Save it to / My Library / Dreamlight / LDP-R /

It will be fixed during next update.

bbroussard said:
The 'Add LDP-R' icon is not the same as in the videos.
What I have loads a desert scene.

Dreamlight · October 2013

There will be a better preview in a future update. For now, the best oyu can do, is to render at a smaller size, like lowering the X / Y size to 25% of the final render, and make sure to use raytracing quality (Deep Shadow Maps take equal time independant on the render resolution). Lowering both X / Y to 25%, will give you a quick preview you can check in Photoshop / Gimp, and also render 16 times faster.

cjdean said:
I was having trouble with positioning the sun, as well, in a scene I'm doing. The preview lights weren't a great indicator, because the SSS on the skin was washing out the preview. What I did was set the view to skylight, add a camera based on that view (Distant Light1), switch to the new camera view, and pan out to where I was comfortable. Now it wasn't parented to the skylight, so I had to create a new one every time I wanted to check an angle, but it was critical to do this, because I had to check to see if foliage was blocking the light, in addition to checking where the light falls on the subject.

Dreamlight · October 2013

What Photoshop version and languge are you using?

cjdean said:
JohnDelaquiox said:
Here is one I did just experimenting.

Is this the one you were having the trouble lining up the light? Is the sun light getting through the ceiling? It seems to have a lot of bounce light, but that's probably better for indoors scenes, if you can get some sun through the top. I remember a tutorial shot for LDPR that had an indoor sci-fi set with some of the ceiling tiles removed, and it had very nice ambience.

I'm still having problems with the photoshop action. I got the Night Combine to work by changing the order of the shots stacked in PS, but for the normal combine, I can't get the order correct. It keeps putting the wrong renders into the wrong layers. I could just cut and paste everything by hand, but that's a pain and the results wouldn't be exactly the same because of the masking.

First I tried 0(c1) 0(c2) 0(c3) 0(c4) 0(Fog) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7- then doing the combine on 7, and it gave me all the custom channels in the sun and sky.

So I figured I would try putting the sun and sky first, and I tried this order: 6 5 4 3 2 1 0(fog) 0(c1-4) and it gave me sun on the sky channel and sky bounce on the sun channel. Very weird. I guess I could try switching the order to start 5 6 4 3 2 1 0000, but WHY is it doing this?

Does anyone else have this problem, or am I doing something wrong?

Dreamlight · October 2013

I'm glad you like it! You're welcome for the Gimp support, yeah, Photoshop is faster and more "accurate", but that might be just because I'm used to it for the last decade and a half... ;)

daniel.hambright said:
Thanks everyone for the responses. I just now am getting back around to dealing with this problem and you guys helped me resolve it. It seems I somehow had the older version of LDP-R, so I uninstalled it and manually downloaded the new version. I had tried reloading it before but that was with the installer manager, which sometimes has problems with updates in my experience.
I'm starting to put out my first LDP renders now, this really is a brilliant product Dreamlight - and thank you for the Gimp support, I know you are a photoshop guy and you always go the extra mile for your customers.

Dreamlight said:
Are you using the latest Gimp version? Yes, there's additional information on how to use it included in the updated user guide. Also, you MUST switch to english Gimp language. (Explained in the user guide).
daniel.hambright said:
I know that GIMP support was just added, but is there any documentation available for it? I am running into a problem using the GIMP plugin. the LDP-R combine script encounters multiple errors and doesn't complete. But first, this is my abbreviated DX
Operating System: Windows 8 Pro 64-bit (6.2, Build 9200) (9200.win8_gdr.130531-1504)
BIOS: BIOS Date: 02/05/10 19:13:52 Ver: 08.00.10
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2600K CPU @ 3.40GHz (8 CPUs), ~3.4GHz
Memory: 16384MB RAM
Available OS Memory: 16354MB RAM
Page File: 8569MB used, 24168MB available
Windows Dir: C:\WINDOWS
DirectX Version: DirectX 11

The LDP runs fine in DAZ studio (for testing purposes, I'm only running the base LDP as it loads originally without modification rendering from the LDP camera using the Render_LDP option; the only thing added to the scene is a random prop) and outputs 8 renders into a folder like I believe it should, they are labelled '0_Fog.bmp' - '7_Mix.bmp'

I import the 8 pictures as layers into GIMP, arranged from top to bottom 7-0.

However, when I go to run the LDP-R Combine I receive 3 errors.

Error 1:
Calling error for procedure 'gimp-item-set-name':
Procedure 'gimp-item-set-name' has been called with value '-1' for argument 'item' (#1, type GimpItemID). This value is out of range.

Error 2:
Execution error for 'LDP-R Combine':
Error: ( : 1) Procedure execution of gimp-item-set-name failed on invalid input arguments: Procedure 'gimp-item-set-name' has been called with value '-1' for argument 'item' (#1, type GimpItemID). This value is out of range.

Error 3:
Plug-In 'LDP-R Combine' left image undo in inconsistent state, closing open undo groups.

Before terminating, the script seems to rename all but the top picture (7_mix.bmp) by removing the number (i.e. 6_sun.bmp becomes just 'sun')

Dreamlight · October 2013

Turned out great! LDP-R will place any lights scattering around into Custom layer 1. The best thing you can do, is to keep your lights within those folders at all times.

cjdean said:
It seems to work OK if you just include the original 8 shots, without the custom lights, but then it did a curious thing and added a second fog layer called 'Custom 4'. now I actually DID have a custom light that I planned to add back in, so this was a convenient cut and paste, but I wonder how it knew to add another layer? Perhaps I should try it with only the custom shots that I use, and not the extras? More experimenting, I guess.
Here's the shot I was working on. I actually turned down or off many of the extra layers, because I wanted to preserve the darkness in the shadow area, and while the bounces were lighting it beautifully and correctly, I really had to restrain myself.

Dreamlight · October 2013

Wow, looking majestic! Love how you placed the sun / moon behind the ship...

Vanguard said:
This was done with several custom point lights.
One in the Captains hand lantern on the deck, and another in the big lantern at the stern of the ship.
I used the normal combine action, not the night, as I wanted to control the light levels myself.

Dreamlight · October 2013

That's one original color scale. Love the composition!

Vanguard said:
Yet another LDP-R render
No custom lights used

Dreamlight · October 2013

Parent script at DAZ today, nice render! I would tone done the surroundings though...

JohnDelaquiox said:
Here is a second try at my aquatic cave ldpr render. I really hope the issue with the parent script gets fixed soon as it is entirely too much work to go back into a scene with close to 100 lights and change the parent.

Dreamlight · October 2013

Nice render! Although a little too much blue light in the walls behind the main character... Try carving out the sun layers (add a mask to the sun layers, paint black to remove sun and then gaussian blur to get a nice soft effect). Yes, you can use any image for the skydome. Just select the skydome item, go to surfaces tab and replace the diffuse image. It should be a 360 degree panorama, like 6000 x 3000 pixels, or it won't wrap around correctly. However, you can try pretty much anything. As long as it looks good.

You can also try using x / Y titling in the surfaces tab, to further get the background where you want it.

You can try loading them one by one if loading all causes issues. I'll see if that can be fixed somehow. What PS version / language are you using?

cjdean said:
When I first got LDP-R I it worked well and I liked using it, but I often used custom lights, which were a pain to use with it, so it limited when I could use LDP-R. With the custom lights update, I gave it another shot, and -Wow- I LOVE it! Awesome update to a great product. Even on high quality it outputs extremely fast. I like tweaking my lights so working in Photoshop is great for me. The 'night combine' action is very useful as well, and the 'cold filter' gives interesting bloom effects.
Here's a shot I did using the Night Combine action and the Cold Filter. I use 3 custom lights, parented to different folders so I can adjust each separately in Photoshop. This also makes postwork incredibly easy to transition to, since the lighting is in layers.

Quick question: will any skydome picture work with the LDPR skydome, or are there certain requirements? I'd like some forest scenes, and lately I've been using DT's excellent HDR-pro set: Yosemite. Can I apply this to LDP-R somehow?

Also I ran into some trouble when I first installed the update through DIM. It didn't erase the old action, probably because as Vanguard pointed out, it's installing to a separate folder in Presets. So when I went to run the action, it was the old action, rather than the new one. (You don't want to see what came out.) I had to completely delete the old action, then re-install.

Then I had a problem where if the pictures aren't loaded in the correct sequential order to PS, the output is a mess, too. I had simply selected all in the output folder and right clicked 'Open". Once I got them in the right order it combined nicely, but it was trial and error at first. You might want to point that out in the instruction manual.

none01ohone · October 2013

Dreamlight said:
It should do that. The desert scene is the default LDP-R background. However, if the icon image itself got mixed up, it might be an update issue.
You can download the real icon here:
http://www.dream-lounge.com/Add LDP-R.duf.png

The link shows 404 not found.

barbult · October 2013

When I upgraded to DS 4.6.1.17, I lost the Render LDP-R item in the scripts menu. I reinstalled LDP-R with the DIM and it put the dse file into the run once, but when I opened DS 4.6.1.17, the item still did not reappear in the menu. I had to add it manually with add custom action.

Dreamlight · October 2013

Sorry, it ended up weird with the space...

This should work:
http://www.dream-lounge.com/Add LDP-R.duf.png

none01ohone said:
Dreamlight said:
It should do that. The desert scene is the default LDP-R background. However, if the icon image itself got mixed up, it might be an update issue.
You can download the real icon here:
http://www.dream-lounge.com/Add LDP-R.duf.png

The link shows 404 not found.

Dreamlight · October 2013

I'll look into this, but I suspect it needs to be manually un-installed before installing again... (the menu item that is)

barbult said:
When I upgraded to DS 4.6.1.17, I lost the Render LDP-R item in the scripts menu. I reinstalled LDP-R with the DIM and it put the dse file into the run once, but when I opened DS 4.6.1.17, the item still did not reappear in the menu. I had to add it manually with add custom action.

Rifful · October 2013

Dreamlight said:
What Photoshop version and languge are you using?

Photoshop CS5 Extended 64-bit / Win 7 and DS4.6

Dreamlight said:
Turned out great! LDP-R will place any lights scattering around into Custom layer 1. The best thing you can do, is to keep your lights within those folders at all times.
cjdean said:
It seems to work OK if you just include the original 8 shots, without the custom lights, but then it did a curious thing and added a second fog layer called 'Custom 4'. now I actually DID have a custom light that I planned to add back in, so this was a convenient cut and paste, but I wonder how it knew to add another layer? Perhaps I should try it with only the custom shots that I use, and not the extras? More experimenting, I guess.
Here's the shot I was working on. I actually turned down or off many of the extra layers, because I wanted to preserve the darkness in the shadow area, and while the bounces were lighting it beautifully and correctly, I really had to restrain myself.

(Dragon render)
Thank you! Actually I was referring to the Photoshop Action when I mentioned the Custom Lights. I have been grouping the extra lights into the custom folders and so far the LDP-R DS script has been working great, especially since the update.

The PS Combine action however, has been giving me odd results with the rendered .bmp's in CS5. The Night Combine and regular Combine do different things with the .bmp's layers depending on the order they are loaded into PS.

Nice render! Although a little too much blue light in the walls behind the main character... Try carving out the sun layers (add a mask to the sun layers, paint black to remove sun and then gaussian blur to get a nice soft effect). Yes, you can use any image for the skydome. Just select the skydome item, go to surfaces tab and replace the diffuse image. It should be a 360 degree panorama, like 6000 x 3000 pixels, or it won't wrap around correctly. However, you can try pretty much anything. As long as it looks good.

You can also try using x / Y titling in the surfaces tab, to further get the background where you want it.

You can try loading them one by one if loading all causes issues. I'll see if that can be fixed somehow. What PS version / language are you using?

Photoshop CS5 Extended 64-bit / Win 7

This render (motorcycle) really did some weird things with the layers (just in PS CS5--The DS script worked fine, and rendered all the lights correctly), like putting sun bounce into sky and sky into sun- I don't remember the order it loaded stuff, but it was really weird. Then the action applied all the masks and filters to the layers (like it's supposed to), but since it was the wrong .bmp's loaded into each layer, I got strange results.

I had just been planning to test it, but one of the Combines had interesting results, so I went with it. In this image one of the bounces actually went into the 'Sun' layer, giving the image a twilight feel to it rather than a nighttime look like I had originally intended.

The problem might have something to do with the order the images are loaded into PS. I am using the tabbed view in PS-CS5, and open them by selecting 'All' in the Explorer folder and right clicking 'Open'. Since the view is tabbed, the order of the tabs might not correspond to the stacked order of the windows in PS, and this might cause the Combine Action to work differently. Is this a known factor of how the Action works? Or does it use image names to combine the .bmp's?

Dreamlight · October 2013

Tabbed view might be the issue here. The loaded images must be stacked in ascending order in order for the script to work properly. Can you try without or load them maybe in groups of 4, to get the order right?

cjdean said:
Dreamlight said:
What Photoshop version and languge are you using?

Photoshop CS5 Extended 64-bit / Win 7 and DS4.6

Dreamlight said:
Turned out great! LDP-R will place any lights scattering around into Custom layer 1. The best thing you can do, is to keep your lights within those folders at all times.
cjdean said:
It seems to work OK if you just include the original 8 shots, without the custom lights, but then it did a curious thing and added a second fog layer called 'Custom 4'. now I actually DID have a custom light that I planned to add back in, so this was a convenient cut and paste, but I wonder how it knew to add another layer? Perhaps I should try it with only the custom shots that I use, and not the extras? More experimenting, I guess.
Here's the shot I was working on. I actually turned down or off many of the extra layers, because I wanted to preserve the darkness in the shadow area, and while the bounces were lighting it beautifully and correctly, I really had to restrain myself.

(Dragon render)
Thank you! Actually I was referring to the Photoshop Action when I mentioned the Custom Lights. I have been grouping the extra lights into the custom folders and so far the LDP-R DS script has been working great, especially since the update.

The PS Combine action however, has been giving me odd results with the rendered .bmp's in CS5. The Night Combine and regular Combine do different things with the .bmp's layers depending on the order they are loaded into PS.

Nice render! Although a little too much blue light in the walls behind the main character... Try carving out the sun layers (add a mask to the sun layers, paint black to remove sun and then gaussian blur to get a nice soft effect). Yes, you can use any image for the skydome. Just select the skydome item, go to surfaces tab and replace the diffuse image. It should be a 360 degree panorama, like 6000 x 3000 pixels, or it won't wrap around correctly. However, you can try pretty much anything. As long as it looks good.

You can also try using x / Y titling in the surfaces tab, to further get the background where you want it.

You can try loading them one by one if loading all causes issues. I'll see if that can be fixed somehow. What PS version / language are you using?

Photoshop CS5 Extended 64-bit / Win 7

This render (motorcycle) really did some weird things with the layers (just in PS CS5--The DS script worked fine, and rendered all the lights correctly), like putting sun bounce into sky and sky into sun- I don't remember the order it loaded stuff, but it was really weird. Then the action applied all the masks and filters to the layers (like it's supposed to), but since it was the wrong .bmp's loaded into each layer, I got strange results.

I had just been planning to test it, but one of the Combines had interesting results, so I went with it. In this image one of the bounces actually went into the 'Sun' layer, giving the image a twilight feel to it rather than a nighttime look like I had originally intended.

The problem might have something to do with the order the images are loaded into PS. I am using the tabbed view in PS-CS5, and open them by selecting 'All' in the Explorer folder and right clicking 'Open'. Since the view is tabbed, the order of the tabs might not correspond to the stacked order of the windows in PS, and this might cause the Combine Action to work differently. Is this a known factor of how the Action works? Or does it use image names to combine the .bmp's?

Dreamlight · October 2013

For some reason, the forums here do not accept a blank character. When I copy the address, it inserts a "%" but it's cropped off here on the forums. Weird. Copy the address below into your browser, but insert a % after Add and before LDP.

Dreamlight said:
Sorry, it ended up weird with the space...
This should work:
http://www.dream-lounge.com/Add LDP-R.duf.png

none01ohone said:
Dreamlight said:
It should do that. The desert scene is the default LDP-R background. However, if the icon image itself got mixed up, it might be an update issue.
You can download the real icon here:
http://www.dream-lounge.com/Add LDP-R.duf.png

The link shows 404 not found.

none01ohone · October 2013

"http://www.dream-lounge.com/Add LDP-R.duf.png"

Works now thanks. (added 'space' between)

Jabba · October 2013

Scout Tower at night

barbult · October 2013

Jabba101 said:
Scout Tower at night

That is really nice! Are those the new dark trees?

Jabba · October 2013

yes, Dark Trees Pack 1

JohnDelaquiox · October 2013

My latest render Nudity tag http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=2478731

barbult · October 2013

There is a new update in the DIM, but when I try to install, I get "Install Failed!".
Edit: Windows tells me the zip is not a valid zip file.

frank0314 · October 2013

Give it a bit of time. The servers are probably overloaded

barbult · October 2013

Frank0314 said:
Give it a bit of time. The servers are probably overloaded

Still broken. DIM log says:
Product failed check, moving to next product : IM00016860-01_LightDomePROR.zip

Trying to open the downloaded zip with 7zip gives an error.

I deleted the download package and downloaded again. Same problem. I wrote a bug report.

Jabba · October 2013

yeah, update not installing for me either

Rifful · October 2013

ditto

/10char

GreenleafCat · October 2013

My install also failed similarly. I deleted and started a re-download, but given it's not just me I cancelled that -- it's a big file. Will wait to see signs of success...

Vanguard · October 2013

A few works recently done with LDP-R.

I have been adding Age If Armor's Advanced Ambient light as a custom light lately. Gives a layer with great lighting for mixing with the other layers.

Dreamlight · November 2013

Impressive, especially the one top left! Thanks for sharing!

Vanguard said:
A few works recently done with LDP-R.
I have been adding Age If Armor's Advanced Ambient light as a custom light lately. Gives a layer with great lighting for mixing with the other layers.

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