Ghost Lights Then and Now
zombiewhacker
Posts: 705
Do all ghost lights available in the store still work in current versions of Studio?
Seeing a new Kindred Arts product debut today, I'm reminded that somewhere along the line nVidia (IIRC) altered the way lighting in Iray works, rendering older ghost light packages useless. Having purchased so many over the years, I can no longer remember which ones are up-to-date and which are not. Based on your own experiences, can anyone here list which older products still work and which don't?
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No. There are various older products that are out of date and have no warning at all. Someone else can tell you when ghost lights changed it was early in the 4.x version numbers is all I know.
I have, in purchase date order
Iray Ghost Light Kit - does not work
Iray Ghost Light Kit 2 - does not work
Iray Ghost Light Kit 3 - volume effects work, to an extent, but the light part does not
Iray Ghost LIght Kit ONE - works
Iray Ghost Light Prop Kit - works
Iray Ghost Light Kit Classic - works
Iray Ghost Projector Lights - works
Iray Cinematic Ghost Lights - works
The names throw me off sometimes - I dont' remember if "classic" works or 1 vs One.
The Light Kit 3 might be of value to you if you can get it cheap, but it will need additional lights. Here is a the godrays from Kit 3 light with a cylinder from ONE, the dimensions of the cylinder shrunk to 1% in x and z
It looks like the ones that don't work have been pulled. At least the Iray Ghost Light Kit and 2 and 3. That look with the prop from 3 is nice, glad I didn't uninstall (but I'll uninstall the other ones, now that I'm thinking about it).
So nice to see your name around these parts! I've missed you.
Oh, thank you! Its been a while. Various life blocks kept me from the art. Can't say they've gone away, but this Ghost light thing keeps bugging me when I'm trying to light a scene.
Iray Ghost Light Kit ONE debuted on 2022-03-19 (SKU: 85078)
That would (probably) mean https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/609556/creating-a-ghost-light-daz-studio-4-21-1-26#latest is a working tutorial on creating your own ghost-lights - which is great, cos I've been meaning to give it ago since Dec-22!
(nice to read an informative topic that isn't about OS or QG... or any other part of the Daz website... not working... that's presuming the linked tutorial does work!
)
I believe this should work with latest DS
Invisi Lights: Ghost Lights and Light Profiles
https://www.daz3d.com/invisi-lights-ghost-lights-and-light-profiles
I think all products centered on offering ghost lights are compatible with the current versions of Daz Studio.
Older Environments using ghost lights, on the other hands, are rarely updated so by default, their ghost lights won't work and will require tweaks and changes to the overall lighting.
KindredArts removed the non working ghost lights from the store and replaced them with new products working with Daz Studo 4.20+:
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/7336636/#Comment_7336636
They do.
They are taking advantage of the update ghost lights from Daz Studio 4.22:
I appreciate the list. I bought every package as it was released and when I installed my content on my new computers I did install one of the 'non-working' kits. I will now uninstall it. Unless someone is working with an version of D|S older than 4.16, they need to note those that don't work now.
Edited to correct version.
expert Dazzers please correct me if I'm wrong:
Older -not-anymore-working kits could be corrected for use by changing values in the light setting while creating the scenes, so it may not be necessary to discard the old kits. Read the above linked forum references, I think it's helpful.
The trouble is that this would chnage the way they rendered, they would no longer be invisible due to their light output while ebfore they would not show in reflections and so on.
I had a recent problem where I parented a ghost light to another object, and then the ghost light was no longer invisible. If I unparented it, it worked properly again. Reparenting it broke it again. Is this a known problem? I had never noticed this before. I was using DS4.24.0.4 Public Build and a half sphere ghost light prop from Invisi Lights: Ghost Lights and Light Profiles.
Reminded me that I purchased this recently and hadn't tested it yet: https://www.daz3d.com/iray-ghost-light-styles
So I gave it a test run in DS 4.24.0.3, where I also I tried to parent it to a lamp in an environment (floor lamp in lower left corner), but it's still working. See video:
https://app.screencast.com/fdFZKjOhqDoLW
Thanks for posing your results. You are using a different ghost light product than I used, so there may be different settings involved. I'm going to retry my scenario in a simpler scene and see what happens. At least your results give me hope.
I figured out my parented ghost light problem. It was not at all what I thought was happening. The item that I parented the ghost light to, had several instances of it in the scene. The ghost light was instanced along with the parent object. It was the instances of the ghost lights that were not invisible. When I unparented the ghost light, those ghost lights were no longer instanced, so they were "invisible", because they weren't even there. I failed to notice that they didn't emit any light (because they weren't even there)! So the problem was NOT that parented ghost lights weren't invisible, it was that instanced ghost lights were not invisible. The instanced ghost lights still emitted light, but they were not invisible. This has nothing to do with parenting. Instancing a single unparented ghost light in the scene also makes all the instances visible in the rendered scene. Is this a bug, that the instances of ghost lights do not inherit the advanced Iray properties that make them invisible (Iray Visible to Primary Rays = Off, etc.)? I am using DS 4.24.0.4 Public Build.
I see what you mean. You can make it work using the old trick with low Cutout Opacity, but AFAIR it may have side effects.
Create a Mesh Light using a Plane (or whatever shape you want) and apply the Emissive Iray Uber shader. Parent the plane to the main object.
Then set the values for the Emissive shader. Settings I've used here: Cutout Opacity: 0.0000001, Two Sided Light: "Off", Luminance Units: "cd/cm^2" and Luminance: 100000000.
Adjust light using Luminance.
I've attached the scene, it should work on your system also if you have all the default stuff installed.
Please report this to the main DS 6 thread. Instancing does have some unexpected effects, but I am not sure if this is an expected unxpected or an unexpected unexpected effect.
done
Thanks, and answered I see.
Yes, but I found a different answer in the forums from crosswind. The advanced properties can be added to the instances to make them ghost lights (invisible) again. I tried it and that did work. However in my case where the ghost light was parented to another prop, adding the advanced properties to the instance made both the instanced prop its child ghost light invisible, because they were both part of the instance.