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That's more the default (or even the add in) Studio 3Delight shaders (no, not the host of presets, in the store called shaders...but the Default Surface, omnifreaker and AoA ones) than anything else. The light shaders in Studio for 3DL, until fairly recently, for the most part, didn't even have falloff, let alone realistic falloff. And falloff is one of the huge differences in lighting. Most of the most photrealistic 3DL renders are done in applications that have had 'realistic' or 'plausible' shaders for quite some time.
Here's a comparison, though understand that in Interactive mode Iray doesn't support several features, and only a limited number of shaders and lights (but that "limited" number ought to be more than what most people use anyway). One of the big features Interactive mode does not support is light-casting from emissive sources. The geometry will appear to be self-lit, but it won't cast light to other objects (or, it will only be minimal).
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/59450/iray-render-mode-comparison
Note that Interactive node isn't biased per se; it simply drops certain shadow casting (and a few other) elements from the final "beauty" render. You may note that if you use the Iray canvas feature, producing a shadow pass is only possible when in Interactive mode.
OK, but I (and indeed most of us) can only compare images from renderers with shaders we have access to.
The point is, it's not 3DL that is limited...it's the shaders in Studio that are. Iray is new, with the current shaders for it. 3DL, while capable of doing much more hasn't had a real shader upgrade, to match the capabilities of what it can do now, in a very long time. So you are really comparing modern shaders with ones that are more than 5 yrs old (in some cases, much more). Just the simple fact that the more modern mode of running a 3DL render is 'off' by default should raise a few questions.
I think it's also worth noting that there are a lot of bad "shaders" that have popped up for Iray. Many seem to be just some textures slapped into UberBase with no real thought as to how the material actually looks in real life. This will always result in subpar renders with Iray.
Some of this probably stems from the general lack of quality documentation about the engine and the UberBase shader. The documentation that is easily available from Nvidia is geared more to those with an aptitude for programming. More so, a lack of knowledge about how light works in the real world probably shares some blame as well. Despite having a decent understanding of real world photography, I find myself having to revisit concepts I haven't thought much about since 8th grade science class. Does that mean Iray is unusable or inferior? Of course not.
As the knowledge about the intricacies of physically based rendering grows among the user base and the PAs, I think we'll start to see vast improvements. I wasn't around for the beginnings of 3DL, but I suspect it probably went through the same evolutionary growing pains.
Reality has jumped the shark IMO. It was a great tool at one time. Perhaps if they ever get their act together. From what I understand Lux also is part of many problems..
You appear to be suggesting that Daz Studio suffers from a lack of documentation.
Instead of worrying about building all these fancy new Connect systems to help users not lose their files when they don't know what they're doing, maybe it would be a better idea to BUILD A MANUAL. Then we could all learn the details of using both render engines in a relatively sane manner.
Ha, I know what you're saying, but that isn't just a Daz thing. I work for a software company, and have been in software for over 20 years. Good documentation always seems to be at the bottom of the priority list for a majority of companies, mainly because it's so difficult to keep up to date and because it's hard to justify the return on investing in such a resource intensive task.
EDIT: I should have said it's difficult to show a tangible return on writing good documentation.
I definitely agree, but also:
http://www.blender.org/manual/getting_started/index.html
It's so beautiful. It's not even a for money program. Why can't they all be like this
Meanwhile I'm learning a $500 program, and while it's at least got entries for everything, it's brief broken English at best.
I was curious about the biased/unbiased thing because there will probably be a point where I'll need to do this and I wanted an idea if the reader is going from one panel to the next, would it look out of place?
The one image linked to was a pretty simple scene but there's not much difference and I don't think a reader would notice (at least not too much), so that's good.
I'm sure others can answer this better than me, but it largely depends on how each render is set up. They could look very similar or extremely different all depending on the render settings, lighting, and shaders used for each type.
I'm not really sure why you'd need to transition between the two though? Wouldn't it make more sense to only use one and simply adjust the style/lighting whatever for the different scenes?
That's what I've been doing.
I started my first book using 3delight (before iray hit) got about a thrid of the way through then we got iray and I liked it's look so much better I went back and redid all those scenes and finished the book using iray.
Much of the continuing story is going to deal with supernatural and demonic entities, so unnatural shadows are very likely going to play a part and until recently didn't even know about iray's optional render mode.
The blender manual is beautiful isn't it. But to be fair it is (rather like the program) a community project, It would be more akin to us forumites creating a wiki (Or Daz opening their wiki to public additions)
While I am waxing poetical about Blender, they also are pretty good with the whole biased/unbiased thing, in cycles you can make a transparent object cast shadows, or a solid object not, or for that matter an object that is completely visible/invisible except for reflections
Well this does exist: http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/artzone/pub/software/dazstudio/updates
It's even updated to Studio 2.1 now!
But every time I've gone looking in the Daz docs thing it's either written in astrophysicist or just guesses by users because no one really knows the secrets. I like the Blender manual because while far from containing everything, you can read along and it'll go through every major part of an absolutely massive program in plain english with visual and often downloadable examples. Sure it's a community thing and it might take a lot of effort, but I feel like this sorts of little touches are what make me really like a program rather than the latest new flashy excite thing which is what Daz seems to love these days.
I do all my Blender rendering by exporting to Studio because I'm scared of Cycles. I've seen amazing things from it but the idea of render nodes and that you're meant to know every detail of every material is terrifying. I like being able to apply a shader preset and being done. -lazy-
Here's something...
I'll let people guess as to which renderer it was done in.
There are two fundamental types of documentation - technical and procedural. The technical documentation covers (or should) each and every individual settable parameter - what it does, what it interacts with, and range of valid values. This is always written by the development team, is usually late, and tends to put one to sleep on the third paragraph. This, for the most part, is what we get from DAZ and given the size of the team, a lot seems to be done off-hours on a time-available basis. Note that this documentation rarely, if ever, tells you why to use any given parameter.
Procedurale documentation needs to be written by a skilled writer with a good grasp of how to use the product. This is the how-to documentation, and most of what we have on Iray and Studio is the contribution of a number of people who have worked with Studio and documented what they have found and what works for them.To really do this properly requires a skilled writer that is also skilled in using the product - who has physical access to the developers, so any mis-understanding can be cleared up on the spot. This tends to require camping at someone's desk and bugging them until the answer comes out. I've yet to see this kind of documentation come from a small team environment, especially on a product that changes as fast as Studio.
My thanks to the PAs and others who have taken the time to write the how-tos that do exist.
I understand it's not a simple thing to have and arrange, etc. What I don't understand is why software companies don't value these sorts of things a lot more.
They made the site hideously bright white with no colour change option because a market research survey told them to, instead of actually asking the people who are sitting on it all day. They constantly push out new, more complicated sales even though they pretty much all break and the website can't even display the totals properly at any given time. Promo shots are almost always based on looking fancy and realistic rather than useful to a customer who needs to know things to make purchases. The getting started tutorials are REALLY good for a piece of software, but anything past day 1 is nonexistent beyond tech jargon devs and a few PAs have written in their spare time that no one understands.
I love Daz products, I love Iray, and I love having sales going on all the time, but there is something to be said for getting foundations working properly instead of constantly trying to dazzle. I want those sales to actually work properly, and to have a proper manual for Iray and 3DL and rigging and the ten million other parts of this great piece of software that I didn't even know existed til I heard them mentioned on a forum or clicked something by accident.
dazzle dazzle daz dazzle
my eyes are getting kinda frazzled
p.s. One thing Daz does do well is that their customer service is SUPER helpful and friendly.
I tried aquire just that effect, but I can't seem to squeeze a colour out of a spotlight when using iRay. The only way it works for me, is by using temperature and then I'm limited from pale red over white bluish.
+ How on earth do you get a transparent background? I cannot seem to manage that and at the same time use other lights than the fixed headlight. I've tried a lot of things, like setting Auto Headlamp to Never without any notable difference. The only way to get any kind of coloured and directed light is to enclose the scene I render into a box primitive or something.
When you create a spotlight or point light, literally the second entry under 'Light' is Color. I'm a bit confused.
Now, mind you, the appearance of the light itself will overexposure to white if you make it bright enough, but the light it casts will be definitely colored. If you want to ensure the lightsource looks whatever color, make it dimmer.
In iRay in the Enviroment render settings ensure that draw dome and draw ground are off, otherwise you will not get a fully transparent background
Yes, I can have a transparent bg, but then I'm stuck with the headlight. And I cannot figure out how to get rid of that headlight without having to box in the scenery I'm doing in a primitive.
Uh. Why are you stuck with the headlight? You can use Sun/Sky with Dome Off, and the scene is lit. Or you can use point/spotlights (off camera if you don't want to see them), or you can use distant light.
Render Settings > General > Auto Headlamp (change to Never)
Done? You don't even need to touch Environment settings - although if there's still too much light in a scene you're manually lighting, it might be because you have it set to render Dome and Scene instead of Scene Lights only if you're trying to do some sort of specific lighting thing.
Dome+Scene = the HDRi plus any of your lights. You can draw the dome or not and it'll still light things regardless.
Sun/Sky = a pretend sun
Scene Only = only the lights you place
I think the reason Iray is so complicated for people is that they're used to years of 3DL and Iray works a bit differently.
Select camera, turn the headlamp off.
Thanks, it worked.
Turned out I needed to change doom/scene too. Three (3) places to keep in mind to switch off the headlamp. Now I imagine I'd have a hard time getting it back on when I need it again, but I imagine I'll cross that bridge when I get to it. Now I 'just' have to figure out if I can get green light to aquire that under water ambience I'm striving for.
You can still use the HDR for lighting if you have selected Dome Only, or Dome and Scene, the suggestion I made was to stop the HDR image from appearing in the render so you would get a transparent background, but the HDR should still light the scene. If it is still too dark, alter the tone mapping, there is no need to switch on the headlamp unless you want the render to look like a photo with the flash used.
How do you mean doesn't change a thing?
This is a render of a cube primative, three spot lights 1 Colour set to red, 1 colour set to blue, 1 colour set to green, Headlamp turned off, Scene only selected, Draw Ground turned off. Temp was left at default 6500
That really isn't the case. Turning off the actual headlamp can be done in either of two places. The absolute easiest is in the General render settings. Scroll down and there is an option to turn off all headlamps. HOWEVER... I think this applies only to actual cameras, and not to the built-in views (I.e. Perspective, Front, Top, Left, Right, Back). If you render while looking through one of the built-in views, I think the headlamp is always on if I recall correctly. I only use those views while placing objects or posing figures, so I'm only about 95% sure I am remembering correctly. For actual cameras, you can also go in to the settings for that camera and turn the headlamp off there as well.
It strikes me that you may have the environment set to Dome Only which is why you may think you're stuck with a headlamp. In Dome Only mode, spotlights will not work. You would need to change it to Dome and Scene, or Scene Only for your spots to be visible in the render.
Turning off Auto Headlamp in Render Settings > General will turn it off in perspective view, etc. too. I use it all the time for quick tests. Turning it off in Camera settings will only turn off that camera's potential headlamp.If you're having issues with an auto headlamp you can always just load a light set to some tiny amount where it won't display and headlamps will turn off anyway.
I think they're probably rendering with Dome/Dome+Scene and that it's not a headlamp that's the problem but the HDRi. Because if they had custom lights active then there'd be no headlamp issues anyway (unless the camera being used had specifically had headlamp locked to On.)
Good call. I couldn't remember for sure on the perspective views, and I'm not at my PC to test.
Early on, I got so irritated with the the Default camera having the headlamp on, and me forgetting to turn it off, I saved an empty scene with a default camera with the headlamp set to off. Now I have Studio load that scene on startup and whenever I click new scene. The only problem now is I occasionally forget to save new scenes using Save As, and inadvertently overwrite my empty scene.