Thank you Rashad! And David!... For explaining how the 3D fill lights work. I had been fighting the lighting on an interior scene for a month. The 3D fills really made a difference compared to True Ambiance (see the attached images).

The TA version uses only standard lights. The sources are standard conical spots and radial lights over each pedestal down the center of the hall, a radial directly behind the camera to provide a little fill light for the foreground, and a very bright radial light behind doors at the far end. The hall radials use gels so that the lighting is not perfectly uniform. I used TA with 64rpp, scattering correction, and boost light. It took about 47min to render. The high rpp setting was to reduce the “salty” hotspots near the blinding light at the doors.

The 3D Fill version uses no TA but has the same standard lighting minus the camera fill light. There are 3D fills over each pedestal and one more in line with the others, over the viewer's left shoulder so that the closest pedestal is not a total black shadow. This used Premium Anti-Aliasing at 16rpp and rendered in 36min. I think it is less noisy than the TA at 64rpp.

I assume the TA image's warmer cast is from the light bouncing off the ceiling but the shading and lighting are much more uniform and flat. The 3D fills produce much more dramatic shadows and shadings.

In the 3D fill version, I tried doing without the standard radials but I found that I lost the nice specular highlight in the false window to the left. I'm not sure if turning up the specular setting on the 3D fills would have helped or how other surfaces would have reacted. The window surface already has maximum specularity. I also tried using only one 3D fill in place of the camera fill light. It produced superior results to the TA version and rendered in less than 20min but it filled in too many of the shadows in the side aisle.

With regard to your images, I am amazed at how densely and naturally you managed to place the plants! Those can be really fantastic scenes. My only complaint is that to my eyes, they are too noisy. There is too much high contrast at too small a scale. What rpp setting did you use for those renders? I think if you can reduce the small scale contrast, you will have some seriously photo realistic renders.

Thanks again for starting this discussion and I look forward to where it goes.

Welcome, dziels_

Thanks for joining the thread with such interesting examples! Both of those renders are fantastic! Both are successful!

You've enbaled the TA options as bet as could be expected. Good to see this degree of smoothness. The Boost Light does a great job of grabbing those colors. Scattering Correction is also helping move the light around and cover all the surfaces. To my eye the TA version is fairly realistic.

The only thing I'd consider doing is to model the spotlights that are suspended above the central line of short columns, rather than to represent them with hidden light sources. Though the resulting lighting effect is correct, it still seems to appear from a source that is hidden from our eye. I find that lighting is often more realistic when a user can trace the influence of a key light source back to it's geometric source. Basically, I try to make any key light sources into real objects in the scene. This is so that the user always knows where the light is coming from, and can therefore gauge the accuracy of the way said light is being represented. Indirect lights are less in need of such explanation.

One of the good things about producing a render with both TA and with 3D Fill examples is that you can use the TA example to help you rig your 3D Fills with more accuracy. Color bleed is an important consideration and when you have walls or floors that are heavily colored in a particular way, it can be wise to account for that in your indirect light rigging. TA picked up the gold coloring of the panels along the vertical walls as well as the rails and ceiling elements. I'd say that you could tint the 3D Fills with some warm tan or brown to bring it closer to the TA example. The deeper shading of the 3D Fill is certainly pleasing. I might want a final shading somewhere in between the two examples. Lowering the shadow intensity of the 3D Fills to maybe 85% could do the trick. I dont usually suggest lowering the shadow intesity of lights, but in this case it might be an effective enough solution that wont add to render time. The good thing about the 3D Fill is that you have the full control of any radial light source, unlike TA whose total intensity and thresholds cannot be controlled directly by the user.

Great render times in both cases. Often the 3D Fill will win the race, but not always.

Thanks as well for the feedback on my images. I agree with you, the noise is a huge distraction. I typically use standard AA, at normal settings, which isn't sufficient for this level of detail. I'm certain the look can be improved easily with better AA, but the effect on render time is yet to be determined. Hopefully, EGFPLS won't be too expensive to use in conjunction with better AA settings. Shortly I'll be turning it over to other people and hopefully we'll see some better looking examples.

Fun, fun!

Oh hey, heads up- if you're doing this- the date in your inbox isn't necessarily the date the order was placed, which is the 30 day timeframe. It will say at the top of the page (once you click your email and open it) the date you ordered. That one day can make a difference. Orders I placed at 11pm Central time should NOT be showing for the next day, DAZ is two hours BEHIND me. So watch for that.

There are several stations, but not much to put on the tracks. Doesn't have to be super high resolution or ultra-detailed. The Subway Train from Polish is amazing, but very resource heavy, so putting more than one in a scene with everything else would be prohibitive. There are a few outdoor trains, but they wouldn't be appropriate for an underground setting. Maybe something to go with one or more of these locations:

The Central District Subway Station
Parkside Tube Station
Neo Station

I will be 63 in a few months.

My musical tastes are wide and varied and include:

Amon Duul II, Barclay James Harvest, Jeff Beck, Adrian Belew, The Bonzo Dog Band, Camel, Can, Gang Of Four, Go, Gong, Graham Central Station, Steve Hillage, David Gilmour, Groove Holmes, Kissing The Pink, Manfred Mann, Mike Oldfield, Passport, The Persuasions, Django Reinhardt, Triumvirat, Robin Trower, Ultravox, Midge Ure, Visage, Yaz, and so many, many more including the usual suspects such as The Beatles, Annie Lenox, Pink Floyd, Tangerine Dream, etc.

Nice list!

I will be 63 in a few months.

My musical tastes are wide and varied and include:

Amon Duul II, Barclay James Harvest, Jeff Beck, Adrian Belew, The Bonzo Dog Band, Camel, Can, Gang Of Four, Go, Gong, Graham Central Station, Steve Hillage, David Gilmour, Groove Holmes, Kissing The Pink, Manfred Mann, Mike Oldfield, Passport, The Persuasions, Django Reinhardt, Triumvirat, Robin Trower, Ultravox, Midge Ure, Visage, Yaz, and so many, many more including the usual suspects such as The Beatles, Annie Lenox, Pink Floyd, Tangerine Dream, etc.

Ouch, now that's one helluva list!!! But you already KNOW I love your taste! ;)

Rock on, my friend!

I am also one of the younger ones at 50 and a half But I grew up listening to a lot of variety going from Johny Cash Dolly Parton and Kenney Rogers to groups i could appriciate more Such as the Clash, Prism .

Me too. 

and the man in the back said that's Dartanbeck

and it turned into a posting blitz...

are you ready Steve?

Stezza?

Alright fellas... let's Rendaaaaaaaaaaaah!!!!!!

I will be 63 in a few months.

My musical tastes are wide and varied and include:

Amon Duul II, Barclay James Harvest, Jeff Beck, Adrian Belew, The Bonzo Dog Band, Camel, Can, Gang Of Four, Go, Gong, Graham Central Station, Steve Hillage, David Gilmour, Groove Holmes, Kissing The Pink, Manfred Mann, Mike Oldfield, Passport, The Persuasions, Django Reinhardt, Triumvirat, Robin Trower, Ultravox, Midge Ure, Visage, Yaz, and so many, many more including the usual suspects such as The Beatles, Annie Lenox, Pink Floyd, Tangerine Dream, etc.

J O'K 

Daddy Cool

EasyBeats

Ross Ryan

just to name a few 

remember when Suzie Q rattled the place so much the pigeon clocks went haywire! 

...yeah was a little miffed as I was doing test renders that were related to a discussion thread and was unable to post results all evening.  stayed up later than usual hoping it would come back online but by 01:00 local time (before giving up) as I was planning to get something with my PC+ coupon in the DO sale because I was going to be away all day Friday. Didn't get back on the site until after 00:00 Daz time Friday/Saturday).

Two things that bothered me about this: 

1. No advance notice (for example, Fantasy Attic gives a 1 - 2 day advance email warning to their community when they schedule downtime for their site and it is usually during low usage hours).

2. The timing.  This fell right during what was essentially "prime time" for most of North, Central, and South America, as well as the Pacific (Hawai'i, Japan, Eastern Australia, New Zealand.  Even had it only lasted for the planned hour thirty duration, it still was a major disruption at the wrong time.

When I was dealing with system operations in college we always scheduled routine maintenance during the lowest user demand as well as posted sufficient advance notice.

Oh... right. Well, since this thread has already taken a life of it's own, and you (Mitovo) wanted to run a thread on game creation or something, you might consider starting a brand new thread.

For starting new threads, go to the White Zone, for the White Zone is for Loading and Unloading. Go to the White Zone. You'll love it. It's a way of life!

                                                                                                                  - The Central Scrutinizer

..OK,so anyone else here as badly inconvenienced by the nearly 5 hour long  "Scheduled Maintenance" (that was never announced via email  banner or any other means) which occurred during the height of Daz "prime time" for most of North America, Central America, South America, and the Pacific?

Crikey when I was in college we always got at least a day's warning and the procedure would be carried out during a time of low user demand.

It's as if Highways scheduled resurfacing of the M4 for a weekday morning and didn't bother to tell the motoring public about it

i was so busy zolly dooming last night, didnt notice 

i'se a lil bummed, had plans to make steak and potatoes birthday dinner.

grocery delivery brought the potatoes and brocolli

the meat didnt arrive, dang it, dont want frozen dinner birthday #53  

cake was in stock, izza a beauty 

..OK,so anyone else here as badly inconvenienced by the nearly 5 hour long  "Scheduled Maintenance" (that was never announced via email  banner or any other means) which occurred during the height of Daz "prime time" for most of North America, Central America, South America, and the Pacific?

Crikey when I was in college we always got at least a day's warning and the procedure would be carried out during a time of low user demand.

It's as if Highways scheduled resurfacing of the M4 for a weekday morning and didn't bother to tell the motoring public about it

I am a HUGE fan of Carrara. It's my favorite reason to turn on a computer - ever.

However, if you're currently looking to work with Genesis 3, posing, rendering, adding clothing, etc., there's only one software I'd suggest for you: Daz Studio, and always keep it updated to the latest. Some folks might not agree with that last bit, but as Daz Studio advances, so does Genesis. As Genesis advances, so does Daz Studio.

On the other hand, Carrara (especially being as inexpensive as it is right now) is amazing at being able to create huge scenes (Computer Specs Required) with atmosphere and so on, and creating High end spherical backdrops for use in Daz Studio's Iray Dome.

These are examples I've done making kind of low to mid-grade tests - the surroundings in the background are 360 degree spherical backgrounds rendered in Carrara and dropped into the Iray Dome in Daz Studio

This one has no additional lighting, and the spherical render is a jpg, not hdr - Mil Dragon 2 and Stonemason's Urban Ruins. Background is spherical render

Not a great result - I was very new to Daz Studio and was just trying it out

This is the original scene for the above dome image. For the dome render, these central building were hidden and I didn't use any lighting effects

(lighting effects baked into a dome image look horrible usually)

The buildings are all very low rez I got from mmoir's BMF Landscapes for Carrara product - they work excellent for this stuff!

Again, spherical jpg, but with three lights in DS - Michael is all by himself - the rest is in the background dome

These next two use the same dome image rendered in Carrara from one of my Carrara EnvironKits products

Why do I have to get out of bed to do the following; take a shower, get dressed or make my bed?

Is actually quite easy to get dressed while still in bed.   Well sort of easy.   Used to do it quite often when young when it was really cold  (pre central heating)

There are several methods to go about it.  If you are rendering in 3Delight, you can do very large scenes rendered at once but you will want to break it all down into seperate scenes first that you can work on one at a time as Odaa mentioned.  If you are rendering in Iray, you are going to have to do it differently by rendering in layers.

For the first method, which I used here - http://www.daz3d.com/gallery/#images/48862/ - I would like to share a few tips from what I did.  I personally set up one character as the central focus and used her to set up my camera and lighting.  After that was done, the character, outfit and hair was saved out as a seperate scene.  The set was also saved as a scene with the lights and camera.  I then made a seperate scene with the same set, camera and lights but with no textures.  This alternate set was used to set up the rest of the characters.  For each additional character(s) that were setup (and saved as a stand alone scene) I would bring in one of the previous ones, remove all the clothes and hair and all textures and just leave them posed in place as a reference.  Once each character was set up, I merged them all together to see how they looked.  I did make a few changes and also saved them all as a single scene.    Depending on your hardware, saving them all as a scene can take a few min or a lot more.

For the second method, rendering in layers and compositing in post,  - http://www.daz3d.com/gallery/#images/293986 - I will admit this was simplified compared to what others have done but its easy to digest.  The scene was split in two.  The first scene was just the room and lighting, which I must credit Jack Tomlin for setting up.  I used his Iray lighting that came with the addon to the Library.  It fits pefectly.  The only light I added was a large primative plane in front to illuminate the girls like a flash on a camera.  The second scene was the girls, the lighting (and lamps) plus the table and chairs.  Because their shadows are only noticable on the capet and table, I had to keep those in their scene.  Again, simple but easy to mentally chew on.

ALso, if you are rendering in Iray, any prop that is not visable to the camera, is not seen in reflections or is not responsable for adding shadow or lights to the scene should be removed as textures take up more VRAM then a mesh does.

I recently reinstalled Studio on my laptop. I install using Install manager and Daz Connect. I have several updates showing in Studio that when I select "install update", it looks like they update, but they do not. They still show in the updates tab. I am running Studio Public Build Beta. Here are the updates that will not update:

Carhop for Genesis Female

The Central Districy Subway

Corset Hat

A Curious Tea: Drink Me

Denver Hair

Genesis 2 Starter Essentials

Genesis Starter Essentials

Holiday Accessories

IDG Portrait Studio

The SteamBoat Machine

Yuletide Treasure Tree 2011

Any ideas of why this is so?

..belated happy "X" number of trips you have completed around the central main sequence stellar primary.

Here is my entry. I stopped the render early because I know it still needs work. Any suggests?

Only thing I would suggest at the moment is changing the camera view slightly or the position of the figure in the chair so that she isn't quite so central in the image. Otherwise, the light is very beautiful, the contrast between cool colour outside and warm colour inside is lovely. Maybe you could accentuate that even more?

Love the contrast between the hot and the cold as well. You might try cropping the left (our left) out just a bit which will also help bring her out of the center of the image.

Here is my entry. I stopped the render early because I know it still needs work. Any suggests?

Only thing I would suggest at the moment is changing the camera view slightly or the position of the figure in the chair so that she isn't quite so central in the image. Otherwise, the light is very beautiful, the contrast between cool colour outside and warm colour inside is lovely. Maybe you could accentuate that even more?

..yeah I have the entire City Ruins Series as well as the Rubble sets and After the War. .  They work well for the scenes in my story that take place after an invasion and subsequent occupation.of the central character's hometown.

Comparison of Urban Sprawl 3 and Dreamland Models in River Front

Here's a look at Urban Sprawl 3. It comes with 5 city blocks in both Iray and 3DL versions. As far as I can see, there is no preset scene where the blocks are already assembled into a unit, so this is something you have to do for yourself. The spacing is 9500, so it's pretty easy to move blocks into position using multiples of that number. This size is fairly close to River Front's block spacing which is about 9866, so the Dreamland Models blocks that load are of a similar scale. The size similarity is somewhat deceiving because of how the products are designed. The Dreamland Model blocks are 1 big square with streets along the outside edges (on right in image below) while the US3 blocks have a smaller central block with streets in from the sides, and a partial block of buildings along the outside edges (on left in image below). The benefit of the US3 design is that you have buildings on both sides of the street after loading just one block, so you are ready to render an image looking down the street, but that advantage can disappear depending upon the position and orientation of the camera. 

The US3 blocks do not have the same street pattern. Blocks 01 and 04 have one square of buildings in the center with adjoining partial blocks on all 4 sides and an eight block in each corner.  Blocks 02, 03, and 05 have a long rectangle of buildings in the center. You can easily see the street pattern in the screen capture below.

One thing you'll notice in distant views is that many of the US3 buildings in the background are high rises compared to the Dreamland buildings in the foreground. 

The US3 streets are 1-way with 3 lanes. The RF streets are 2-way with 4 lanes total. The US3 lanes are about 20% wider. I found the RF lanes to be a bit tight for most of the vehicles I was testing, so the bigger lanes are a plus.

I wondered if the building heights are compatible and they look like they are. This view shows a 4-story building from US3 on left and a 3-story building from DM on the right. Doors and floor levels appear to be of similar heights.

One big difference between the two product lines are the look and details. RF is quite clean, with fresh sidewalks, streets, and building textures. There's some details that load, like stop signs at corners and billboard trees and it also comes with electrical poles with wires you can add. But if you want other common street elements like mailboxes, litter, trash cans, etc., or you want buildings/streets with more variegated textures, you'll have to add that yourself. US3 comes with much of that already in place. The trees are 3D models, there's litter in the gutters, trash bag piles by buildings, mailboxes, street signs, etc. 

Click on images for larger views. Note these were all 3DL renders just because they render faster.

One way to think of these products is that if you want to build your own city, River Front is a good setting, and as I've shown in this thread, can accept not only Dreamland models but also other products including Urban Sprawl 3 (more on this in a future post). US3 on the other hand gives you an instant city with lots of the tiny details already in place, which is most helpful if your focus is on rendering a city scene with people and vehicles added.

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