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Light - let there be light! Please! Let there be light.
Using RRRR to practice using Studio.
I am still struggling with getting the lights to work in Studio. I am using the Courtyard Poolside set, which has a roof. I've got 5 spotlights pointed at walls, a pointlight below the roof, in addition to the main spotlghts pointed at the figure. Nothing I do seems to get light on the set. The lumens are up to 250,000. The render settings are set to scene only. It is as if I learned nothing from the February new users challenge.
Help
In the attached, see some of the lights. I stopped the render around 50%, but you can see that the walls of the courtyard have very little light shining on them.
Have you adjusted the Tone Mapping from the default (in Render Settings)?
Try turning down the spotlight(S) shining on the main character. It could be that it is too strong and the camera is set to allow for that and the lights at the back aren't registering.
OK - thanks for the quick replies.
I will try these. To answer, no, I did not adjust Tone Mapping. Also, did not know that Studio default cameras reacted that way.
Out of curiousity, just to make sure it wasn't my settings for each light, I did a test render in 3DL. Ignoring the foreground figure with Iray shaders, it is obvious that I have all sorts of light shining on the set. LOL.
So, back to the basic Iray threads and video tutorials for some basic understanding. Thanks again for the quick replies. I will focus on finding info on Studio tone mapping and camera settings.
Here is the washed out 3DL render.
Your spotlights seem to be a long way away from the background. With realistic falloff, maybe they don't reach that far. Spotlights probably won't give you realistic "outdoor" lighting anyway.
You mentioned Courtyard Poolside. Do you mean Courtyard Pool? What is the "roof" you mention in your original post? I don't see a roof over the pool area in Courtyard Pool in the store promos. The product says it comes with a Daz preload and a Poser preload. It doesn't mention Iray. Does the set load with a "skydome"? If so, that is probably a 3Delight skydome. If a skydome is loaded, delete it and use an HDRI in your Iray Render Settings, and change to Dome and Scene. You will probably need to eliminate or turn down the spotlight on the woman.
@Diomede - Did you get this resolved? I'm interested in hearing how it turned out for my own edumacation. I would guess Barbult sounds spot on, but I'm very curious. I didn't know the cameras were like that either.
Im not sure if anyone suggested this or not but you can "look through" your light as if it was a camera (The spotlight will appear in the camera dropdown in the viewport) ...easiest way to be sure where it is directed and what it is looking at is through the spotlight camera. It also helps with sorting out if there is something in your cameras way like skydomes, ceilings, etc. If so you can pull the light in with that view to get your light inside whatever it is so the light is where you mean it to be
To do so:
1. Click on the Light in the Scene Tab
2. Select the Light in the Camera Dropdown in the Viewport.
3. You will see 2 red circles. One is where the specific stronger part of the focus of the light is pointing and then the outter shows you the general light fall off. Once you have it pointed in the right place, you can adjust the strength of the light by going to the Lights Tab
4. In the Lights Tab adjusting Spread Angle will make the falloff area larger. Adjusting Liminous Flux (Lumens) will adjust the strength. And you can also adjust Intensity to further multiple the strength. Color will adjust the color.
Hope that helps :)
Solution - bottom line - set comes with a sky dome. That sky dome was the "roof" that I was seeing when I zoomed out of the scene. (Thank you, Barbult). I compounded my confusion by setting the environment lighting to "scene only." As per Barbult, I have now unchecked visibility for the courtyard pool skydome to turn it off. I used a different HDRI for the environment and changed back to Dome and Scene in the render settings. I did a test render of just the set and the raft. I stopped it very very early, less than 10%. It is clear that everything is looking much better.
Thank you everyone for your replies. Very helpful, and much appreciated.
Much better! Good work!
Thank you for identifying the key issues!
I can see. I can see.
Deilah never had long term relationships. I did this for the RRRR. Had to use the courtyard pool set, the wizard clothing outfit, dark trees, and party time balloons.
I am just happy to render a Studio scene that has enough light to see the basics. Getting the lights to shine at all in an Iray render has been a consistent obstacle for me.
Here is the raw render.
Here it is after a little touch up with filter forge. Should have some depth of field, but will save that for my next excursion.
OMGosh that book made me laugh out loud! Nicely done.
Thanks - it is for the always zany RRRR challenge.
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/233496/rrrr-judged-by-the-cover-render-contest/p1
Now that I've gotten over the thrill of just getting an Iray scene to render with light, I can only see the render's flaws. Argh. I will have to revisit Delilah the Spider Witch after I rewatch these SickleYied lighting tutorials. I swear I've watched 3 times already. I hope at some point I start retaining some of this information. I went back to my first page in this thread and noticed I was having similar problems with the warrior scene. And I had the problem again in the new user thread. I think I'm going to have to do my own screencap guide.
Iray lighting for outdoor scenes is simple - Remove any skydome, choose "Dome and scene" under Environment, pick a suitable HDRI image under Environment map (plenty of nice free ones out there to choose from), supplement with a spotlight or two if required. The thing to remember with iray spots is that the 3Delight "Intensity" value does nothing - you have to use the Luminous Flux value instead.
Thanks. I didn't realize additional sky domes could be inserted with certain sets. Now that I know what to look for, hopefuly I will do better.
I wish I could give good advice for lighting but to be honest, I pretty much depend on light sets and Kindred Arts ghost lights. I have a fair idea of how its supposedly done, but A.it takes me wayyyy to long to set up my own lights and B. I don't want to lol. I do think its important to know how, but i sincerely do not have time to muck about with lighting. Just because I know how doesn't mean I'm good at it lol. I've invested in a fair amount of lighting products and know enough of how things work to be able to tweak them to suit a particular render but they save me a huge amount of time as far as set up goes.
Don't be discouraged though, its really a huge amount of information and each and every scene is different. 100's of possibilities so if it takes a bit to get the hang of it, that's perfectly normal.
Also, go to the new users challenge forum and look at the previous challenges on lighting. Even just reading through them will yield a huge amount of information and I believe they link to various resources and tutorials at the beginning of each challenge as well.
Great suggestions, Sonja. I've made it a point to try to do more Studio renders. One way to make myself practice is to participate in the New Users Challenge and in the RRRR Challenge. As per your suggestion, the New User challenge on lighting was very helpful, especially Barbult, but I'm just not retaining the information. Sometimes I will watch a video tutorial and my interface won't have some of the tools, and I can't figure out which pane I need, or if it is something else.
For example, I just watched some tutorials on using primitives as emissive lights and read through a related thread. Yet I am really struggling in my tests to get a primitive sphere to shine light on some other primitives I've inserted in the scene. At one point, the video I watched used a scripting function. Can't find it anywhere and the scripting pane I did find looked nothing like the tutorial.
Despite my expressed fustration, I am learning a lot. Usually, the Daz Studio approach makes sense once I figure out what is going on. There are a lot of functions to make things easier. Two thumbs up.
I wonder if the scripting pane you saw was for an add on utility. I know there are several out there and own a couple myself, so that might be what you saw (although it would be nice if that was mentioned right?) I don't recall a scripting function native to Studio for that.(doesn't mean there isn't one, just means I haven't heard about it lol) Don't feel too bad on the retention, I've been known to watch something, pause it so I can try and by the time I get from the video to Daz, I've forgotten what I'm supposed to do already lol.
For the emmissive spheres, try changing the lumens tothe K setting instead of the C setting I think its kdcm or kcdm versus cdcm. (Sorry, at work and not on my rendering computer but its under lumens.) At the lower setting you sometimes have to set the lumens in the millions to get enough light. Using the other setting will let you use a lower setting and may work better.
I found some light, LOL .(maybe too much)
Sonja, thanks for the tips, especially the kcdm vs cdcm. Here is a test with an environment HDRI and one spotlight. Definitely have more light now. Now I have some more questions.
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Aren't there two planes that you adjust for focal points? and then DOF occurs outside the planes? Or something like that. Couldn't find them.EDIT: Found the DOF button on the camera and the planes by looking through another camera. Still working out how to adjust them.
- How do I adapt the shaders for the tomato plant for Iray? Isn't there an Iray conversion shader, or something like that? Uber? The tomato plant is a custom plant that I made in Carrara.
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How do I make the eyes point at the tomato?EDIT: Found the point at. Still working it out.Updated for finding a couple of the settings.
You did indeed find light lol! Glad I could help.
Yes the Daz Iray Uber shader will convert the textures for you. There is one to make things emmissive as well. They are under Shader Presets / Iray / DAZ Uber. If you right click on it you can add a shortcut to the top bar where the file edit etc tabs are. It will make a scripts tab and you can save any utility script up there as a shortcut for ease of use. Right click and choose create custom preset (right click on the script or action, not on the top bar}
That looks nice, Diomede! For the surface, check out if you have some emission set to "on", and also for the gloss.
As far as lights are concerned, I divide them into two sections - "work lights" and "portrait lights". The work lights are fairly quick set-ups that use a combination of whatever lights and HDRI in my arsenal work good and fastest. It doesn't always give the "bam" effect. "portrait lights" aren't strictly for portraits, but bring out the "bam". Those take usually longer to set up properly (at least for me), which is why i keep them for special occasions.
As for people looking at things&each other - I recently got myself "Look at Me", which is a very useful script that lets you adjust eyes and heads with moving a few sliders. It's a real time saver when setting up a scene and makes head movements look smoother. There are a few tricks with getting the best effect out of it, but it has saved me quite some time posing characters already.
Hey, Diomede -
Try toning down the gloss on your tomatoes. They have a matt finish. Also, fiddle around with Base Color and Glossy Color to darken and neutralize the colors on the tomatoes and foliage and make them more realistic.
Sonja - thank you once again. You are a lifesaver.
Thank you, BeeMKay. Will check the gloss settings. One thing that I am trying to get used to is that the surfaces pane uses slightly different terminology than I am used to. Good suggestions regarding the lights. I think what I am likely to do is create 4 or 5 lighting arrangements and then save them as starter scenes. Probably similar to your work light and bam light setups. But for indoor scenes, I'd like to be able to use spherical emissives and I'm still working on a couple of related tutorials. Will check on the "Look at me" script. That would be great. I was going to ask if Studio had something similar to target helpers.
Dracorn - perfect suggestions. The shaders of the tomato plant dominate the scene, in a bad way. Ideally, I'd take some reference photos from tomato plants for the leaves, but will save that for another day. Toning it down will do for now.
You have great DOF, it looks really good. If you want to work on DOF, when you have the camera selected in Scene, go to (for example) Perspective view, and look down from the TOP. Putting your figure between the planes will do it. You may want to experiment with foreground DOF, have part of the props outside the planes (like the tomato plant, or a leg that is out front, etc.)
@Diomede - Your entry in the RRRR was quite funny. It's looking good. I commented over there already, but wanted to stop by your thread over here.
@Novica - I really appreciate the tip. I had actually put in two cameras, one of which was just to look at the first to try to find the DOF planes. LOL. I will experiment with some foreground DOF.
@Wanderer - thanks for the kind words. I enjoyed thinking up my RRRR entry. What does that say about my sense of humor? For RRRR, I like looking through the thread because those folks are hilarious - and really good. I don't always enter, but I do try to make time to go through and vote when it ends. The various challenges are great ways to keep rendering, which I consider like a sketchpad. If you are a platinum club member, there are regular challenges there as well.