Playing with Lights and Environments

michael_7654011a

Greetings everyone -

I've been trying to learn the lights on DAZ3D and frankly I haven't been overly impressed with some of the sponsored video tutorials. Does anyone know of a good video tutorial on lighting that really lays it bear to get a good understanding?

Also, with regard to environments - how if you have a full set can you place a character outside the set. For instance - I have the Karate dojo full structure and inside. I want to actually place my character outside the dojo - can you do that? If so how.

Thanks

barbult

Daz Studio has two main render engines - 3Delight and Iray. Lighting techniques will vary depending on which render engine you are using. The render engine is selected in the Render Settings pane. Some techniques are generic, like the theory of 3 point lighting, but the actual settings for lights and environments will differ. So the first thing to know is which render engine you want to work with and then focus on tutorials for that render engine. Iray render engine is the newer of the two, Be aware that any tutorial that is a couple years old or older will probably be for 3Delight. I use Iray, because it gives me the most realistic results and I have a fairly good NVIDIA graphics card to accelerate the rendering.

SickleYield is a PA here in the Daz Store. She has a Deviant Art journal with lots of useful Daz Studio tutorials. Use the search bar to search for topics you are interested in or browse through her journal history. Here is a good one to start with. She also has a YouTube channel with lots of video tutorials. Here is a good one to start with. She presents good down to earth information. She is very knowledgeable and very generous with sharing her knowledge.

Yes, you can move your characters any place you want them to be. There are several ways to do that. First select the character in the Scene pane. Then you can move the character by adjusting the X,Y, and Z parameters in the Parameters pane. Or you can move the character with the Universal tool or Translate tool on the tool bar. It will be useful to zoom the Viewport out far enough to see where you want to put the character before moving the character.

You can control where you character is placed when you add the character to the scene by holding down the Alt key (in Windows) and dragging the figure's thumbnail from the Content Library or Smart Content pane into the Viewport pane. A red dot with a yellow circle will appear in the Viewort. It moves as you drag your cursor around the Viewport. When you release the mouse button, that is where your character will be loaded.

DDCreate

Good tip on character placement Barbult! I didn't know that! That'll be a time saver in my multi-level environments!

barbult

I'm glad it helped. Soon after I posted this, I discovered a new Daz YouTube video that covers the same technique. It would have been so much easier to just link to that, if I had only known at the time.

Knittingmommy

@Barbult  Can you believe I've never heard of using the ALT key and dragging to the desired location before?!!!  Thanks!  I'm bookmarking the video, too.  You're amazing!!!