West park lights and effects on textures

Khoyan

Hi guys,

I've created a scene using some West Park products, the West Park Legacy add-ons and the light set that comes with it. I'm pleased with the scene and the lights are AWESOME... except that they make some sort of funny texture on everything, including the human model.

I don't know the first thing about lights. I've seen the tutorial, I've tried to figure it out on my own, but I'm not good at it, so I resort to using premade sets. The West Park set gives me exactly the look and feel I want, but I get funny looking surfaces on human skin and lose the details of the Super Hero suit the character is wearing

Here is the West Park light set. Notice the odd texture on his skin and the suit

Here is another light set. Details of the human character is better and the suit looks great, but the lighting is wrong :(

Can anyone tell me why the preferred light set does that and what I can do to remove that texture problem but keep the lighting?

AndyS

Hi Khoyan,

funny, I'm just playing with some West Park Sets.

At first:
the delivered light setups are at low quality. You could go into the parameters for the area light and set the sample rate to at least 128. That'll help a lot.

But it is better to become familiar with lighting by yourself. As I modified the setup, I got the first results shown in in a German thread.
At the moment I'm working on some presets which I can apply to each element individually. And I reworked the textures so alternatively I have my own non abandoned version and a night lighting set.

Some examples: --> http://andysanderson.deviantart.com/

Yours
Andy

Szark

as smftrsd72 said increasing the Area Light Samples is a good start but not the only thing to adjust. I wouldn't go for 128 first but try 32 or 64 and decrease the Shading Rate in the Advanced Settings Pane to 0.20. That will increase the overall quality. You could also try increasing the Shadow Samples to 24 again in the Advanced Render settings.

Khoyan

Thanks so much for your help, guys! However... I can't seem to find any parameters to set sample rate on any of the nine area lights in this set. All I see is color, intensity, translate, rotate, scale, visibility in render and so on. The Render settings like shadow samples and shading rate I can find, but not sample rate for each of the lights.

Szark

Select the Area light/s in the Scene Pane and then pop in to the Surfaces Pane. Remember if you read my Area Light tutorial these are surface shader lights so their parameters will be in the Surfaces Pane. ;)

Khoyan

I'm sorry for being slow, but... That looks nothing like my panes, Szark. I can add various panes to either side of my gui layout, but the only thing called surfaces is "Surfaces (Color)" and there are no options there for lights.

I'm using Daz Studio v. 4.6.3.50 Pro Edition, if that matters?

AndyS

Hi Khoyan,

the area light planes are "hidden" in the West Park elements. Perhaps you can find them in the scene tab under the different items (WP_room..., WP_corr...).
Sorry that I can't show a screenshot at the moment, but I have a render running.

Later I'll come back.

Szark

Yes you need to select the light/s before any parameters will show up in Surfaces (Colour) Pane which is the same as My Surface Pane. I am just using a different UI layout and colour scheme.

They should all show up in the Scene pane though so they can be selected. Don't select anything called Area Blocker (or something like that) but select the object, Sphere, pane etc that is emitting the light. It should say Area Light Sphere, pane etc. I also cannot check as I too have a; Vue render going and b; I don't have this set yet.

AndyS

OK Khoyan,

Now attached you find a screenshot where I marked the important elements.

On the right side I'm in the scene tab to see all items of the scene. For the West Park Set they have grouped all light items, so you have to expand that entry.
Now you see the entries marked with a little cube. These are the important area lights. If you select one, you get all parameters in the surface reworking tab (left). Here you go to the light entry. This is the place where you can modify the intensity, the color of the light and the sample rate for the quality. In this case: higher values = higher quality.

In the second picture you see as an example, where the light area is located. The faint yellow area corresponds to the orange selected entry in the scene tab.

But for all rener quality parameters please keep in mind: Higher quality causes extraordinary longer render times!

I hope that helps.

Andy

Khoyan

Oh wow, what fantastic and superhelpful replies! The screenshots were right on the spot, thank you for putting such effort in it, smftrsd72. Thank you guys so much! I'm rendering now with 32 sample rate and shading values that Szark suggested and we'll see how that comes out. Then I'll try 64 and 128 after, just to see the difference :)

Szark

Oh yeah I forgot Jack names his lights now. Sorry about that and thanks smftrsd72 for posting those. I must admit I don't use many lights sets these days. And last year my old PC couldn't cope well with a lot of Area Lights so I didn't use them much.

Szark

It does depend on what the surfaces are as to what sample level you use. I have noticed Uber Surface and the new SSS shader that comes with DS you do need a higher value. But sometimes 16/32 will do fine. Never try to assume higher is better sometimes it doesn't need to be. What you are doing rendering at a certain level and go up from there is a great way to see the differences, great for learning. Let us know how you get on please.

Khoyan

This is the result of a sample rate of 64, with shading rate at 0.20 and shadow samples to 24. I wasn't satisfied with the sample rate 32 render, but saw a clear difference. The image will be post processed in Photoshop, so this result is more than good enough for me.

I'll run a 128 sample rate render as well just for the heck of it.

Thank you guys so much for all your help!

Szark

Nice, yes looking much better.