Increasing illumination of outfits without using spotlight or mesh light sources

Cenobite

Is there a setting i could use to increase the illumination of each piece of equipment or clothing without having to broadcast direct light on the subject. In the render below one outfit doesn't seem to have MDL shaders for Iray, how do i increase the baseline textures brightness as outside light sources that cast light onto the subject fail to render the detail of the texture because there seems to be no illumination to the textures, is there a slider or option i can set to increase the light emitted from pieces of outfit like you would increase intensity & lumens to a spotlight thats broadcasting over the area, there must be a setting to increase the texture brightness for Iray as lights sources do not reveal more texture detail because non MDL textures don't have any illumination to them in iray no matter how bright the light you cast on the material.

TheKD

Iray is a render engine that attempts as best it can to mimic real physics. If you want something to be lit, you either gotta shine more light on it, or make it glow. To make it glow, you have to change emission color to something brighter than black. If you don't see that color channel, it's probably hidden. Go to the top left of where you have the surfaces tab, there is a little icon that looks like a sticky note. Click on that, preferences > show hidden properties and it should appear in the surfaces tab. I think I explained it all well, let me know if I didn't lol.

Cenobite

Yeah Hidden properties i remember looking at these as i've stumbled around the editor learning what different settings do, theres like a million different settings in various locations in the editor, if you know them all i'm sure what i'm asking is just simply a slider or value too adjust in one tab or another, what i'm looking for is just a setting to be able to adjust the brightness of any outfit piece without replacing the shader or casting light onto it from an outside source in the scene like a spot light or point light, something like a contrast & brightness setting you would find in monitors and T'V's in parameters of the outfit piece but there is none that i see, there all sorts of shader settings in surfaces but after adjusting a few i don't see any effect so i figure these are not the right settings to just bring up the brightness on the texture, 3 models in the scene above are from the same artist yet one of the outfits the Bio Squad Blaster sold here in store which has 4 different coloured types of materials that show detail in normal textures when in texture mode yet all display way too dark in IRAY renders compared to the rest of the collection and there are a few which have normally highlighted MDL textures as you can see from the picture, the dark shaded character should be much lighter like the others in scene and it has a spot light beaming on it with over 100k lumen which is bright that close to the subject yet no textures are highlighted and the textures should show great detail like the other two characters in scene which don't have spotlights on them at all. There must be a setting to highlight the pieces in the outfit. I don't see a illumination setting in surfaces like you would find in environments something like this would be good or just a general lumination in parameters on whatever you have highlighted in the scene tree like a brightness slider. How do you turn the shader from RSL too MDL without completely replacing the shaders. RSL being for 3DL and MDL for Iray are they completly two different shaders or is there some setting to flip them into Iray from 3DL?.

Richard Haseltine

Generally if DS hides surface properties it's because theya re not going to have any effect with the current options on another property.

If you find a surface is too dark you need to adjust its properties, possibly after applying the Iray Uber base since the auto-conversion from the 3delight shader is not working as desired. Whichj settings you want to adjust is of course a matter of trial and error to an extent.

Cenobite

Richard Haseltine said:

Generally if DS hides surface properties it's because theya re not going to have any effect with the current options on another property.

If you find a surface is too dark you need to adjust its properties, possibly after applying the Iray Uber base since the auto-conversion from the 3delight shader is not working as desired. Whichj settings you want to adjust is of course a matter of trial and error to an extent.

Thank You very much Champion you help fix my issue, i applyed the Subsurface Base Shader from the Default resources in smart content (shaders catagory) then the Subsurface Colour had changed to black in the surface editor tab settings i was now able to toggle it to the colour desired and it fully higlighted the textures, will post a results in a few hours after render the next scene.

Edit.

As you can see i fixed the problem, thank you to both of you, you helped me solve this major issue i had with more then a few items not showing textures fully, also allows me to light stuff up without using super bright light sources that effect the surrounding area.

Cenobite

I also found using allowing the Hidden Tools then merging the Subsuface Base materials onto the piece of outfit or prop anything really that it will revealed a bunch of cool settings too tweek & adjust the base iiumination by changing certain pallet tones for subsurface values also some things require you to turn subsurface on to the value of 1 then slide up the subsurface like you would for opacity shaders, in this way you can use light in a different way in your scenes, adjusting the tone color to dark environments by bringing up the tone on the item itself then using natural objects and spot lights to produce the shade needed if you want shadows but still having the parts you want lit to the required value without shining something directly onto the surface creating distortion or glare factors from using point lights, spot lights & mesh light setups.