Daz 4.20 Broke My Lighting
Since I upgraded to 4.20, some objects I have been using to illuminate scenes are no longer working. The object is a primitive (e.g., sphere, cube) with an emission surface, and cutout opacity set to 0.0000010. The object is basically invisible, yet before 4.20 the light emitted by the object was at full strength. In 4.20, the strength of the illumination is now scaled along with the opacity, so these objects no longer illuminate scenes unless the opacity is increased until they are visible in the scene.
I used these objects in quite a few interior scene presets that I created for use in my projects. Is there some setting I can adjust to get illumination from these objects again without making them visible, or am I going to have to redo the lighting in all of my scene presets that use them?
Comments
This is a chnage in Iray, a deluiberate change unfortunately. Previously the luminosity was not affected by the cutout opacity, as long as it was greater than 0 , but now the luminosity is multplied by the opacity (which is more physically correct). There are several possible ways to (partially) work around this, discoussed int eh threads on the new versions of daz Studio (mainly the beta thread) in the Daz Studio Discussion forum.
Did anyone consider the impact this change would have on hundreds of existing products that provide illumination? Candles, for example. The flames on those often use the cutout opacity field to simulate the translucency of fire. Now, none of those products will provide the level of illumination their creators intended. Users will have to tinker with each of them to provide the correct about of light.
As I said, it was nVidia's decision - though i'd think it was likely to break saved scenes in other applications too.
As I said, it doesn't just affect saved scenes. The change - whether or not it was nVidia's decision - impacts all illumination products that involve transparency, not just on Daz3d but any other rendering application. Any props that involve fire, in particular, will no longer provide the default levels of illumination that their creators intended.
How exactly do I locate these "(partial) work arounds" in the Daz Studio Discussion forum?
Same here, now even all saved scene's lighting(especially indoor enviorment) aren't working properly and it's harder too acheieve good results. Many enviorment product with default pre-set lighting that worked perfectly before 4.20 are also broken now, it just require tons more efforts to do stuffs that were granted before 4.20.
it was DAZ's decision to impliment the change
We don't know the terms of the Iray licensing deal, and even if Daz is able to skip the latest version that would also close the door to bug fixes and updates.
perhaps an extra controller in the surfaces section that let's you cut the opacity and pushes the light up at the same time? Can't see that having anything to do with licensing... just good programming.
DAZ dropped the ball on that update, killed hundreds of products in the process, its unexcusable.
Other 3d softwares had no impact whatsoever due to Nvidia's update.
Perhaps they simply didn't use that exploit? If they did they would have been affected (and I'm sure some people would have used similar techniques, but that would probably have been individual users since the other applications don't generally have the same kind of content market as Daz Studio.
In any event, Daz did talk to nVidia and there is now a better (though still not exact) alternative, which also opens up new possibilities.