Can I possibly get someone to show me what I'm doing wrong?

bleybourne_772d5802c5

I don't even know if what I'm asking is possible. I have an image I am trying to render (Daz4.5) and for the LIFE of me, I can't work out how to light it and make it look nice. Is there a way of giving someone else my saved scene so they can bring it up in their own copy of Daz without them needing to have all the same content installed? I.e. can I save the scene as a "solid" object, so they couldn't manipulate it at all (hence not needing the same content in their library) but could add lights and send it back to me so I could see how to light it? No matter what I do, I can't seem to light the scene and make it look anything but awful :-/

Failing that I could post a couple of screenshots of my various attempts to light the thing, I guess. Is anyone able/willing to help me out?

JimmyC_2009

Please post your render here on the forum, that way more experienced users can see it, and may be able to suggest alternative lighting for it.

Please add some information about what lighting there already is in the Scene. That is the best way to do it, and you don't have to ask to post an image, just make sure that the TOS is obeyed with regard to nudity (if any) and we'll be glad to help.

Lighting is probably the most difficult aspect of producing 3D art, but there are plenty of tutorials on it, and I will try to did some up for you as well.

bleybourne_772d5802c5

Thanks for the suggestion. OK, I will attach three versions of the render to this post (the shield changes slightly, don't worry about that). No nudity or anything.

As you can see, I have tried different things with the lighting, but nothing seems to look good.

test4 (attached) is probably the least-bad, so I'll describe what I did there.

There's a distant light at 25%
There's a spotlight above and to the left of the picture looking down at the 3 main figures, this is at 100% and casts a shadow
Another spotlight is acting as a fill light, to the right of the picture, at 45%, also casting a shadow
The magic flame is a point light with an orange hue, I had to crank it up to 200% intensity and it still barely registers on anything but the shield
I had a 2nd point light on the flame ion front of the girl, but it didn't really work at all, so I removed it and put another spotlight pointing from the fire onto her

It all kind of works, but doesn't look that good, and in order to see the figures I had to crank up the spotlights, so the background is brighter than I would like (ideally it would look all moody and dark).

Any suggestions would be greatly received. Also if anyone has better posing/framing ideas, I'll all ears - still learning! :-)

Richard Haseltine

It will be easier to light your sceen if, in Render Settings, you set the gamma value to 2.2 and turn Gamma Correction on - the point light will then give a reasonable range of light, and the shadows will be less deep. One thing you need to decide is how the scene is being lit, other than the magical flame and the firepots. You could do it literally - add more point lights to the fire pots (with soft shadows), or use Linear point lights which fall off less sharply and can have a maximum range set (if you use real point lights, with shadows on, they are going to bog the render down with shadow calculations even after the light has ceased to be visible). You could add a uberEnvironment light, at low intensity and with a blue tint, to account for bounce light and to keep things from vanishing entirely.

Steven-V

You could also try getting AOA's advanced ambient light and using that to add some generalized ambient light to the scene. That would brighten things up without requiring anything directional.

bleybourne_772d5802c5

Richard Haseltine said:

It will be easier to light your sceen if, in Render Settings, you set the gamma value to 2.2 and turn Gamma Correction on - the point light will then give a reasonable range of light, and the shadows will be less deep. One thing you need to decide is how the scene is being lit, other than the magical flame and the firepots. You could do it literally - add more point lights to the fire pots (with soft shadows), or use Linear point lights which fall off less sharply and can have a maximum range set (if you use real point lights, with shadows on, they are going to bog the render down with shadow calculations even after the light has ceased to be visible). You could add a uberEnvironment light, at low intensity and with a blue tint, to account for bounce light and to keep things from vanishing entirely.

Thanks, I'll have a play with those ideas and see what I can come up with. Man, I thought posing and composition was tricky, but lighting is the really hard part of rendering scenes.

bleybourne_772d5802c5

steven.viscido said:

You could also try getting AOA's advanced ambient light and using that to add some generalized ambient light to the scene. That would brighten things up without requiring anything directional.

Thanks. I'm trying not to spend too much more money at this point (this is a hobby where you can spend a LOT) but if I can;t get it looking right I may pick that up.

JimmyC_2009

You should also take a look at Uberenvironment lights as Richard has suggested.

You will find them in DAZ Studio Formats under Light Presets >. omnifreaker. There are links in there from DSA files which take you to omnifreaker's site for the help files.

bleybourne_772d5802c5

Thanks for the replies, all. I can't really justify picking up costly light packs, but I did mess about with the Uberenvironment lights (candlelight setting) and it really helped the render along, I'm a lot more pleased with it now.

So thanks!

patience55

bleybourne said:

Thanks for the replies, all. I can't really justify picking up costly light packs, but I did mess about with the Uberenvironment lights (candlelight setting) and it really helped the render along, I'm a lot more pleased with it now.

So thanks!

I found this to be a helpful tutorial: http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/56592/

ShawnBooth

Another option for you - bring that distant light of yours up to 50% and then bring down your levels in post.

I personally rarely use the spotlight. They can work well though when used properly. I would highly suggest you place another distant light completely opposite of the first distant light to act as a bounce from it. Be sure to turn it down to 20%... IMO, this is only reason to have such a low value for a distant light.

In terms of affording toys at the store, advanced lighting pack is a must have. Period.

Of course, I'd also recommend upgrading to current Daz and start playing around in IRAY and using "real world" lighting if you will. By that I mean light behaves as it should.

In terms of your scene, I would bring your Orc type guy closer to camera, tuck the other two slightly behind him. Stacking them will bring out more depth. Also consider this, what's the focal point of your image? Do you know the rule of thirds?

bleybourne_772d5802c5

Patience55 said:

bleybourne said:

Thanks for the replies, all. I can't really justify picking up costly light packs, but I did mess about with the Uberenvironment lights (candlelight setting) and it really helped the render along, I'm a lot more pleased with it now.

So thanks!

I found this to be a helpful tutorial: http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/56592/

Thanks, I'll check that out later today!

bleybourne_772d5802c5

ShawnBooth said:

Another option for you - bring that distant light of yours up to 50% and then bring down your levels in post.

I personally rarely use the spotlight. They can work well though when used properly. I would highly suggest you place another distant light completely opposite of the first distant light to act as a bounce from it. Be sure to turn it down to 20%... IMO, this is only reason to have such a low value for a distant light.

So, you're saying to use one distant light at 50% and another opposite at 20% instead of spotlights? I'll give that a try. I assume you mean in combination with an ambient light like uberenvironment or Advanced lighting pack.?

ShawnBooth said:

In terms of affording toys at the store, advanced lighting pack is a must have. Period.

Of course, I'd also recommend upgrading to current Daz and start playing around in IRAY and using "real world" lighting if you will. By that I mean light behaves as it should.

I wish there was a way to preview the lighting pack and try it out before committing to purchasing it. I'm pretty broke at the moment and what money I can spare has gone on armor and such :-/

I have thought about upgrading my Daz version, but I'm terrified of the job of trying to reinstall all of my stuff - a lot of the older stuff I don;t even have installers for anymore. Is there any way to do an in-place upgrade that doesn't lose any of my library stuff, and is it reliable?

In terms of your scene, I would bring your Orc type guy closer to camera, tuck the other two slightly behind him. Stacking them will bring out more depth. Also consider this, what's the focal point of your image? Do you know the rule of thirds?

I'm aware on a basic level of the rule of thirds but clearly I'm not getting it right since you mention it :-) I tried to put the three main figures heads at approximately a third line (although looking at it again, I see they're a bit high) and was trying to make the two outside guys heads be at the top two thirdcorners, but again, it looks like I missed (must have gone right out of my head when I did a final camera shift before starting to look at lighting). I'll try your suggestion and shuffle them around a bit and see how that looks - thanks.

mjc1016

bleybourne said:

I have thought about upgrading my Daz version, but I'm terrified of the job of trying to reinstall all of my stuff - a lot of the older stuff I don;t even have installers for anymore. Is there any way to do an in-place upgrade that doesn't lose any of my library stuff, and is it reliable?

Other than the included content, the install doesn't do anything to your current content...unless you want it to (and even then it's only Daz content, installed with the DIM that it would touch).

Also, if any of your 'missing installers' content is from the Daz store, it will still be there...in your account's product library. And most of the bought content at other sites should still be in your account (notable exception to that rule...Content Paradise).

Leana

mjc1016 said:

Also, if any of your 'missing installers' content is from the Daz store, it will still be there...in your account's product library. And most of the bought content at other sites should still be in your account (notable exception to that rule...Content Paradise).

Unless it comes from a site which has closed, like Poser Pros or 3D Commune.
And there's the problem of freebies...

Anyway, upgrading DS should't affect your content at all, but if you want to be extra safe you can always make a backup of the content before upgrading.

bleybourne_772d5802c5

Leana said:

Anyway, upgrading DS should't affect your content at all, but if you want to be extra safe you can always make a backup of the content before upgrading.

Yeah, as you said, finding all the TONS of free content and such that I have installed would be a nightmare.

So if the worst came to the worst, I could reinstall Daz from scratch (just a base install), and then copy back my "my library" folder (which I do back up) and everything would then work, right? Smart Content wouldn't, but I tend to just use the content library tabs anyway, and all that would work?

Leana

bleybourne said:

So if the worst came to the worst, I could reinstall Daz from scratch (just a base install), and then copy back my "my library" folder (which I do back up) and everything would then work, right? Smart Content wouldn't, but I tend to just use the content library tabs anyway, and all that would work?

Yes, the content would work. You would need to reinstall the plugins too though.