Trying to use Stonemason's Utopia Labs for Iray render lighting
pctech4ny
Posts: 183
So a few days ago I decided I needed a couple of exterior sci-fi environments. I bought Utopia Labs https://www.daz3d.com/utopia-labs .
It's an older product with only 3DL materials, but I have had luck using older products in Iray before.
(TL;DR version: how to light this for an Iray render? Suggestions needed. The whole sad story is below.)
After I spent several hours adding some cameras and creating the scene I wanted, I added a daytime HDRI for the sky and went to Iray preview it in the little preview viewport. Things were barely visible; the "ground level" of this set is actually a courtyard at least 2 floors below Daz Studio coordinate "ground level." So I supposed not much of the light from the HDRI was getting down into the large opening over the courtyard. Switched HDRI to a bright summer day sky from Orestes "Summer Day" set. Light was a little more but not that much better.
So I decided to be "super-genius" (cue Wile E. Coyote getting a package from Acme) and thought, "I wonder if the 3DL to Iray Converter utility I own converts lights to Iray as well?" I checked the documentatiom and it said it did.
Step One was run Scene Optimizer on the scene since I had numerous G8 figures in the scene; reduced all textures to maximum of 2k size (the building itself -yes the whole thing is one gigantic object - already had textures lower than that).
Step Two was save scene and then run the 3DL to Iray Converter script. Did NOT save scene again just in case of unfortunate results.
Step Three: clicked to switch the little previewer viewport from Texture Shaded to Iray, NOT the main viewport.
Step Four: spent 20 minutes staring at an all-white version of the scene in the secondary viewport. Every so often a little message would appear at the bottom advising me of "Iray generating native CPU code" or something to that effect. Eventually I was able to click the secondary viewport back to Texture Shaded, the system was bogged down doing calculations and generally non-responsive.
Step Five: I suddenly rememebered that the set was one gigantic object, and there were no separate lights; where did the 3DL version get it's lighting from? Checked the building surface and the WHOLE GIANT BUILDING was now an emissive surface with a value of 1000 kcd / square meter. So Iray had been calculating about a kajillion (totally a thing in this case) light paths and bounces and the effective completion time was probably infinite.
Step Six: bravely I ventured forth and clicked the secondary viewport to Filament draw style. Almost instantly I got a preview in that washed-out style of Filament. Very carefully DID NOT save the scene, so the last save was before I ran the 3DL to Iray Converter. Exited Daz Studio,
Step Seven: pulled up Windows Task Manager and watched for at least 30 minutes while the system unloaded all of the memory allocated to Daz Studio. Something like 10 hours after I started building my scene, I shut off the PC.
Epilogue: so what to do now and light my scene? Leave it as 3DL materials and add my own Iray spotlights and spend who-know how many additional hours getting them all positioned and tweaked? Maybe try making a giant ghost light plane and position it as the "ceiling" of the courtyard? (Never actually used ghost lights before, but own some products with them; that is why I am still using older Daz Studio version 4.16.03 to not have to re-buy ghost light kits.) Use a giant ghost light plane and add some "off-screen" spotlights similar to a 3-point light setup? (Not that I have actually done that precisely, but have been able to fudge it in the past. Lack of art or photography background, you see.)
Anyhow, any advice would be welcome. Thank you anyone who made it this far.
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Comments
Is there a dome enclosing the scene, to give the sky? If so hide/remove it as it will block Iray environment and distant lights.
Under lights it only lists "UberEnvironment" and a single distant light "Sun". Being unfamiliar with it, would the UberEnvironment count as a physical skydome that would need to be removed?
NOTE: I just noticed Dreamlight made an Iray HDRI and Sun set for it, would that be an quicker solution for now?
https://www.daz3d.com/utopia-labs-iray-lights
I'm on a tight budget but I could spare $4 while its still 75% off for March Madness.
UberEnvironment is a 3Delight shader for environment lighting and even bouncing, depending on settings. It isn't applied to a dome, but because 3Delight allows an object not to block light (Shadows off/none) a dome won't interfere with it.
I think I will buy the Iray HDRI / Sun set for the set, and the Architectural Lighting Rig for Iray since it's also on sale. I've been setting up cameras and lights purely from scratch in a lot of cases, and the rig should speed up my workflow a lot. I'll test them out tomorrow when I can use the rendering PC. Thank you.
Dreamlight's is one possibility, but any HDRI you like will give you some lighting and backgrond scenery, if you want. You probably already have some in your library, as Light or Render Presets that come with some environments, or in HDRI packs (lots of freebies out there). You can add a distant light if you want (set Environment Mode to "Dome and Scene" to enable both), or use Sun-Sky mode (sun in any place in the sky) if you don't actually need to see the sky or surrounding environment. There is more than one way to light a scene in Iray.
as Richard mentioned the skydome is whats preventing the Iray lighting from working, if you delete it from the scene then everything should look good.
the skydome in this instance doesn't cast any light so you don't need it for Iray rendering.
The main issue is that the "ground level" of the set is at least 2 stories below what Daz Studio considers "ground level." So very little of the light from the HDRI (I've tried 2 different ones already) actually gets through the giant hole over the bottom level courtyard. I have to basically treat it as an interior scene at this point I guess; maybe get a little light from an HDRI overhead, a distant light "Sun" pointing at one corner, and use spotlights positioned "off-screen" from my chosen viewpoint for the scene render.
Look at the 3rd promo pic of the set here: https://gcdn.daz3d.com/p/15214/i/popup03_1_34.jpg and you will see what I am facing.
The physical skydome that needs to be removed is "UT2Skydome", which is parented to the main "UT2BldgBase2".
Have you removed the dome? If you are in a shdowed area you will still need to adjust the Tone Mapping settings, or use the AutoExposure widget that appears next to the DrawStyle picker in the cotnrols at top-right of the Viewport in Iray Draw Style, to get reasonable results but that is not just this set.
OK that would explain it, the skydome is a sub-entry of something else in the scene. Thank you all for your patience.
Still to be learned: if I blow up my PC trying to render that many G8 figures at once (although I did use Scene Optimizer to reduce the texture sizes); I've never really tried more than about 5 and I don't know the limits of this newer PC yet.