Placing lights and tweak them are just as important as the scene itself imo. Found a few lazy things i like to share - "Orbital Lights" (a plugin) from the daz store to make light positioning on a character that much easier (usually aim it at the neck) and also when pairing it with the histogram plugin where you can select the target lum and then the plugins do the job to find the correct settings for the light. Also use to switch the light from what is it candles to watt's as it requires that much less 0's when tweaking and also makes more sence. Great vid!
Yeah, decent plugins those .. but as you say "lazy things" ... I've not used them but will a complete beginner be able to learn how to use lighting properly by using them?
@@mikael2670 That's what I'm asking .. COULD a beginner learn about lighting from them? Or are they just plugins that allows you to press a button and it sets things up quick and easy without any explanation?
@@RaukoDaz3D Both are more of QoL plugins imo, makes it easier to position and dial in light properties - Would aim such things for later tutorials tbh. Better get the basics in place as it's already alot to keep track of for beginners. Good job of explaining the interface of daz etc. Would made my first steps easier when I started with daz. Took a break from raytracing, used to toy around with a real old one - Real3d (back in the Amiga days - they even used that for the first seasons of the old tv series babylon 5), just took 5-6 hrs to render a 320x200 image with ok quality (while the 4090 does a 4k in 20ish mins with better quality - insane!:)).
Another really useful tutorial, Rauko. Thank you! Y'know, I've never heard *anyone* recommend leaving the headlamp on in DAZ -- it kinda makes me wonder why it's there at all if everyone's turning it off? Oh, and the word you were looking for in the vid is "dynamism" -- it's a rare form of the word dynamic that hardly gets used any more -- it's probably going away. Anyway, thanks again. Cheers!
Yeah, the headlamp is pretty pointless .. yet I do see a few people still use it as the main / only light in their scene ... so it was worth a mention .. And .. I actually knew what I was trying to say .. I just couldn't say it for some reason .. 😂 .. it just wouldn't come out right .. haha!
Thanks .. If I remember right, the environment setup here is from the Boss Pro setup over on the Daz store (tinyurl.com/v4sjjk6c) .. I just stripped out the lights and used the studio environment
Very useful and creative tutorial. You improved two old tutorials in better one. I used Top View to adjust the position of the SpotLights. In this new tutorial you focus on settings and that helps too much. I followed your instructions and got the best result till now. But I don't know why the camera is not shown in your Activity Layout. Thanks
Thanks Mahir .. glad to help you out. The camera is just inside the Environment Group that I created and you can see in the Scene Tab .. the camera isn't important in this video and so there's no point it getting in the way.
Great tutorial, thanks. I have used that camera light a lot, and part of the problem with it is that if you want to change the camera angle and do more than one shot in a scene, than the lighting gets messed up and inconsistent as the headlamp moves with the camera of course. I have fiddled with the camera's headlamp to reposition it but seriously, if you're going to do that, you're better off creating proper lighting that doesn't move with the camera and just plain looks better.
@@RaukoDaz3D I just done a scene up yesterday. Man, I still had a HARD time lighting it. Daz does not make it easy. With the spotlights I found they would focus on brightening up a specific point while most of the room was still dark. I ended up taking a wall that wasn't visible in the scene and making it emissive. Maybe do a tutorial on lighting a dark room. It was poorly lit in the original asset. I wanted to light it up better without using the tone mapping settings to artificially lighten it (which just makes it seem more washed out).
@@NeilRoy A spotlight will work (in it's default state) exactly how you describe .. a cone of light - with a bright center - and then diminishing more and more as it gets further from the center. To change that, do what I do in this video .. in the lights tab, turn it into a Rectangle shape and increase the size to Height 100 Width 100 .. it will still be a spotlight but the surface area of it will be greater and therefore spread the light out further. You might have to increase the Lumens as the same amount of light will be emitted from a larger surface area dimming it slightly. Plus, you'll get the added bonus of softening all the shadows ...
@@RaukoDaz3D I was doing a single render and ended up selecting a wall that wasn't visible and making it emissive. :) Worked great, which is honestly exactly what you were saying, a large rectangular emissive surface as a light. I'll have to experiment more with it as lighting is VERY important in a scene. On another topic... I would love to see a video on using "Noise Degrain Filtering". I heard from someone recently who dislikes denoising, I actually love it and they instead used the Noise Degrain Filtering. I haven't used that at all and am curious how to use it properly (if in fact it should be used at all) and what are the pros and cons to using it. I'm a big denoise fan myself, I'll do 400-800 iterations and then denoise on the last iteration and in my tests, the difference isn't that great... certainly doesn't seem worth the extra wait without it but... I'm rambling. ;)
If you're not doing a studio / promo / "glamour photoshoot" type of image (like what I've done in this video) .. then my answer would be neither .. only be using spotlights in these types of images. For "real" images - where you're looking to capture slices of life .. ie, people enjoying a beer in a bar, somebody watching TV, a warrior fighting Orcs etc .. then look for a combination of HDRI / Sun Sky, point lights from light sources (if it's night time or a darker setting) and emissives .. I never use ghost lights .. as you can always achieve the same results with any of the actual lights that exist within Daz.
@@LemmieShadix-f6n I am actually thinking on a video of what lighting to use when and how .. but the hard part is presenting the ideas and showing "good" vs "bad" examples .. so it will come eventually ..
@@RaukoDaz3D Thanks for the reply. I just wanted to make sure I'm rendering under the right Nvidia settings. I know there's Global settings and program settings. Are there any additional settings that's recommended?
To be honest there's nothing much that will need changing (depending on what card you had before) - just make sure your new card is selected the Render settings (Advanced tab at the top) .. you should be good to go .. If you have a big memory card (16gb vram and above) - you could always look to increasing the Medium and High Threshold for the textures (on that same Advanced tab) .. for my 24gb 4090 - I have the medium set at 4096 and the high at 8192 .. which means textures below 4096x4096 in size won't get compressed (and lose quality) when sent to the GPU and any texture over 8192 will get compressed to 8192. Now I won't notice much difference generally - but the textures on closeups *should* look better. As for external settings like in the NVIDIA Control Panel - I've never changed anything in those when I've used a new card.
I'll get round to skin surfaces eventually in the beginners tutorial but it's a bit more advanced than Level 0 which I'm trying to focus on for now. As for Spot vs Ghostlight .. That's .. quite a topic .. my short answer would be : Neither .. 😀.. I barely ever use either of them as I never have need .. I'll be doing a video shortly on when / why to use different lighting .. as it depends on what you're looking to achieve .. But, to kind of anwer your question, if you're doing a "Studio" shoot - like in this video, for instance .. I'd follow what professional photographers use .. and that would be spotlights (softboxes and things) as they've kind of worked out what works best .. as ghost lights aren't really a "thing" .. just a bug in Iray that people exploited and found a use for.
@@FoulPet It depends on the type of image you're doing .. like I mentioned previously .. for a "Studio" shoot like what a pro photographer would do then spot / soft boxes .. or what I like to call "artificial" lights .. However, for slice of life shots - something not in a studio but out in the real world ... I go HDRI and then only use artificial lights to brighten a scene (as opposed to lighting the scene) and then only as a last resort.
@Rauko yeah, I'm not really into portraits of 3D characters, so I rarely render them. It's more like your second example of characters actually in an environment doing something other than "sleeping" together. My goal is photorealism. Hair seems to be the biggest giveaway. Skin is getting pretty close depending on the lighting. Getting hair right would be another nice tutorial.
Any idea how to remove the limited viewport range for spotlight? whenever I am on the spotlight view, it limits the vision of what I can see with this greyish dome. It's like a fog effect when you are moving your spotlight except its solid grey. This is a pain in the butt for big scenes
Hmmm. I can't say I know what this is. There's no "greyish dome" or fog effect when I look through the spotlight .. So I can't say I know what it is you're seeing .. The only think I can think of is if you're change the "Light Geometry" from a Point to a Rectangle or Disc with a largish size as that can sometimes obscure the "camera" within the spotlight .. but beyond that .. I don't know as I've never seen what you're describing! Sorry!
@@RaukoDaz3D No problem, on daz forum I found out that its just how it is. Its more of a clipping visibility limit (sorry if I didnt describe it properly). Basically people will only notice it with a bigger scene where the spotlight is trying to capture something in the distance in its spotlight viewmode (not iray mode). I hope they remove that limit in future. so you will see this effect when with spotlight if you move away further and further from your target and you will see how quickly it will disappear or be covered by this grey clipping thing.
@@NoxP-n3jWait up -- you're not talking about the cone of "blackness" when you have Preview Lights turned on, are you? Go to Window > Preview Lights and turn them off if that's what you mean .. I do some pretty huge scenes at times and I've never witnessed anything like what you're talking when looking through a spotlight .. because I DO see that if I forget to turn them off .. so .. .. if you're talking the Preview Lights .. well, they turn on by default every time you load Daz and it shows when a light into the scene .. So, turn them off and see if that solves it for you
@@RaukoDaz3D Oh no it's not the preview lights deal. If you wanna do a little test to see what I mean. Create a spotlight, place an object infront of it like a tree, then duplicate that tree and move it further away from the spotlight, do like 5 trees like this in a line with good distance apart and then switch to your spotlight view (not in iray preview mode) and without moving the spotlight, you will see that not all trees are visible (If the distance is enough) through the spotlight view. So basically I have to use perspective or camera's view because those do not have that visibility limitation, sort out the position and then create a spotlight and then apply the camera's or perspective views viewport setting to the spotlight because technically in render/iray preview mode the light goes past that point you cannot see in spotlight view mode. Even with preview lights on or off, you will not see all the trees
@@NoxP-n3j Ahhh .. just done what you said and you're right .. don't know why that is ..Although, I do see them in Iray Preview / Filamement .. I can move the tree 40 or 500000 away from the spotlight and still see it - right to the point where it was just a dot .. but, only to about 8000 away when in Texture mode .. Weird! Anyway, I went through all the settings I can think of and nothing changed it .. I guess it's just one of those things we have to live with!
Hi, running a render as we speak in a stock envrionment (Halloween Cemetry), ran a few off no problem but on this latest one there is a very obvious straight line in the middle of the frame where fog effect cuts off, is there a fix for that problem?
Ohh .. without seeing a screen shot or knowing about the cemetery - I couldn't comment .. Is the fog is part of the product or have you added in via the Render Settings?
Could be many things without any details ... My first guess : Are using a HDRI to light the scene and as a background? If so, a floor doesn't come automatic .. but there are things you can do. But .. if you give me more detail on context I'll see what I can come up with.
@@RaukoDaz3D so for some time even if i had dome and scene selected when i added custom lights like spotlight it would work the same way i see in your video,but recently that changed and no matter what custom light i use the scene doesnt turn black by the effect of adding that custom light(which indicated that is working) and yes im using the default hdri so now the only thing i can do to have the full effect of the custom light is by changing to Scene only but that removes the floor(+ shadows) and i tried a trick with dome and scene active,reducing the environment light to about 0,01 and the custom light start taking effect and i can keep the floor+its shadows but i feel like this way it doesnt give me the full effect of the custom light
@@ilithielxd2356 The reason you won't get a shadow when using a light source is that there will be no "floor" geometry in the scene ... to put one in there you'll have to either create a Plane primitive (Create > New Primitive .. change Type to PLANE .. when inserted, you might have to colour / texture it yourself and then rotate it if needed) or to use the floor from an already installed environment you have in your Content Library .. The reason you get a shadows with a HDRI is because it can simulate the ground with the Draw Ground option in Render Settings > Environment. Sadly, this doesn't work when not using the Dome / Dome and Scene I am curious though why the scene lights aren't showing when in "Dome and Scene" mode. When you say the "scene doesn't turn black" - I'm guessing from this that you NORMALLY have "Windows > Preview Lights" turned ON .. check it now in a new scene .. Go to the menu at the top .. click on Window and then check if the Icon next to Preview Lights is Yellow or White The scene turning black only occurs when Preview Lights is turned on and you have a scene light in scene (ie, a Spotlight) .. but if Preview Lights is turned off (white Icon) then the screen won't turn black but the lights will still be working render mode .. just turn up the Luminosity and you should start to see them Let me know if this solves your issue!
@@RaukoDaz3D ok i will try that btw, my confusion was that before i could have the custom light working and having that draw ground on at the same time of having dome and scene active but now as i said in prev reply ,if i have dome and scene active the custom lights wont work and if i have scene only active then the draw ground wont work so my question was how that changed,it couldnt be just the preview light on/off the cause
@@RaukoDaz3D so it seems that preview light doesnt work..i turn it on and off and nothing happend like i remember in the past i could turn it on/off and it would do the exact thing i want but now is not working,just a function that does nothing no matter if is on/off
Don't bother using them they wreak a scene, Use the HDRI lighting or use a camera with its headlamp setting for the camera, use the intensity and lumens settings on it to get the right lighting in a daz3d scene. Point lights scatter to many crappy particles everywhere in Iray causing the render to look fuzzy and crap due to ray tracing and light bouncing to many times, it takes forever to render and never looks finished or clear if you use them, In 6 years I been using daz3d this is the worst lighting of them all, If you want to kill a scene and slow the render down for nothing put heaps of these crap point lights in your scene. Spotlights aren't much better usually throw bad shadows and over brighten parts of the scene you don't want to much light in, you really have to fiddle with the settings to get them to work right there is not some magical setting to use on every scene. Good HDRI lighting will render a scene in 5 minutes with high quality compared to 4 hours and an unfinished render look with point and spot lights.
Well, that's some sort of advice I suppose .. whatever works for you. 😃 For everybody else : The HDRI - yes. The rest. No. Certainly the headlamp. Turn that off and never turn that monstrosity back on!!!
@RaukoDaz3D Yeah I figured your the turn off the headlamp type as you don't know how to apply it properly to a scene, instead use these garbage spot lights to slow a render down. Only need to turn off the headlamp if you have the right settings in scene already, if anything the head lamp when used correctly will light the area more effectively attached to camera then a spotlight or point light. You move the camera around the scene set its perspective and the light broadcast from it the same way yet your telling me to turn it off. I have tried many methods spotlights and points lights are the worse lighting. If fog is used in a scene turn headlamp off as it will reflect of every particle and produce grainy renders.
@@thornbloodstone6275 Like I said - whatever works for you. Maybe you should turn the resolution of your models down so you get low-res models too - that will speed your renders up x2 also. Oh, and always render through your perspective camera - that's faster also not only render-wise but moving through your viewport and works best with your headlamp when you're washing away all the scene lighting with it. Like I say, whatever works for you .. if you want to ignore spot / point lights (do emissives get the same hate?) .. then that's entirely up to you.
@@RaukoDaz3D depends on how many models use have in scene the amount of props and how close the focus is on the entire scene swell as lighting all factor into render times that and if you have set everything on bodies and equipment to sub-D 4 on high resolution it will take longer to render, setting things like the convergence ratio too 98 or 99% to smooth out any unfinished pixels.
Asset Links (see desc for details):
Model : tinyurl.com/yc5zme3a
Hair : tinyurl.com/mrjvp2ak
Outfit : tinyurl.com/2358yhd7
Again, I've been doing it the hard way. This will be practiced within minutes. Thanks.
Glad to have been some help!
Which "hard way" have you been doing it?
In Rauko we trust
Ha! Thanks!
Great video, very informative. Learned a few things I'll definitely be incorporating. Thank you!
Glad to help out, Linda and thanks for watching!
Thank you for explaining. I was struggling with rim lights and hard shadows❤
Glad to help out - if you have anything else you're struggling with .. just mention it here and I'll do my best to help!
I was struggling with GETTING hard shadows. This helps ME, too.
Asset Links (see description for details):
Model : tinyurl.com/yc5zme3a
Hair : tinyurl.com/mrjvp2ak
Outfit : tinyurl.com/2358yhd7
Thank you for this. Really useful. Eager for the next.
Glad to help out - next will be coming soon. I've been away and so things have got a little delayed!
Placing lights and tweak them are just as important as the scene itself imo. Found a few lazy things i like to share - "Orbital Lights" (a plugin) from the daz store to make light positioning on a character that much easier (usually aim it at the neck) and also when pairing it with the histogram plugin where you can select the target lum and then the plugins do the job to find the correct settings for the light. Also use to switch the light from what is it candles to watt's as it requires that much less 0's when tweaking and also makes more sence. Great vid!
Yeah, decent plugins those .. but as you say "lazy things" ... I've not used them but will a complete beginner be able to learn how to use lighting properly by using them?
@@RaukoDaz3D The comment wasn't aimed at the absolute beginners but rather basic/advanced users that watches the vid and would have missed the tools.
@@mikael2670 That's what I'm asking .. COULD a beginner learn about lighting from them? Or are they just plugins that allows you to press a button and it sets things up quick and easy without any explanation?
@@RaukoDaz3D Both are more of QoL plugins imo, makes it easier to position and dial in light properties - Would aim such things for later tutorials tbh. Better get the basics in place as it's already alot to keep track of for beginners. Good job of explaining the interface of daz etc. Would made my first steps easier when I started with daz.
Took a break from raytracing, used to toy around with a real old one - Real3d (back in the Amiga days - they even used that for the first seasons of the old tv series babylon 5), just took 5-6 hrs to render a 320x200 image with ok quality (while the 4090 does a 4k in 20ish mins with better quality - insane!:)).
Another really useful tutorial, Rauko. Thank you! Y'know, I've never heard *anyone* recommend leaving the headlamp on in DAZ -- it kinda makes me wonder why it's there at all if everyone's turning it off? Oh, and the word you were looking for in the vid is "dynamism" -- it's a rare form of the word dynamic that hardly gets used any more -- it's probably going away. Anyway, thanks again. Cheers!
Yeah, the headlamp is pretty pointless .. yet I do see a few people still use it as the main / only light in their scene ... so it was worth a mention .. And .. I actually knew what I was trying to say .. I just couldn't say it for some reason .. 😂 .. it just wouldn't come out right .. haha!
@@RaukoDaz3D I have times like that -- brain works, mouth not so much! 😄
@@obviousalias9506 It's getting more often for me as I get older!
I hope more of these videos are coming!
They'll be coming shortly .. I've been away for a few weeks and am just catching up with everything I need to get done!
Thanks for the detailed tutorial, man! What kind of location are you using? It looks like a canvas in photo studios
Thanks .. If I remember right, the environment setup here is from the Boss Pro setup over on the Daz store (tinyurl.com/v4sjjk6c) .. I just stripped out the lights and used the studio environment
@@RaukoDaz3D Thank you very much!
Very useful and creative tutorial. You improved two old tutorials in better one. I used Top View to adjust the position of the SpotLights. In this new tutorial you focus on settings and that helps too much. I followed your instructions and got the best result till now. But I don't know why the camera is not shown in your Activity Layout. Thanks
Thanks Mahir .. glad to help you out. The camera is just inside the Environment Group that I created and you can see in the Scene Tab .. the camera isn't important in this video and so there's no point it getting in the way.
@@RaukoDaz3D I understood the idea. Thanks
Great tutorial, thanks. I have used that camera light a lot, and part of the problem with it is that if you want to change the camera angle and do more than one shot in a scene, than the lighting gets messed up and inconsistent as the headlamp moves with the camera of course. I have fiddled with the camera's headlamp to reposition it but seriously, if you're going to do that, you're better off creating proper lighting that doesn't move with the camera and just plain looks better.
Yeah, the headlamp is a no-no ... best to switch it off and do what you want to do with real lights ..
@@RaukoDaz3D I just done a scene up yesterday. Man, I still had a HARD time lighting it. Daz does not make it easy. With the spotlights I found they would focus on brightening up a specific point while most of the room was still dark. I ended up taking a wall that wasn't visible in the scene and making it emissive.
Maybe do a tutorial on lighting a dark room. It was poorly lit in the original asset. I wanted to light it up better without using the tone mapping settings to artificially lighten it (which just makes it seem more washed out).
@@NeilRoy A spotlight will work (in it's default state) exactly how you describe .. a cone of light - with a bright center - and then diminishing more and more as it gets further from the center.
To change that, do what I do in this video .. in the lights tab, turn it into a Rectangle shape and increase the size to Height 100 Width 100 .. it will still be a spotlight but the surface area of it will be greater and therefore spread the light out further. You might have to increase the Lumens as the same amount of light will be emitted from a larger surface area dimming it slightly. Plus, you'll get the added bonus of softening all the shadows ...
@@RaukoDaz3D I was doing a single render and ended up selecting a wall that wasn't visible and making it emissive. :) Worked great, which is honestly exactly what you were saying, a large rectangular emissive surface as a light.
I'll have to experiment more with it as lighting is VERY important in a scene.
On another topic... I would love to see a video on using "Noise Degrain Filtering". I heard from someone recently who dislikes denoising, I actually love it and they instead used the Noise Degrain Filtering. I haven't used that at all and am curious how to use it properly (if in fact it should be used at all) and what are the pros and cons to using it. I'm a big denoise fan myself, I'll do 400-800 iterations and then denoise on the last iteration and in my tests, the difference isn't that great... certainly doesn't seem worth the extra wait without it but... I'm rambling. ;)
is there a way to get a hard-edged shadow in preview (smooth-shaded) mode? Thanks for this video!
In which mode do you mean? The Iray Preview mode or the general base Texture View?
I thot it was called "Smooth Shaded"--? but NOT the iRay view.@@RaukoDaz3D
Can you upload some indoor lighting tutorials?
I will move onto that in this series - but I have previously uploaded a Daylight Indoor Video : ruclips.net/video/tIG8vV3p3XE/видео.html
@@RaukoDaz3D
How did you make that portrait background? Or is it a product that can be purchased?
The background is from the Boss Light set up .. tinyurl.com/2c6nffxf .. over on the Daz store
Should I use more ghost lights for indoor lighting? Spotlights are poor indoors I don't know if I have a problem with the settings
If you're not doing a studio / promo / "glamour photoshoot" type of image (like what I've done in this video) .. then my answer would be neither .. only be using spotlights in these types of images.
For "real" images - where you're looking to capture slices of life .. ie, people enjoying a beer in a bar, somebody watching TV, a warrior fighting Orcs etc .. then look for a combination of HDRI / Sun Sky, point lights from light sources (if it's night time or a darker setting) and emissives ..
I never use ghost lights .. as you can always achieve the same results with any of the actual lights that exist within Daz.
@@RaukoDaz3D Thank you, it would be even better if there was a video tutorial
@@LemmieShadix-f6n I am actually thinking on a video of what lighting to use when and how .. but the hard part is presenting the ideas and showing "good" vs "bad" examples .. so it will come eventually ..
Is there a video on GPU settings? I just got a new card and I want to make sure that I'm on the right settings for rendering.
At the moment - no, but there will be soon .. if you have any questions in the meantime, fire away and I'll see if I can help ..
@@RaukoDaz3D Thanks for the reply. I just wanted to make sure I'm rendering under the right Nvidia settings. I know there's Global settings and program settings. Are there any additional settings that's recommended?
To be honest there's nothing much that will need changing (depending on what card you had before) - just make sure your new card is selected the Render settings (Advanced tab at the top) .. you should be good to go ..
If you have a big memory card (16gb vram and above) - you could always look to increasing the Medium and High Threshold for the textures (on that same Advanced tab) .. for my 24gb 4090 - I have the medium set at 4096 and the high at 8192 .. which means textures below 4096x4096 in size won't get compressed (and lose quality) when sent to the GPU and any texture over 8192 will get compressed to 8192. Now I won't notice much difference generally - but the textures on closeups *should* look better.
As for external settings like in the NVIDIA Control Panel - I've never changed anything in those when I've used a new card.
@@RaukoDaz3D Okay, thanks buddy.
Wish they would make it so the lumens resembled reality. Let us treat their lights like the emissives, and change the luminescence units.
You're not wrong. But, we have what we have to work with so we just have to make the best of it!
@@RaukoDaz3D I can dream, cant I?
@@TheDevian That dream will require Daz to do something sensible ... so .. dream on!
@@RaukoDaz3D Sad but true.
What are You using as a background?
It is the background / Set of the Boss Pro Light Set Up (Daz Aff link : tinyurl.com/4cx62mfx)
Tips on tweaking realistic skin would be nice. Why use a spot instead of a ghostlight?
I'll get round to skin surfaces eventually in the beginners tutorial but it's a bit more advanced than Level 0 which I'm trying to focus on for now. As for Spot vs Ghostlight .. That's .. quite a topic .. my short answer would be : Neither .. 😀.. I barely ever use either of them as I never have need .. I'll be doing a video shortly on when / why to use different lighting .. as it depends on what you're looking to achieve .. But, to kind of anwer your question, if you're doing a "Studio" shoot - like in this video, for instance .. I'd follow what professional photographers use .. and that would be spotlights (softboxes and things) as they've kind of worked out what works best .. as ghost lights aren't really a "thing" .. just a bug in Iray that people exploited and found a use for.
@Rauko I just make an illuminate plane for my soft box. When not using that, I use HDRIs. I did like how the 3 spots looked, though.
@@FoulPet It depends on the type of image you're doing .. like I mentioned previously .. for a "Studio" shoot like what a pro photographer would do then spot / soft boxes .. or what I like to call "artificial" lights ..
However, for slice of life shots - something not in a studio but out in the real world ... I go HDRI and then only use artificial lights to brighten a scene (as opposed to lighting the scene) and then only as a last resort.
@Rauko yeah, I'm not really into portraits of 3D characters, so I rarely render them. It's more like your second example of characters actually in an environment doing something other than "sleeping" together. My goal is photorealism. Hair seems to be the biggest giveaway. Skin is getting pretty close depending on the lighting. Getting hair right would be another nice tutorial.
Any idea how to remove the limited viewport range for spotlight? whenever I am on the spotlight view, it limits the vision of what I can see with this greyish dome. It's like a fog effect when you are moving your spotlight except its solid grey. This is a pain in the butt for big scenes
Hmmm. I can't say I know what this is. There's no "greyish dome" or fog effect when I look through the spotlight .. So I can't say I know what it is you're seeing .. The only think I can think of is if you're change the "Light Geometry" from a Point to a Rectangle or Disc with a largish size as that can sometimes obscure the "camera" within the spotlight .. but beyond that .. I don't know as I've never seen what you're describing! Sorry!
@@RaukoDaz3D No problem, on daz forum I found out that its just how it is. Its more of a clipping visibility limit (sorry if I didnt describe it properly).
Basically people will only notice it with a bigger scene where the spotlight is trying to capture something in the distance in its spotlight viewmode (not iray mode).
I hope they remove that limit in future. so you will see this effect when with spotlight if you move away further and further from your target and you will see how quickly it will disappear or be covered by this grey clipping thing.
@@NoxP-n3jWait up -- you're not talking about the cone of "blackness" when you have Preview Lights turned on, are you?
Go to Window > Preview Lights and turn them off if that's what you mean ..
I do some pretty huge scenes at times and I've never witnessed anything like what you're talking when looking through a spotlight .. because I DO see that if I forget to turn them off .. so ..
.. if you're talking the Preview Lights .. well, they turn on by default every time you load Daz and it shows when a light into the scene .. So, turn them off and see if that solves it for you
@@RaukoDaz3D Oh no it's not the preview lights deal. If you wanna do a little test to see what I mean. Create a spotlight, place an object infront of it like a tree, then duplicate that tree and move it further away from the spotlight, do like 5 trees like this in a line with good distance apart and then switch to your spotlight view (not in iray preview mode) and without moving the spotlight, you will see that not all trees are visible (If the distance is enough) through the spotlight view.
So basically I have to use perspective or camera's view because those do not have that visibility limitation, sort out the position and then create a spotlight and then apply the camera's or perspective views viewport setting to the spotlight because technically in render/iray preview mode the light goes past that point you cannot see in spotlight view mode.
Even with preview lights on or off, you will not see all the trees
@@NoxP-n3j Ahhh .. just done what you said and you're right .. don't know why that is ..Although, I do see them in Iray Preview / Filamement .. I can move the tree 40 or 500000 away from the spotlight and still see it - right to the point where it was just a dot .. but, only to about 8000 away when in Texture mode ..
Weird!
Anyway, I went through all the settings I can think of and nothing changed it .. I guess it's just one of those things we have to live with!
Hi, running a render as we speak in a stock envrionment (Halloween Cemetry), ran a few off no problem but on this latest one there is a very obvious straight line in the middle of the frame where fog effect cuts off, is there a fix for that problem?
Ohh .. without seeing a screen shot or knowing about the cemetery - I couldn't comment .. Is the fog is part of the product or have you added in via the Render Settings?
@@RaukoDaz3D yeah I know, not ideal! It is built in to that environment product you have the option to turn fog on or off.
Just realised I am in your group on FB so will post image there!
Ok, will look out for it!
what could be the problem if i cant see the floor?
Could be many things without any details ... My first guess : Are using a HDRI to light the scene and as a background? If so, a floor doesn't come automatic .. but there are things you can do.
But .. if you give me more detail on context I'll see what I can come up with.
@@RaukoDaz3D so for some time even if i had dome and scene selected when i added custom lights like spotlight it would work the same way i see in your video,but recently that changed and no matter what custom light i use the scene doesnt turn black by the effect of adding that custom light(which indicated that is working)
and yes im using the default hdri
so now the only thing i can do to have the full effect of the custom light is by changing to Scene only but that removes the floor(+ shadows) and i tried a trick with dome and scene active,reducing the environment light to about 0,01 and the custom light start taking effect and i can keep the floor+its shadows but i feel like this way it doesnt give me the full effect of the custom light
@@ilithielxd2356 The reason you won't get a shadow when using a light source is that there will be no "floor" geometry in the scene ... to put one in there you'll have to either create a Plane primitive (Create > New Primitive .. change Type to PLANE .. when inserted, you might have to colour / texture it yourself and then rotate it if needed) or to use the floor from an already installed environment you have in your Content Library ..
The reason you get a shadows with a HDRI is because it can simulate the ground with the Draw Ground option in Render Settings > Environment. Sadly, this doesn't work when not using the Dome / Dome and Scene
I am curious though why the scene lights aren't showing when in "Dome and Scene" mode. When you say the "scene doesn't turn black" - I'm guessing from this that you NORMALLY have "Windows > Preview Lights" turned ON .. check it now in a new scene .. Go to the menu at the top .. click on Window and then check if the Icon next to Preview Lights is Yellow or White
The scene turning black only occurs when Preview Lights is turned on and you have a scene light in scene (ie, a Spotlight) .. but if Preview Lights is turned off (white Icon) then the screen won't turn black but the lights will still be working render mode .. just turn up the Luminosity and you should start to see them
Let me know if this solves your issue!
@@RaukoDaz3D ok i will try that
btw, my confusion was that before i could have the custom light working and having that draw ground on at the same time of having dome and scene active but now as i said in prev reply ,if i have dome and scene active the custom lights wont work and if i have scene only active then the draw ground wont work
so my question was how that changed,it couldnt be just the preview light on/off the cause
@@RaukoDaz3D so it seems that preview light doesnt work..i turn it on and off and nothing happend
like i remember in the past i could turn it on/off and it would do the exact thing i want but now is not working,just a function that does nothing no matter if is on/off
Don't bother using them they wreak a scene, Use the HDRI lighting or use a camera with its headlamp setting for the camera, use the intensity and lumens settings on it to get the right lighting in a daz3d scene. Point lights scatter to many crappy particles everywhere in Iray causing the render to look fuzzy and crap due to ray tracing and light bouncing to many times, it takes forever to render and never looks finished or clear if you use them, In 6 years I been using daz3d this is the worst lighting of them all, If you want to kill a scene and slow the render down for nothing put heaps of these crap point lights in your scene.
Spotlights aren't much better usually throw bad shadows and over brighten parts of the scene you don't want to much light in, you really have to fiddle with the settings to get them to work right there is not some magical setting to use on every scene.
Good HDRI lighting will render a scene in 5 minutes with high quality compared to 4 hours and an unfinished render look with point and spot lights.
Well, that's some sort of advice I suppose .. whatever works for you. 😃
For everybody else : The HDRI - yes. The rest. No. Certainly the headlamp. Turn that off and never turn that monstrosity back on!!!
@RaukoDaz3D Yeah I figured your the turn off the headlamp type as you don't know how to apply it properly to a scene, instead use these garbage spot lights to slow a render down. Only need to turn off the headlamp if you have the right settings in scene already, if anything the head lamp when used correctly will light the area more effectively attached to camera then a spotlight or point light. You move the camera around the scene set its perspective and the light broadcast from it the same way yet your telling me to turn it off.
I have tried many methods spotlights and points lights are the worse lighting. If fog is used in a scene turn headlamp off as it will reflect of every particle and produce grainy renders.
@@thornbloodstone6275 Like I said - whatever works for you.
Maybe you should turn the resolution of your models down so you get low-res models too - that will speed your renders up x2 also. Oh, and always render through your perspective camera - that's faster also not only render-wise but moving through your viewport and works best with your headlamp when you're washing away all the scene lighting with it.
Like I say, whatever works for you .. if you want to ignore spot / point lights (do emissives get the same hate?) .. then that's entirely up to you.
@@RaukoDaz3D depends on how many models use have in scene the amount of props and how close the focus is on the entire scene swell as lighting all factor into render times that and if you have set everything on bodies and equipment to sub-D 4 on high resolution it will take longer to render, setting things like the convergence ratio too 98 or 99% to smooth out any unfinished pixels.
@@thornbloodstone6275 Well, like I say - if you want to ignore spot and point lights and use your headlamp then that's entirely up to you.