I thought I knew all of these techniques so well. But your presentation really brighten up everything. I have known enough but I haven't tried it all enough. And some comments here are valuable, too. This is a really worthwhile hour to spend. Got so many ideas. Thanks you!
@@RaukoDaz3D Using the ceiling for ambient lighting helped with the project I was working on. I had a character in a glass cylinder. I was trying to use a torus for the top and combine it with a spot light. That wasn't going well. Using a solid lid and converting it into a light emitter worked perfectly and gave me much better control on intensity. I haven't tried the other tips yet as I was anxious to get back to my project but I will. Thanks again!!
Whoa whoa whoa, you can turn surfaces into lights? Man I'm such a Noob! 😅 I'm glad you make these videos Rauko because they are so informative and helpful! Thank you so much
Hey - always good to learn new things ... here's the video on Emissive Surfaces seems as though you missed it : th-cam.com/video/8IkkAPIZeMg/w-d-xo.html
Thankyou for another fantastic tutorial. I have learnt so much from you since starting my Daz journey 2 years ago and still learning from your videos. Really appreciate it. Regards Simon
Fantastic video. I agree with rutber2000 about the HDRI brightness being a revelation. I'm always so inspired after one of your videos. Please keep doing what you're doing :)
Wow, nice one with the instances! I've never thought of doing that, gonna have to give it a try soon! Keep up the amazing work - I've been using this software for 10 years, and I've learned several new tricks from you in the last year alone haha You're great, thanks so much for the videos!
Hi Rauko, Great video! I find using spotlights in the right way you can create some great effects and have more control where the lights are placed such as background and back light. Hdri's are certainly good as well and provides a scene.
I also find that a combination of HDRi and Spotlights is my preferred method. I was surprised at the comment in the video about getting out of that "bad habit". I also remove ceilings and walls to let more light in but that's not always possible or doing so will often mess up the shadows.
Sorry for the delay in getting back! You could take a look at your SSS settings in the surface tab .. it's generally this that reddens some of the characters up .. just lessen the weight or intensity of it until you get the look you're after
There's another way that's similar to your multiple planes but much simpler: Position the perspective view outside, facing in the direction you want the light to go and create a distant light using the perspective view. Adjust the luminosity and job done. I used to use spotlights but distant light provides better coverage.
I know this is an older video but... I'm curious... would you make a video on best practices for lighting indoor scenes that are not anywhere near windows? I've been mostly working with planes (primitives) turned into emissive surfaces to replicate "ceiling lights" but this is often unsatisfying when lighting multiple figures. Thanks!
If you're talking about indoor night time shots then I do have a video in mind for that .. if it's indoor daytime (like this video but further distance from the windows) then I personally wouldn't use ceiling lights .. To me, anything daytime (indoor or outdoor) should use as much natural light as possible (so HDRI or Sun / Sky dome) as anything artificial like ceiling lights would just produce .. artificial lighting. If things are a little too dull indoors then play with the tone-mapping settings and / or add either some strategically placed bounce boards (white reflective planes) to spread the natural light about more or add some subtle emissive planes to light up your models. But you need to bear in mind that these planes are there to add to the natural light and not replace it.
@@RaukoDaz3D I am discussing light indoors away from windows. Like, the light in the deeper parts of a shop, or in a basement, or the middle of an office building. Places where you probably only have overhead lighting and not a lot else going for you. I'd love to know more about using reflectors. I have no idea how that works and it seems like it would just vastly slow down render times. But I still feel like a total newbie even though I've been fooling around almost a year now.
A light reflector is something like you might see used in Photography (see this image : i0.wp.com/digital-photography-school.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/photo4.jpeg) - it doesn't give off light in itself but just reflects light in the scene onto areas of your subject that might be darker. As for the bigger picture .. indoor light with little outside ambience .. I tend to use a mix of emissive and ghost lights if needed .. (check out this video on Emissives where I build a completely dark scene using emissives : th-cam.com/users/video8IkkAPIZeMg) .. however, it depends on what type of scene you're building .. If you're doing something like a model shoot then you'll want to use Spotlights / Point Lights .. but if you're doing a "slice of life" scene - for instance, a night time scene in a living room showing a family watching TV .. then try and use (in this order) : Natural light (through any windows no matter were the windows are .. so, mimic moonlight for instance if it's a nighttime shot .. sunlight if it day light) Any lighting that would be in the scene .. ie, table lamps, TV screens etc and do so as emissives .. (if the scene you're using uses spotlights as a lamplight, for instance, convert it to an emissive) Then add ghost lights if the environment itself isn't lit enough If your models aren't lit well then add SUBTLE emissive lighting (relatively large plane or disc primitives) to ADD to the lighting in the room and brighten lighten the models more .. don't have these lights too bright that they out-shine any natural light or emissive light that you've already have in scene .. just add them to add to what you already have. Then adjust tone mapping and camera setting to brighten the image further if needed. That is generally my workflow doing indoor scenes ..
When using ghost lights at the windows I’m not able to get that box of sunlight on the ground if you know what I mean. It just sort of diffuses and lights up the whole room. Not sure what Im doing wrong.
Sorry for the delay - I only just noticed your post!! Even with the Ghost lights at the windows I'm still using a low level HDRI to give the light shafts onto the floor - I'm just not using the HDRI to light the scene .. I do my images by always .. and I mean always .. use either a HDRI or Sun / Sky dome to provide a base ambient lighting into the scene and then, in this example, use Ghost Lights at the windows to amplify that light! You could get the same effect with the ghost lights by positioning them further from the windows .. quite a bit further in fact .. and ramping up the luminosity ..
@@RaukoDaz3D thanks mate, that def helps. But another question I had and something i just noticed, at like 15:50, you don’t have ghost lights, just the fully visible emissives. Shouldn’t that block the hdri? Because despite having the emissive planes at full opacity in the way, seems like the hdri is still casting sunshine on the ground.
I've actually now just rewatched the video (from 14:30 to 17:00) .. and I don't actually see the "box of sunlight" that you're referring to .. I'm sure it's just the room being lit from the "ghost lights" (albeir they aren't ghost lights at that point) .. you can see the "box" at 19:30 with the HDRI method (if that's what you're referring to) .. but I don't think it's there with the "ghost light" method ... but if that's what you do want using the "ghost light" method - then yeah, use a low intensity HDRI to provide the sun-boxes and use ghost lights to supplement the light .. or .. pull the ghost lights back from the window and up their brightness
@@RaukoDaz3D Haha I now see where I went wrong. What I thought was sunlight on the ground was just the lit up areas in contrast to the shadows casted by the furniture. I didn't register the fact that they were casting shadows and so thought those dark areas were the spaces in between windows, causing there not to be direct sunlight there. Thanks for clearing it up and also for the replies, very much appreciated.
Hi Rauko, excellent video as usually. Really appreciate it. Thank you very much. Just one question: What's the clothing you're using in this render? Regards Squeeze
Hey Squeeze .. I never included the clothing in the links as its a an assest AND a texture pack from Renderosity .. but here's the links : www.renderosity.com/rr/mod/bcs/dforce-xl-tank-top-for-genesis-8-females/137991 www.renderosity.com/rr/mod/bcs/cover-up-for-xl-tank-top-g8f/138181 The necklace is from the Slouchy Sweater clothing bundle www.daz3d.com/slouchy-sweater-outfit-for-genesis-8-female-s BTW : She's just wearing a standard underwear set underneath ..
Thank you very much for your lessons, I learned a lot from you (sorry that facebook is blocked in my country and we cannot communicate with you as before) Regards Vladimir Belous. P.S. I can not understand where creativity and politics are. To politicize everything and everyone is absurd!
A HDRI should be quicker when it comes to rendering vs a single point light as they will be generally more light given off from the HDRI. Iray loves light - the more you give it and have it cover the entire scene the faster the render will be. It's darker areas that cause Iray to slow down .. and with a HDRI being a 360 degree panorama there will be light coming from all angles which should mean faster renders. However, that doesn't mean light everything up like a Christmas Tree .. there's a balance you'll need to find between how much light in the scene and speed of the render.
Using ghost lights at the windows with HDRI at default intensity for ambience and no tone mapping (for consistency between renders) is what I found to produce the most natural result without killing your render time. There was a particular scene I could render to 160k iterations with HDRI alone before it got to a convergence ratio target, putting the HDRI intensity back to default and dropping a ghost light in front of the window resulted in the same render finishing within 22 minutes instead of SEVEN hours, with any render target above 5.5k iterations being absolutely indiscernible in quality from the 5.5k render (I could switch between two pictures on a 34" monitor and there would be zero flickering suggesting any difference in clarity), WITH denoise off! Generally I dislike tone mapping, because it isn't a render technique, it is applied in post to the image itself, meaning the brightness of your picture can literally change in the preview window as you render, as more of the picture is done rendering.
There's many different ways to do it .. some give great results, some poor results .. there's no right or wrong way to do it .. just comes down to what you're happy with generally and what works best for a specific situation.
Great video! You make it look simple, but it doesn't look the same to me. I used the third method (HDRI). With the same parameters in render settings (including the dome rotation at 82.62), with the HDRI you attached, same environtment, same model position, same camera framing... And the results are far away compared to your final render... Too much noise, grainy (or whatever it's called). The shadows don't look the same to me. I don't have a 3090, but I do have a 2080TI... I don't know what could be going on... I hate lighting, I'll never get it...
Hhhm .. I don't know - there's nothing else been done other than what's in the video.. Are you on Daz 4.22? I noticed myself when I tried to render something on an older version of Daz there was a slight difference between it and a 4.22 rendered version - so there's definitely been a change in Iray (though they were still 99% the same). Without seeing your version - it's hard to make a call on it .. You've increased the Tone Mapping like I did in the video? ... Just a random thought, that's all .. Like I say - I've not used any magic sauce .. so .. copy the numbers things should come out more or less the same ..
@@RaukoDaz3D Thank you for your reply. I increased the env. intensitiy, and in another attempt I used the tone mapping values (although I didn't combine both). I'm using version 4.22. Btw, I have the computer unformatted since older versions of Daz Studio. Maybe updating version after version has something wrong for a long time and I should format the computer.
The reason why instances work the way they do is because you're creating a single plane that will be loaded into video memory and then you're telling the engine to use that one object for all of them. Which is why when you change the original, all change, because they all point to the same object in video memory. A bonus from using instances is that they are much faster for the computer to use and they don't take up much video memory due to there being only one object. I've programmed instanced objects in 3D and man, do they ever speed things up!
So one major issue I found with the HDRI method. Was that on what seemed like an overwhelming majority of them, the sun was always located in the same rough location. Mainly this is only an issue if you want/need the ability to have control over transition of the time of day. (Such as creating a visual novel.) For purely artistic renders, the below method isn't really needed. An example I found of this, was I was having really weird lighting issues from 2 different HDRIs. One was this lovely warm glow that really had a wonderful early morning or late evening feel to it. The second had this really well done white light/midday feel to it. Turns out the latter that looked more midday, the sun was placed lower than the warm glow HDRI. So despite it looking more midday, the sun was actually lower in the sky and wrecking havoc on my lighting. I found the way to fix this, was to set the "Environment Mode" to "Dome & Scene", setting "Environment Map" to "None", then after setting EM to None go and rename/delete the default environment map file. Doing this will ensure that when you reload a scene saved with these settings it won't auto load the default EM file. This effectively makes it function like Sun-Sky Only, where you can set long/lat/UTC Offset and so on but still allows the use of other lights in your scene. ("Sun-Sky Only" disables lights that aren't the sun, at least last time I tried). This lets you have all the pro's of Sun-Sky without the con of breaking your "real" lights in a scene like lamps and such. After setting these settings, add in some physical clouds (DimensionTheory's Cloudscape Creator works wonderfully for this). This will add volume to the new "realistic" sky and allow contrast between the blue sky and the clouds, giving you a traditional sky effect. All of this together makes for some pretty powerful sky details/controls that let you fine tune not only lighting, but your time of day and weather as well.
I've actually seen that occur in Daz a number of times by accident but I've never utilised it when it occured .. but I imagine it would serve the purpose in which your proposing. Although, I'd hazard a guess and suggest it's a bug and could well be written out in Daz 5. We do have some tools at our disposal however. If doing a indoor shot and not showing what's outside the windows - use of the dome rotation, as we know, will spin the dome around .. but also use of Dome Orientation X and Z will allow us to also change the angle of the light. So you can use the same HDRI and move the sun to a lower or higher position. It wouldn't change the lighting colour to what we'd see at dawn or dusk but I know of at least one toolset on the Daz Store that will allow filters to be applied to HDRIs. The problem of course IS if you are planning to show the dome as changing the X / Z orientation will cause a tipped up world outside the window. But manufacturing a background either in Daz (as you show) or in Post can get around this easy enough.
@@RaukoDaz3D I suppose it's a good thing for me I plan to basically never update from Daz 4.20 haha. At least not any time soon. Ideally, for the purposes of creating my visual novel, I'm using an isolated instance of Daz that I've set to never update and have all my library set in a custom directory. Stability of an non-updating system n all that. I'll likely set up an alternate instance of Daz in a different file structure that I'll let auto updates run, that way I can toy around with Gen9 and stuff sometime next year when it's got the products to support it. So last thing I need is an auto update potentially writing out a very valuable setting to me lol. I've gone through pained efforts to try and streamline my process so I don't have to bugger around with any artificial lighting at all, and doing my best to also avoid having to futz exposure values when a window just happens to be in X scene out of potentially hundreds or thousands. So far I've managed to elude having to do anything in post, save for a couple touch ups from a hidden prop (Light under door thresholds and such.)
I'm the same - I've been playing around building a VN for 6 months now when I get the time .. Sounds like you're like me and tend to go huge on the number of images per scene / conversation : every new spoken line get's a new image as though it's a still from a movie .. I can easily go 50 images for a conversation between two characters .. And so as you say : need everything streamlined and speedy!
Of course - you adjust to suit your needs .. change the brightness, change the angle the sun enters the room or, in worse case scenarios if it darkens the rest of your image : lower the brightness and then spot render the area of the floor that's too bright and combine in a paint package
Actually, the basic lights were all updated to emissive objects several versions back. Putting a spotlight in a scene is just the same as adding an emissive plane. Just using different controls. Create a spotlight and change the geometry to a 1 meter square if you don't believe me. Look at what you get. It's a simple emissive plane, just controlled using the camera object instead of creating the plane from a primitive. I'm surprised you didn't try the distant light or the sun sky method. Both would give the same effect as an HDRI with much more efficient rendering.
A spotlight is still a spotlight whether you change it's shape and size or not .. the final light of a 1m square spotlight will be different from the light emitted from a 1m square emissive. For instance, it will still be focused into a cone as is any spotlight. As for the distant / sun sky methods - the vid is already 25 minutes in size!! I wouldn't have wanted to include other options and add more time onto the end.
How do I get a no lights scene; you do not say. I do not want to use IRAY and rather use indoor lighting. DS 4.21 does not show an environment option in render settings. Your tutorials are for more advanced viewers and your text font size, even at 2160p 3k is illegible. I cannot find a tutorial for novices.
@@RaukoDaz3D Many thanks for your prompt reply. On opening DS with nothing in the scene and then the Render Tab, the tab for ENVIRONMENT does not show. The bottom last tabs are: “Gamma; shading rate and filter. “ The ALL tab at the top does not show it either although there are them more options. The reason why I want the Environment tab is to bypass the Iray dome and set the camera to never. I found by fumbling around, setting the render engine to Iray and then pressing RENDER in the topmost tab the option for ENVIRONMENT appears beneath ‘Tonemapping’. I make simple animations using DS and (3dlight (RSL) and do not render them; preferring to use a screen capture (OBS). I also interchangeably use the CTRL L keys to change the lighting. I am thus become independent on IRAY which I find a ‘drag’. I am also using the Daz to Blender and do animations and render there. I think I will now perhaps be able to follow your tutorials which I initially found daunting, and your das windows text rather small. I will now upvote and subscribe. Thank you once again.
Hey Brian - if you're selecting a surface with a base Iray texture assigned to it (that should be most of them) .. then first you need to set "Emissive Color" to something that is none black (Select the object in scene, then into Surfaces, scroll down your options till you see it) .. this will "turn on" the emissive and then you'll be able to play with the luminance and such .. If there is no "Emissive Color" or any emissive setting on the surface at all - then i t means you're working with a non-Iray surface texture .. and you'll need to apply one to the surface. Again, select the object and then the particular surface in the surface tab .. .. then go to your Content Library .. .. scroll through the directory structure until you see "Shader Presets" .. expand it .. .. Look for "Iray" and expand it .. Click on "Daz Uber" .. In the side window (with lots of coloured balls) double click on "!Iray Uber Base" to assign the texture to your selected surface "Emissive Color" should now be available in the surfaces tab Let me know if they sorted things for you!
Asset Links(see desc for details):
The Model : tinyurl.com/yxgqgjml
The Hair : tinyurl.com/2p9c9h2p
Environment : tinyurl.com/2p8p9p2f
The trick with the panes is amazing! The ceiling emmission awesome too! I've learnt something today, thanks to you! Thank!
Hey you're welcome - glad to help out!
This is the best indoor lighting tutorial on TH-cam for Daz and I love that you cover it all In under half an hour!
Thanks! Glad you got something out of it!
Been having trouble with scene lighting since I started with Daz, your tutorial clarified and simplified things so well. Thank you so much!
You're welcome Valgus - glad to be of some help!
I thought I knew all of these techniques so well. But your presentation really brighten up everything. I have known enough but I haven't tried it all enough. And some comments here are valuable, too. This is a really worthwhile hour to spend. Got so many ideas. Thanks you!
You're welcome - glad to be of some help .. keep practicing!
Thanks. This really helped me understand lighting and get the effect I want in my current project.
Glad to help out - which of the 3 techniques helped the most?
@@RaukoDaz3D Using the ceiling for ambient lighting helped with the project I was working on. I had a character in a glass cylinder. I was trying to use a torus for the top and combine it with a spot light. That wasn't going well. Using a solid lid and converting it into a light emitter worked perfectly and gave me much better control on intensity. I haven't tried the other tips yet as I was anxious to get back to my project but I will. Thanks again!!
Really helpful, Thank you so much!
You're welcome Nightcore .. and thanks for the Thanks!
Muchas gracias por tus videos, hacen mucha falta tutoriales asi en español, por suerte puedo comprender la mayoria de lo que explicas, thanks teacher.
¡De nada! Lamentablemente, no puedo hablar una palabra de español, ¡pero me alegra que lo entiendas! (traducido de Google)
I've been a daz user for over a decade and I've learned something today! Thank you! Great video.
Hey, you're welcome Tyler .. thanks for watching! Glad to pass on little things that I know!
Mee too
Whoa whoa whoa, you can turn surfaces into lights? Man I'm such a Noob! 😅
I'm glad you make these videos Rauko because they are so informative and helpful!
Thank you so much
Hey - always good to learn new things ... here's the video on Emissive Surfaces seems as though you missed it : th-cam.com/video/8IkkAPIZeMg/w-d-xo.html
Guys like you, are heroes! Thank you
Ahhh shucks .. 🦸♀🦸♂🦸♂
Glad to have been some help!
Thankyou for another fantastic tutorial. I have learnt so much from you since starting my Daz journey 2 years ago and still learning from your videos. Really appreciate it. Regards Simon
Hey Simon - really glad I'm managing to help you out! I'll do my best to keep pumping more in your direction!
@@RaukoDaz3D I'm looking forward to trying out these new lighting techniques
Thanks for this. Getting the light to look realistic is crucial to a good image. Cheers!
You're welcome! Glad to help out!
Thanks. I've got some stuff to try out now!!
You're welcome Gray - hope you find something that helps!
Thanks!
As always... amazing content. Thanks for taking the time to share your knowledge.
Hey thanks Jay .. really appreciate it .. I'll keep pumping out more vids!
Good techniques and tips. Thank you for this video.
You're welcome! Glad to help!
Great as usual! Thanks!😃
Thanks Ingemar!
Fantastic video. I agree with rutber2000 about the HDRI brightness being a revelation. I'm always so inspired after one of your videos. Please keep doing what you're doing :)
Hey Charlie .. I shall do my best to keep doing what I am!!
Excellent
Thank you! Cheers!
thx i'm new to daz and this video will help me alot
Glad to help you out and thanks for watching! If you have any questions about Daz ask away and I'll do my best to answer them for you!
Wow, nice one with the instances! I've never thought of doing that, gonna have to give it a try soon! Keep up the amazing work - I've been using this software for 10 years, and I've learned several new tricks from you in the last year alone haha
You're great, thanks so much for the videos!
Thanks Mike .. appreciate it ... hopefully I have a few more tricks up my sleeve for you going forward!
Hi Rauko, Great video! I find using spotlights in the right way you can create some great effects and have more control where the lights are placed such as background and back light. Hdri's are certainly good as well and provides a scene.
There's a variaty of different ways it can be done .. I stopped at 3 as it already got to a 28min video! 😀
Spotlights are the only way to light indoor, imo. From a visual novel or comic perspective, at least.
@@RaukoDaz3D Yes, there are many ways,,,and you can cheat and remove a ceiling /roof to let the hdri come through.
I also find that a combination of HDRi and Spotlights is my preferred method. I was surprised at the comment in the video about getting out of that "bad habit". I also remove ceilings and walls to let more light in but that's not always possible or doing so will often mess up the shadows.
How to treat this reddish skin problem on 24:40? I saw it so many times and my renders also have to much red tone on skin with HDRI lightning.
Sorry for the delay in getting back!
You could take a look at your SSS settings in the surface tab .. it's generally this that reddens some of the characters up .. just lessen the weight or intensity of it until you get the look you're after
@@RaukoDaz3D Thx for reply! Great channel, very useful tips!
Nice
Thanks
There's another way that's similar to your multiple planes but much simpler: Position the perspective view outside, facing in the direction you want the light to go and create a distant light using the perspective view. Adjust the luminosity and job done.
I used to use spotlights but distant light provides better coverage.
Yeah, there's multiple ways it can be done .. I did three "different" ones .. but each of them could have a variation within each of them also!
Do you have any art illustrating that?
I know this is an older video but... I'm curious... would you make a video on best practices for lighting indoor scenes that are not anywhere near windows? I've been mostly working with planes (primitives) turned into emissive surfaces to replicate "ceiling lights" but this is often unsatisfying when lighting multiple figures. Thanks!
If you're talking about indoor night time shots then I do have a video in mind for that .. if it's indoor daytime (like this video but further distance from the windows) then I personally wouldn't use ceiling lights .. To me, anything daytime (indoor or outdoor) should use as much natural light as possible (so HDRI or Sun / Sky dome) as anything artificial like ceiling lights would just produce .. artificial lighting. If things are a little too dull indoors then play with the tone-mapping settings and / or add either some strategically placed bounce boards (white reflective planes) to spread the natural light about more or add some subtle emissive planes to light up your models. But you need to bear in mind that these planes are there to add to the natural light and not replace it.
@@RaukoDaz3D I am discussing light indoors away from windows. Like, the light in the deeper parts of a shop, or in a basement, or the middle of an office building. Places where you probably only have overhead lighting and not a lot else going for you. I'd love to know more about using reflectors. I have no idea how that works and it seems like it would just vastly slow down render times. But I still feel like a total newbie even though I've been fooling around almost a year now.
A light reflector is something like you might see used in Photography (see this image : i0.wp.com/digital-photography-school.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/photo4.jpeg) - it doesn't give off light in itself but just reflects light in the scene onto areas of your subject that might be darker.
As for the bigger picture .. indoor light with little outside ambience .. I tend to use a mix of emissive and ghost lights if needed .. (check out this video on Emissives where I build a completely dark scene using emissives : th-cam.com/users/video8IkkAPIZeMg) .. however, it depends on what type of scene you're building .. If you're doing something like a model shoot then you'll want to use Spotlights / Point Lights .. but if you're doing a "slice of life" scene - for instance, a night time scene in a living room showing a family watching TV .. then try and use (in this order) :
Natural light (through any windows no matter were the windows are .. so, mimic moonlight for instance if it's a nighttime shot .. sunlight if it day light)
Any lighting that would be in the scene .. ie, table lamps, TV screens etc and do so as emissives .. (if the scene you're using uses spotlights as a lamplight, for instance, convert it to an emissive)
Then add ghost lights if the environment itself isn't lit enough
If your models aren't lit well then add SUBTLE emissive lighting (relatively large plane or disc primitives) to ADD to the lighting in the room and brighten lighten the models more .. don't have these lights too bright that they out-shine any natural light or emissive light that you've already have in scene .. just add them to add to what you already have.
Then adjust tone mapping and camera setting to brighten the image further if needed.
That is generally my workflow doing indoor scenes ..
When using ghost lights at the windows I’m not able to get that box of sunlight on the ground if you know what I mean. It just sort of diffuses and lights up the whole room. Not sure what Im doing wrong.
I’m brand new and don’t have any sets yet. Until I get some, I’m working with a square primitive with cutouts for windows. Could that be the reason?
Sorry for the delay - I only just noticed your post!!
Even with the Ghost lights at the windows I'm still using a low level HDRI to give the light shafts onto the floor - I'm just not using the HDRI to light the scene .. I do my images by always .. and I mean always .. use either a HDRI or Sun / Sky dome to provide a base ambient lighting into the scene and then, in this example, use Ghost Lights at the windows to amplify that light!
You could get the same effect with the ghost lights by positioning them further from the windows .. quite a bit further in fact .. and ramping up the luminosity ..
@@RaukoDaz3D thanks mate, that def helps. But another question I had and something i just noticed, at like 15:50, you don’t have ghost lights, just the fully visible emissives. Shouldn’t that block the hdri? Because despite having the emissive planes at full opacity in the way, seems like the hdri is still casting sunshine on the ground.
I've actually now just rewatched the video (from 14:30 to 17:00) .. and I don't actually see the "box of sunlight" that you're referring to .. I'm sure it's just the room being lit from the "ghost lights" (albeir they aren't ghost lights at that point) .. you can see the "box" at 19:30 with the HDRI method (if that's what you're referring to) .. but I don't think it's there with the "ghost light" method ... but if that's what you do want using the "ghost light" method - then yeah, use a low intensity HDRI to provide the sun-boxes and use ghost lights to supplement the light .. or .. pull the ghost lights back from the window and up their brightness
@@RaukoDaz3D Haha I now see where I went wrong. What I thought was sunlight on the ground was just the lit up areas in contrast to the shadows casted by the furniture. I didn't register the fact that they were casting shadows and so thought those dark areas were the spaces in between windows, causing there not to be direct sunlight there. Thanks for clearing it up and also for the replies, very much appreciated.
Hi Rauko, excellent video as usually. Really appreciate it. Thank you very much.
Just one question: What's the clothing you're using in this render?
Regards Squeeze
Hey Squeeze .. I never included the clothing in the links as its a an assest AND a texture pack from Renderosity .. but here's the links :
www.renderosity.com/rr/mod/bcs/dforce-xl-tank-top-for-genesis-8-females/137991
www.renderosity.com/rr/mod/bcs/cover-up-for-xl-tank-top-g8f/138181
The necklace is from the Slouchy Sweater clothing bundle
www.daz3d.com/slouchy-sweater-outfit-for-genesis-8-female-s
BTW : She's just wearing a standard underwear set underneath ..
@@RaukoDaz3D Thank you very much.
Thank you very much for your lessons, I learned a lot from you (sorry that facebook is blocked in my country and we cannot communicate with you as before) Regards Vladimir Belous.
P.S. I can not understand where creativity and politics are. To politicize everything and everyone is absurd!
That's the way of the world sadly .. 🙁 .. but I'm glad you're getting something out of the videos at least!
so you are telling me custom lights like point light.spotlight,etc impact less the rendering time than hdri?
A HDRI should be quicker when it comes to rendering vs a single point light as they will be generally more light given off from the HDRI.
Iray loves light - the more you give it and have it cover the entire scene the faster the render will be. It's darker areas that cause Iray to slow down .. and with a HDRI being a 360 degree panorama there will be light coming from all angles which should mean faster renders.
However, that doesn't mean light everything up like a Christmas Tree .. there's a balance you'll need to find between how much light in the scene and speed of the render.
Thanks for the Info . very helpful😇
may i know the GPU you are using here.
Hey there - glad to be of some help .. I'm on an NVIDIA 3090 .. so things will be a little quick ..
@@RaukoDaz3D Amazing.. keep giving us more videos like this🔥
Using ghost lights at the windows with HDRI at default intensity for ambience and no tone mapping (for consistency between renders) is what I found to produce the most natural result without killing your render time. There was a particular scene I could render to 160k iterations with HDRI alone before it got to a convergence ratio target, putting the HDRI intensity back to default and dropping a ghost light in front of the window resulted in the same render finishing within 22 minutes instead of SEVEN hours, with any render target above 5.5k iterations being absolutely indiscernible in quality from the 5.5k render (I could switch between two pictures on a 34" monitor and there would be zero flickering suggesting any difference in clarity), WITH denoise off!
Generally I dislike tone mapping, because it isn't a render technique, it is applied in post to the image itself, meaning the brightness of your picture can literally change in the preview window as you render, as more of the picture is done rendering.
There's many different ways to do it .. some give great results, some poor results .. there's no right or wrong way to do it .. just comes down to what you're happy with generally and what works best for a specific situation.
Great video! You make it look simple, but it doesn't look the same to me.
I used the third method (HDRI). With the same parameters in render settings (including the dome rotation at 82.62), with the HDRI you attached, same environtment, same model position, same camera framing... And the results are far away compared to your final render... Too much noise, grainy (or whatever it's called). The shadows don't look the same to me.
I don't have a 3090, but I do have a 2080TI...
I don't know what could be going on...
I hate lighting, I'll never get it...
Hhhm .. I don't know - there's nothing else been done other than what's in the video.. Are you on Daz 4.22? I noticed myself when I tried to render something on an older version of Daz there was a slight difference between it and a 4.22 rendered version - so there's definitely been a change in Iray (though they were still 99% the same).
Without seeing your version - it's hard to make a call on it .. You've increased the Tone Mapping like I did in the video? ... Just a random thought, that's all ..
Like I say - I've not used any magic sauce .. so .. copy the numbers things should come out more or less the same ..
@@RaukoDaz3D Thank you for your reply.
I increased the env. intensitiy, and in another attempt I used the tone mapping values (although I didn't combine both).
I'm using version 4.22.
Btw, I have the computer unformatted since older versions of Daz Studio. Maybe updating version after version has something wrong for a long time and I should format the computer.
The reason why instances work the way they do is because you're creating a single plane that will be loaded into video memory and then you're telling the engine to use that one object for all of them. Which is why when you change the original, all change, because they all point to the same object in video memory. A bonus from using instances is that they are much faster for the computer to use and they don't take up much video memory due to there being only one object. I've programmed instanced objects in 3D and man, do they ever speed things up!
Instances are one of the most overlooked things in 3D to the beginner and their use goes far beyond just filling a forest up with trees ..
So one major issue I found with the HDRI method. Was that on what seemed like an overwhelming majority of them, the sun was always located in the same rough location.
Mainly this is only an issue if you want/need the ability to have control over transition of the time of day. (Such as creating a visual novel.) For purely artistic renders, the below method isn't really needed.
An example I found of this, was I was having really weird lighting issues from 2 different HDRIs. One was this lovely warm glow that really had a wonderful early morning or late evening feel to it. The second had this really well done white light/midday feel to it. Turns out the latter that looked more midday, the sun was placed lower than the warm glow HDRI. So despite it looking more midday, the sun was actually lower in the sky and wrecking havoc on my lighting.
I found the way to fix this, was to set the "Environment Mode" to "Dome & Scene", setting "Environment Map" to "None", then after setting EM to None go and rename/delete the default environment map file. Doing this will ensure that when you reload a scene saved with these settings it won't auto load the default EM file. This effectively makes it function like Sun-Sky Only, where you can set long/lat/UTC Offset and so on but still allows the use of other lights in your scene. ("Sun-Sky Only" disables lights that aren't the sun, at least last time I tried). This lets you have all the pro's of Sun-Sky without the con of breaking your "real" lights in a scene like lamps and such.
After setting these settings, add in some physical clouds (DimensionTheory's Cloudscape Creator works wonderfully for this). This will add volume to the new "realistic" sky and allow contrast between the blue sky and the clouds, giving you a traditional sky effect. All of this together makes for some pretty powerful sky details/controls that let you fine tune not only lighting, but your time of day and weather as well.
I've actually seen that occur in Daz a number of times by accident but I've never utilised it when it occured .. but I imagine it would serve the purpose in which your proposing. Although, I'd hazard a guess and suggest it's a bug and could well be written out in Daz 5.
We do have some tools at our disposal however. If doing a indoor shot and not showing what's outside the windows - use of the dome rotation, as we know, will spin the dome around .. but also use of Dome Orientation X and Z will allow us to also change the angle of the light. So you can use the same HDRI and move the sun to a lower or higher position. It wouldn't change the lighting colour to what we'd see at dawn or dusk but I know of at least one toolset on the Daz Store that will allow filters to be applied to HDRIs.
The problem of course IS if you are planning to show the dome as changing the X / Z orientation will cause a tipped up world outside the window. But manufacturing a background either in Daz (as you show) or in Post can get around this easy enough.
@@RaukoDaz3D I suppose it's a good thing for me I plan to basically never update from Daz 4.20 haha. At least not any time soon. Ideally, for the purposes of creating my visual novel, I'm using an isolated instance of Daz that I've set to never update and have all my library set in a custom directory. Stability of an non-updating system n all that.
I'll likely set up an alternate instance of Daz in a different file structure that I'll let auto updates run, that way I can toy around with Gen9 and stuff sometime next year when it's got the products to support it. So last thing I need is an auto update potentially writing out a very valuable setting to me lol.
I've gone through pained efforts to try and streamline my process so I don't have to bugger around with any artificial lighting at all, and doing my best to also avoid having to futz exposure values when a window just happens to be in X scene out of potentially hundreds or thousands. So far I've managed to elude having to do anything in post, save for a couple touch ups from a hidden prop (Light under door thresholds and such.)
I'm the same - I've been playing around building a VN for 6 months now when I get the time .. Sounds like you're like me and tend to go huge on the number of images per scene / conversation : every new spoken line get's a new image as though it's a still from a movie .. I can easily go 50 images for a conversation between two characters .. And so as you say : need everything streamlined and speedy!
21:40 While the lighting around her looks good, the sunlight on the floor and chair look way too bright.
Of course - you adjust to suit your needs .. change the brightness, change the angle the sun enters the room or, in worse case scenarios if it darkens the rest of your image : lower the brightness and then spot render the area of the floor that's too bright and combine in a paint package
Actually, the basic lights were all updated to emissive objects several versions back. Putting a spotlight in a scene is just the same as adding an emissive plane. Just using different controls. Create a spotlight and change the geometry to a 1 meter square if you don't believe me. Look at what you get. It's a simple emissive plane, just controlled using the camera object instead of creating the plane from a primitive. I'm surprised you didn't try the distant light or the sun sky method. Both would give the same effect as an HDRI with much more efficient rendering.
A spotlight is still a spotlight whether you change it's shape and size or not .. the final light of a 1m square spotlight will be different from the light emitted from a 1m square emissive. For instance, it will still be focused into a cone as is any spotlight.
As for the distant / sun sky methods - the vid is already 25 minutes in size!! I wouldn't have wanted to include other options and add more time onto the end.
How do I get a no lights scene; you do not say. I do not want to use IRAY and rather use indoor lighting. DS 4.21 does not show an environment option in render settings. Your tutorials are for more advanced viewers and your text font size, even at 2160p 3k is illegible.
I cannot find a tutorial for novices.
Hey there Hennie - if you're not using Iray - which render engine within Daz will you be using? 3Delight or Filament?
@@RaukoDaz3D Many thanks for your prompt reply.
On opening DS with nothing in the scene and then the Render Tab, the tab for ENVIRONMENT does not show. The bottom last tabs are: “Gamma; shading rate and filter. “
The ALL tab at the top does not show it either although there are them more options. The reason why I want the Environment tab is to bypass the Iray dome and set the camera to never.
I found by fumbling around, setting the render engine to Iray and then pressing RENDER in the topmost tab the option for ENVIRONMENT appears beneath ‘Tonemapping’.
I make simple animations using DS and (3dlight (RSL) and do not render them; preferring to use a screen capture (OBS). I also interchangeably use the CTRL L keys to change the lighting. I am thus become independent on IRAY which I find a ‘drag’. I am also using the Daz to Blender and do animations and render there. I think I will now perhaps be able to follow your tutorials which I initially found daunting, and your das windows text rather small. I will now upvote and subscribe. Thank you once again.
Every time I try to select a surface........ there is no emission setting!
Hey Brian - if you're selecting a surface with a base Iray texture assigned to it (that should be most of them) .. then first you need to set "Emissive Color" to something that is none black (Select the object in scene, then into Surfaces, scroll down your options till you see it) .. this will "turn on" the emissive and then you'll be able to play with the luminance and such ..
If there is no "Emissive Color" or any emissive setting on the surface at all - then i t means you're working with a non-Iray surface texture .. and you'll need to apply one to the surface.
Again, select the object and then the particular surface in the surface tab ..
.. then go to your Content Library ..
.. scroll through the directory structure until you see "Shader Presets" .. expand it ..
.. Look for "Iray" and expand it
.. Click on "Daz Uber"
.. In the side window (with lots of coloured balls) double click on "!Iray Uber Base" to assign the texture to your selected surface
"Emissive Color" should now be available in the surfaces tab
Let me know if they sorted things for you!