Questions about lighting in DAZ 4.9

TomViola

After years of experience using the DAZ 3 generations, I have had to switch up to 4.9  While I have viewed the tutorials, there is obviously something I am missing.

I am working on a scene which employs the DH Study, set under Dysopia Nighttime Skydome.  In the study fireplace, I have a fire, and light it up with a red Point of light and a red Spotlight. Naturally once I added a source of light the default lighting shut offs. So, I added a Distant Light inside the Study. However once I render the scene, the only light is the red lights in the fireplace... the room is dark... no matter how high I set the light intensity on the Distant Light.  This does not seem like an unusual scene, so I assume I am doing something wrong.

I am using DAZ 4.9 on a Windows 10 platform.

Khory

Are you rendering in Iray or 3dlight?

TomViola

Iray

mjc1016

The light from the distant light is mostly going to be blocked by the geometry of the Study.  And in Iray, at least in photoreal mode, you can't make the geometry not cast shadows.  Try creating a plane (you'll probably need to flip it upside down), don't give it any sections/divisions, so it's a single qud and move it up to near the ceiling, put the Iray emissive shader on it and adjust the luminence values.

Khory

There are a couple of things hindering your lighting. First be sure that you have applied the iray uber shader to everything in the scene. Light will bounce better and it will speed your render up a bit. Secondly, the sky dome is blocking the light from the hdri. If you are really in love with that sky dome then you can always set it to emit some light into the scene. After you apply the Iray uber shader to the sky dome go to the surface tab / editor scroll down to emission color. Plug the texture from the dome into that image slot and change the color to white. You may need to make some adjustments to the luminance to get the light you want and so that the dome looks correct. The distant light will be blocked by the sky dome so you can lose it. I would suggest subbing in a spot if you want moonlight to come directly in through a window or door. If your still not getting enough light in the scene I would suggest adding some spots or point lights to increase the light in the room.  BTW, if your not in love with the sky dome image you can use the sun sky option and set it for evening lighting. If you need a "view" out of the windows you can always save the image as a png and pop a photo in as post work.

TomViola

How do I apply Uber shader? Do I literally have to apply Uber shader to every item in the scene? I guess if I understood the mechanics behind how light works in 4.9... then my questions would not be so poorly stated.

Khory

I'm going to go step by step for the easiest way to apply the uber iray shader to everything in the scene.

1- First go to the scene tab and look at the top corner. You should see a little arrow with 4 lines. Click that and you will get a drop-down list. You want to expand everything. That way even items parented to something else will be open. Click the top item and then hold down the shift key and select the bottom item. Now they should all be selected in the scene.

2- Now you need to go to the surface tab. And inside that select the editor. There will be a list of everything in your scene. Again select the top item and then hold down shift then click the bottom item. Now you should have every surface of every item selected at the same time.

3- Now you apply the Iray uber shader. It will be in shader presets in your content library under Iray/Daz Iray or in Smart Content under shaders/Iray/ Utility. Just double click.

4- After that you can go through and see if there are any surfaces that need a special shader. For example glass or a metal. If your putting glass on a window pain be sure to use the thin glass.