Wish I could do what I envision

whispers65

So I have all of this cool content that I want to work with but yet I still get no where. I just can't get out of my head and onto the screen like I see it. And I know it takes time and practice ugh. But still.

So here is a scene I want to tackle - the Cyro Environment with CryoTubes from Stonemason. Really great set for me.

If I load everything as is, blank environment, and render it looks great from the default. The problem is when I add characters and effects.

The characters are too dark, too many shadows and you can't see them clearly. I really want to add some atmosphere to this.

So here's what I would like to accomplish:

1) Have the characters show clearly (probably need to lighten the set as a whole)
2) Have the glass on the tubes kind of a translucent glow (as if the machine is working or whatever) or light the inside of the tube. I've tried but can't do the effect in my head yet.
3) Add some kind of smoke or fog effect near the bottoms of the tubes or something like steam from the machine.
4) Fix the stupid color on the tubes I did - green and blue. They look over exposed. I really like the light flares or whatever it is called on the promos that Stonemason did but have no idea how to achieve that affect. Maybe it was done through post work?
5) Fix the figures. I know their feet aren't solidly on the floor. :)

Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated. I'm just frustrated. I'm getting better at lighting single people but doing scenes as a whole has a lot to be desired.

StratDragon

whispers65 said:

So I have all of this cool content that I want to work with but yet I still get no where. I just can't get out of my head and onto the screen like I see it. And I know it takes time and practice ugh. But still.

So here is a scene I want to tackle - the Cyro Environment with CryoTubes from Stonemason. Really great set for me.

If I load everything as is, blank environment, and render it looks great from the default. The problem is when I add characters and effects.

The characters are too dark, too many shadows and you can't see them clearly. I really want to add some atmosphere to this.

So here's what I would like to accomplish:

1) Have the characters show clearly (probably need to lighten the set as a whole)
2) Have the glass on the tubes kind of a translucent glow (as if the machine is working or whatever) or light the inside of the tube. I've tried but can't do the effect in my head yet.
3) Add some kind of smoke or fog effect near the bottoms of the tubes or something like steam from the machine.
4) Fix the stupid color on the tubes I did - green and blue. They look over exposed. I really like the light flares or whatever it is called on the promos that Stonemason did but have no idea how to achieve that affect. Maybe it was done through post work?
5) Fix the figures. I know their feet aren't solidly on the floor. :)

Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated. I'm just frustrated. I'm getting better at lighting single people but doing scenes as a whole has a lot to be desired.

Everything I've envisioned in my head is a compromise or full diversion from what I imagined when I attempt to do it, sometimes that's my limitations with the software, sometimes it doesn't make sense to do it in the software when I can do it elsewhere.

1) Lights, You need them in your scene and but you need to use them effectively. Years of using 3Delight in Daz Studio and I can safely say lights are not my strong point but there are tons of tutorials out there that can help. What works for me is Reality (renderosity.com) and LuxRender (luxrender.net); lights make perfect sense and I get far better results, the trade off is the cost of the software and it takes longer to render. If Reality is out of your price range you can try Luxus (Daz3d.com) or if you're using DS3 you can find the LuxRenderDS plugin on google, it's free. Reality and Luxus require purchase, LuxRender is free.

2) Try a glass shader (search sharecg.com) and drop a colored spotlight in the tube.

3) the uber surfaces in Daz Studio does have a volumetric smoke effect, but I would do this in Photoshop after I render, this is called postwork, and it is your friend. You're going to have much more control over your smoke in an image layout program than the time it takes you to experiment with 3Delight (or LuxRender), you can do a google search for "Smoke in Gimp", I did and found video tutorials, but I don't use Gimp which is free btw (gimp.org)

4) all lights have an intensity setting in the parameters tab. like salt in food, salt to taste.

5) CTRL+D will drop the figure to "floor", but it's relative to origin point and "0" on the y scale. What works better is to adjust the y-translation at the root of your figure when you select the figure in the content pane and move the y-translation slider in the properties tab.

whispers65

StratDragon said:

whispers65 said:

So I have all of this cool content that I want to work with but yet I still get no where. I just can't get out of my head and onto the screen like I see it. And I know it takes time and practice ugh. But still.

So here is a scene I want to tackle - the Cyro Environment with CryoTubes from Stonemason. Really great set for me.

If I load everything as is, blank environment, and render it looks great from the default. The problem is when I add characters and effects.

The characters are too dark, too many shadows and you can't see them clearly. I really want to add some atmosphere to this.

So here's what I would like to accomplish:

1) Have the characters show clearly (probably need to lighten the set as a whole)
2) Have the glass on the tubes kind of a translucent glow (as if the machine is working or whatever) or light the inside of the tube. I've tried but can't do the effect in my head yet.
3) Add some kind of smoke or fog effect near the bottoms of the tubes or something like steam from the machine.
4) Fix the stupid color on the tubes I did - green and blue. They look over exposed. I really like the light flares or whatever it is called on the promos that Stonemason did but have no idea how to achieve that affect. Maybe it was done through post work?
5) Fix the figures. I know their feet aren't solidly on the floor. :)

Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated. I'm just frustrated. I'm getting better at lighting single people but doing scenes as a whole has a lot to be desired.

Everything I've envisioned in my head is a compromise or full diversion from what I imagined when I attempt to do it, sometimes that's my limitations with the software, sometimes it doesn't make sense to do it in the software when I can do it elsewhere.

1) Lights, You need them in your scene and but you need to use them effectively. Years of using 3Delight in Daz Studio and I can safely say lights are not my strong point but there are tons of tutorials out there that can help. What works for me is Reality (renderosity.com) and LuxRender (luxrender.net); lights make perfect sense and I get far better results, the trade off is the cost of the software and it takes longer to render. If Reality is out of your price range you can try Luxus (Daz3d.com) or if you're using DS3 you can find the LuxRenderDS plugin on google, it's free. Reality and Luxus require purchase, LuxRender is free.

2) Try a glass shader (search sharecg.com) and drop a colored spotlight in the tube.

3) the uber surfaces in Daz Studio does have a volumetric smoke effect, but I would do this in Photoshop after I render, this is called postwork, and it is your friend. You're going to have much more control over your smoke in an image layout program than the time it takes you to experiment with 3Delight (or LuxRender), you can do a google search for "Smoke in Gimp", I did and found video tutorials, but I don't use Gimp which is free btw (gimp.org)

4) all lights have an intensity setting in the parameters tab. like salt in food, salt to taste.

5) CTRL+D will drop the figure to "floor", but it's relative to origin point and "0" on the y scale. What works better is to adjust the y-translation at the root of your figure when you select the figure in the content pane and move the y-translation slider in the properties tab.

Thanks for the reply. It's not really about the tools necessarily though.

1) I do have LuxRender, Reality (2.5 or something) and a myriad of other lighting sets. But tools in the hand of a pro versus a noob is like the difference between Shakespeare and a chimp sitting at a type writer trying to bang out a great work. Theorically it may be possible in time but do you really want to wait that long? LOL. Of course even chimps can make art, that is if you considering smearing dung on their glass enclosures as art.

2) I'll look for the shaders and see if I can find what I'm looking for.

3) I've never done postwork before but I'm not against it. And I do have Photoshop as well as other like the Gimp.

4) It just looks gawdy for my first attempt. I'm going to revisit.

5) I do use the drop figure to floor all the time. In this case, and I'll look at it again tonight when I get home, part of the set is below the floor level so if I drop to floor then it sinks below the "platform" they are standing on. It' would be nice if the drop to floor was actually drop to the next object. Like if you are above a bed, it would drop to the bed rather than fall through the bed to the floor if that makes sense.

Anyway, thanks for your time and effort. Time is a precious comodity to me and one that I really appreciate especially other's time.

StratDragon

Shakespeare never owned a typewriter, but I was aghast to find out stick 10,000 chimps in a room with one and your likely to get dung smeared on a typewriter, but no Brothers Karamazov any time soon.

As for Reality there is a forum over at runtimedna.com for Reality users and they are a super friendly bunch of people who love that software and can turn you to if not a pro; a noob with pro skills. I'm not going to say you can't do this in 3Delight or that 3Delight is a bad engine, my experience is I can get far better results in luxrender than I can with 3Delight.

Ademnus

whispers65 said:

So I have all of this cool content that I want to work with but yet I still get no where. I just can't get out of my head and onto the screen like I see it. And I know it takes time and practice ugh. But still.

So here is a scene I want to tackle - the Cyro Environment with CryoTubes from Stonemason. Really great set for me.

If I load everything as is, blank environment, and render it looks great from the default. The problem is when I add characters and effects.

The characters are too dark, too many shadows and you can't see them clearly. I really want to add some atmosphere to this.

So here's what I would like to accomplish:

1) Have the characters show clearly (probably need to lighten the set as a whole)
2) Have the glass on the tubes kind of a translucent glow (as if the machine is working or whatever) or light the inside of the tube. I've tried but can't do the effect in my head yet.
3) Add some kind of smoke or fog effect near the bottoms of the tubes or something like steam from the machine.
4) Fix the stupid color on the tubes I did - green and blue. They look over exposed. I really like the light flares or whatever it is called on the promos that Stonemason did but have no idea how to achieve that affect. Maybe it was done through post work?
5) Fix the figures. I know their feet aren't solidly on the floor. :)

Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated. I'm just frustrated. I'm getting better at lighting single people but doing scenes as a whole has a lot to be desired.

well, you can achieve all that you want, if you really put in the time -and time spent on lighting can be frustrating and tedious but ultimately worth it. However... I find sometimes a little cheating goes a long way.

Sometimes I just don't want to deal with days of tedious lighting work when I can usually achieve the effect I want using layers. This assumes you own something akin to photoshop with a layers system (and now that you can subscribe and get ps6 for 20 bucks a month instead of 1500 dollars it should be more accessible if you dont already own it.)

If all else fails you can render your lovely environment without figures (that will now be your background layer) and then render your figures separately. Lighting figures alone is far simpler than lighting figures in an environment. They become the layer top layer. You can then hand draw shadows on the floor, walls etc, in PS and use that as the layer between.

Its a cheat, to be sure, but a very effective one taken from the playbook of motion pictures who very often composite actors over a virtual background. It cannot really replace all-in-scene rendering as there won't be the bounce lighting and other light and shadow effects that can make everything look inclusive but if you're not using LUX or Reality and HDR etc you probably don't care anyway. Try it, you may just like it.

As a side note, you can use the image you made as your background layer, as it has shadows etc and just overlay a layer of just the figures, lit as you like them, so their lighting doesnt spill onto the steps etc that might ruin the look you have going there on the tubes.

Oh and Ron's Fog is a great postwork tool for photoshop that can get you your fog in the scene without complicated plugins.

As for planting their feet firmly on the ground, I usually use a second camera to get right in close and make sure they're on there but with the layers system you wont even need to.

here's an example.

The first picture shows a before and after. On the left is m5 in a room with simple lighting. On the right, the finished composite. I just dashed this off as an example, or else Id have much more carefully lit the environment, but you should get the process from this example easily.

The second picture shows the layers. 1, the original shot of m5 in a room. its not good but it has the reflection of him on the floor. 2, the empty room, 3 m5 with lantios lights, shot in empty space and saved as a .png with transparency.

I lined up 3 on top of 1 so m5 is in the exact right place. layer 2 is placed between them, obliterating the poorly lit m5. I used an eraser to erase the part of the floor on layer 2 that hid the reflection and viola! Well lit m5 is on your background, no fuss no muss.

Paula Sanders

We were all new once. But getting the results you envision means controlling the tools and not having them control you. This takes time and practice and can't be rushed.

whispers65

StratDragon said:

Shakespeare never owned a typewriter, but I was aghast to find out stick 10,000 chimps in a room with one and your likely to get dung smeared on a typewriter, but no Brothers Karamazov any time soon.

As for Reality there is a forum over at runtimedna.com for Reality users and they are a super friendly bunch of people who love that software and can turn you to if not a pro; a noob with pro skills. I'm not going to say you can't do this in 3Delight or that 3Delight is a bad engine, my experience is I can get far better results in luxrender than I can with 3Delight.

Thanks for all of your tips! The only thing about Reality is I did buy a tutorial but the objects used were no longer available and I tried to use substitutes and eventually gave up because I couldn't get similar results. I'll try it from another angle.

whispers65

sgreco1970 said:

well, you can achieve all that you want, if you really put in the time -and time spent on lighting can be frustrating and tedious but ultimately worth it. However... I find sometimes a little cheating goes a long way.

Sometimes I just don't want to deal with days of tedious lighting work when I can usually achieve the effect I want using layers. This assumes you own something akin to photoshop with a layers system (and now that you can subscribe and get ps6 for 20 bucks a month instead of 1500 dollars it should be more accessible if you dont already own it.)

If all else fails you can render your lovely environment without figures (that will now be your background layer) and then render your figures separately. Lighting figures alone is far simpler than lighting figures in an environment. They become the layer top layer. You can then hand draw shadows on the floor, walls etc, in PS and use that as the layer between.

Its a cheat, to be sure, but a very effective one taken from the playbook of motion pictures who very often composite actors over a virtual background. It cannot really replace all-in-scene rendering as there won't be the bounce lighting and other light and shadow effects that can make everything look inclusive but if you're not using LUX or Reality and HDR etc you probably don't care anyway. Try it, you may just like it.

As a side note, you can use the image you made as your background layer, as it has shadows etc and just overlay a layer of just the figures, lit as you like them, so their lighting doesnt spill onto the steps etc that might ruin the look you have going there on the tubes.

Oh and Ron's Fog is a great postwork tool for photoshop that can get you your fog in the scene without complicated plugins.

As for planting their feet firmly on the ground, I usually use a second camera to get right in close and make sure they're on there but with the layers system you wont even need to.

here's an example.

The first picture shows a before and after. On the left is m5 in a room with simple lighting. On the right, the finished composite. I just dashed this off as an example, or else Id have much more carefully lit the environment, but you should get the process from this example easily.

The second picture shows the layers. 1, the original shot of m5 in a room. its not good but it has the reflection of him on the floor. 2, the empty room, 3 m5 with lantios lights, shot in empty space and saved as a .png with transparency.

I lined up 3 on top of 1 so m5 is in the exact right place. layer 2 is placed between them, obliterating the poorly lit m5. I used an eraser to erase the part of the floor on layer 2 that hid the reflection and viola! Well lit m5 is on your background, no fuss no muss.

I see what you mean on the sample shots. Thanks for taking the time to do those. To-date, I've never tried to mesh more than one pic together like that. I have added "rain" before in photoshop but that was from a tutorial also. I have seen Ron's stuff a lot of times. Actually I had looked into the Fog one especially but never really done post work before so I didn't get into to much.

We shouldn't have to worry about tornadoes much tonight so I can settle down. Maybe what I'll do is instead of trying to match the lighting that is there is strip out all of the lighting and try some things from scratch. I'll work on the CryoTube by itself. It'll render quicker and I can try out "fog", "lights", etc. Actually in my scene they are used more for cloning than sleeping lol. Oh well.

whispers65

batesyboy said:

We were all new once. But getting the results you envision means controlling the tools and not having them control you. This takes time and practice and can't be rushed.

I've been trying for a while though. I'm just starting to feel like a professional noob. :)

Ademnus

whispers65 said:

sgreco1970 said:

well, you can achieve all that you want, if you really put in the time -and time spent on lighting can be frustrating and tedious but ultimately worth it. However... I find sometimes a little cheating goes a long way.

Sometimes I just don't want to deal with days of tedious lighting work when I can usually achieve the effect I want using layers. This assumes you own something akin to photoshop with a layers system (and now that you can subscribe and get ps6 for 20 bucks a month instead of 1500 dollars it should be more accessible if you dont already own it.)

If all else fails you can render your lovely environment without figures (that will now be your background layer) and then render your figures separately. Lighting figures alone is far simpler than lighting figures in an environment. They become the layer top layer. You can then hand draw shadows on the floor, walls etc, in PS and use that as the layer between.

Its a cheat, to be sure, but a very effective one taken from the playbook of motion pictures who very often composite actors over a virtual background. It cannot really replace all-in-scene rendering as there won't be the bounce lighting and other light and shadow effects that can make everything look inclusive but if you're not using LUX or Reality and HDR etc you probably don't care anyway. Try it, you may just like it.

As a side note, you can use the image you made as your background layer, as it has shadows etc and just overlay a layer of just the figures, lit as you like them, so their lighting doesnt spill onto the steps etc that might ruin the look you have going there on the tubes.

Oh and Ron's Fog is a great postwork tool for photoshop that can get you your fog in the scene without complicated plugins.

As for planting their feet firmly on the ground, I usually use a second camera to get right in close and make sure they're on there but with the layers system you wont even need to.

here's an example.

The first picture shows a before and after. On the left is m5 in a room with simple lighting. On the right, the finished composite. I just dashed this off as an example, or else Id have much more carefully lit the environment, but you should get the process from this example easily.

The second picture shows the layers. 1, the original shot of m5 in a room. its not good but it has the reflection of him on the floor. 2, the empty room, 3 m5 with lantios lights, shot in empty space and saved as a .png with transparency.

I lined up 3 on top of 1 so m5 is in the exact right place. layer 2 is placed between them, obliterating the poorly lit m5. I used an eraser to erase the part of the floor on layer 2 that hid the reflection and viola! Well lit m5 is on your background, no fuss no muss.

I see what you mean on the sample shots. Thanks for taking the time to do those. To-date, I've never tried to mesh more than one pic together like that. I have added "rain" before in photoshop but that was from a tutorial also. I have seen Ron's stuff a lot of times. Actually I had looked into the Fog one especially but never really done post work before so I didn't get into to much.

We shouldn't have to worry about tornadoes much tonight so I can settle down. Maybe what I'll do is instead of trying to match the lighting that is there is strip out all of the lighting and try some things from scratch. I'll work on the CryoTube by itself. It'll render quicker and I can try out "fog", "lights", etc. Actually in my scene they are used more for cloning than sleeping lol. Oh well.

Give it a try.

Light the tube the way you want and shoot it. Then pose your figures and make the tube and cryo room invisible and light the figures as you like. Layer them in PS and add your fog. Its especially cool if you do figures seperately too. Then you can some fog between the cryo tube and the fathest figures and more between them and the nearest figures. Gives a lot of depth. post it here so we can gawk ;p

static

As far a lighting the whole thing up, try adding a Distant Light. "Create\New Distant Light" Then adjust ONLY the rotation, starting with Z Rotate. This works as well indoors as it does out, especially if you have a single (or at least a strongest) light source that will throw your main shadows. then you can try Spots for other light sources. I have (recently) found that if you want an effect like having your tubes "glow" with an "inner" light, that Point Lights work well for that. Just place them inside your tubes, and adjust strength for the amount of luminescence you want to achieve. I am still experimenting with this myself.
Good luck. Hope it helps.

whispers65

staticdrifter said:

As far a lighting the whole thing up, try adding a Distant Light. "Create\New Distant Light" Then adjust ONLY the rotation, starting with Z Rotate. This works as well indoors as it does out, especially if you have a single (or at least a strongest) light source that will throw your main shadows. then you can try Spots for other light sources. I have (recently) found that if you want an effect like having your tubes "glow" with an "inner" light, that Point Lights work well for that. Just place them inside your tubes, and adjust strength for the amount of luminescence you want to achieve. I am still experimenting with this myself.
Good luck. Hope it helps.

I did try a distant light earlier before I read this but it didn't seem to do anything but I didn't rotate it either duh. I can try that.

On the bad render up above I used quite a few point lights for the lights on the Cryotubes but I remember reading something about the ability to make any surface as a light source using UberAreaLights or something like that. I looked for a tutorial or something to see what that was about but haven't found anything helpful so far.

static

Well, that's outside of my experience as of yet, so I can't offer any more, but I have been getting better and better at manipulating the Distant, and Point lighting and I get some pretty good effects with the Point Light, placing them just about anywhere, but they aren't (so far) casting much of a shadow, just low intensity light. I use them for color effects, mostly.
Good luck.

Ademnus

whispers65 said:

staticdrifter said:

As far a lighting the whole thing up, try adding a Distant Light. "Create\New Distant Light" Then adjust ONLY the rotation, starting with Z Rotate. This works as well indoors as it does out, especially if you have a single (or at least a strongest) light source that will throw your main shadows. then you can try Spots for other light sources. I have (recently) found that if you want an effect like having your tubes "glow" with an "inner" light, that Point Lights work well for that. Just place them inside your tubes, and adjust strength for the amount of luminescence you want to achieve. I am still experimenting with this myself.
Good luck. Hope it helps.

I did try a distant light earlier before I read this but it didn't seem to do anything but I didn't rotate it either duh. I can try that.

On the bad render up above I used quite a few point lights for the lights on the Cryotubes but I remember reading something about the ability to make any surface as a light source using UberAreaLights or something like that. I looked for a tutorial or something to see what that was about but haven't found anything helpful so far.

hehe ok sounds like lighting is your real issue. First, realize that lighting is everything. You can have awesome sets and figures, posed beautifully, dressed well -and without good lighting, it will be lackluster at best. What you are using when you do not add lights is the built-in "headlight" on the camera. Its like having a video cam with a light built onto the front. Sure, it adds light so you can see -but that's it. No shadows, no subtlety, no nothing.

In general, you should have at least 3 lights going; a keylight (your main source of light), a fill light (to illuminate the angle not covered by the keylight, but never at full power. You want a darker side on your figure but not pitch darkness! So you use a fill to fill in the darkness but at around 50% or lower) and a backlight to highlight shapes.

Depending on the environment youre shooting in, these can be simple or complex to arrange, and larger environments usually call for more lights and can get very tricky. This is why I always have my layer compositing trick to fall back on as it can sometimes be simpler to light the environment separately from the figures.

But a really nice go-to set of high quality light presets is Lantios Lights. I'll link them below. One click and instant awesome lights. Still, these are best used in outdoor environments or very large environments and can present issues in close quarters. No preset will ever work in every single situation, and lighting will always be tricky -but also always be crucial. I'll post some examples. Note: Lantios Lights presets will really look amazing, and I use them when able, but they can be tricky and make renders take a long time. Search for some tips on using them, especially killing the raytracing on hair figures, to decrease render times if you choose to use them. Personally, I couldnt live without them.)

http://www.daz3d.com/lantios-lights

Start with at least those, but he has tons for sale -just do a product search for lantios.

Lighting is everything. Take some time to learn about it, be patient, and play around with it. You'll be glad you did, its worth the time. It will take your figures from 3d model to super model ;p

(click image to see full size)

whispers65

sgreco1970 said:

whispers65 said:

staticdrifter said:

As far a lighting the whole thing up, try adding a Distant Light. "Create\New Distant Light" Then adjust ONLY the rotation, starting with Z Rotate. This works as well indoors as it does out, especially if you have a single (or at least a strongest) light source that will throw your main shadows. then you can try Spots for other light sources. I have (recently) found that if you want an effect like having your tubes "glow" with an "inner" light, that Point Lights work well for that. Just place them inside your tubes, and adjust strength for the amount of luminescence you want to achieve. I am still experimenting with this myself.
Good luck. Hope it helps.

I did try a distant light earlier before I read this but it didn't seem to do anything but I didn't rotate it either duh. I can try that.

On the bad render up above I used quite a few point lights for the lights on the Cryotubes but I remember reading something about the ability to make any surface as a light source using UberAreaLights or something like that. I looked for a tutorial or something to see what that was about but haven't found anything helpful so far.

hehe ok sounds like lighting is your real issue. First, realize that lighting is everything. You can have awesome sets and figures, posed beautifully, dressed well -and without good lighting, it will be lackluster at best. What you are using when you do not add lights is the built-in "headlight" on the camera. Its like having a video cam with a light built onto the front. Sure, it adds light so you can see -but that's it. No shadows, no subtlety, no nothing.

In general, you should have at least 3 lights going; a keylight (your main source of light), a fill light (to illuminate the angle not covered by the keylight, but never at full power. You want a darker side on your figure but not pitch darkness! So you use a fill to fill in the darkness but at around 50% or lower) and a backlight to highlight shapes.

Depending on the environment youre shooting in, these can be simple or complex to arrange, and larger environments usually call for more lights and can get very tricky. This is why I always have my layer compositing trick to fall back on as it can sometimes be simpler to light the environment separately from the figures.

But a really nice go-to set of high quality light presets is Lantios Lights. I'll link them below. One click and instant awesome lights. Still, these are best used in outdoor environments or very large environments and can present issues in close quarters. No preset will ever work in every single situation, and lighting will always be tricky -but also always be crucial. I'll post some examples. Note: Lantios Lights presets will really look amazing, and I use them when able, but they can be tricky and make renders take a long time. Search for some tips on using them, especially killing the raytracing on hair figures, to decrease render times if you choose to use them. Personally, I couldnt live without them.)

http://www.daz3d.com/lantios-lights

Start with at least those, but he has tons for sale -just do a product search for lantios.

Lighting is everything. Take some time to learn about it, be patient, and play around with it. You'll be glad you did, its worth the time. It will take your figures from 3d model to super model ;p

(click image to see full size)

Thanks as always for the advice. I picked up 3 of the Lantios light sets to play around with. I know about the raytrace and hair trick. That really helps especially if the shot isn't all that close up.

As far as long render times, I have an ipad, MAC, another PC, Nintendo 3ds, Kindle and Nook software installed on my phone, etc....I keep myself entertained. :)

Ademnus

whispers65 said:

sgreco1970 said:

whispers65 said:

staticdrifter said:

As far a lighting the whole thing up, try adding a Distant Light. "Create\New Distant Light" Then adjust ONLY the rotation, starting with Z Rotate. This works as well indoors as it does out, especially if you have a single (or at least a strongest) light source that will throw your main shadows. then you can try Spots for other light sources. I have (recently) found that if you want an effect like having your tubes "glow" with an "inner" light, that Point Lights work well for that. Just place them inside your tubes, and adjust strength for the amount of luminescence you want to achieve. I am still experimenting with this myself.
Good luck. Hope it helps.

I did try a distant light earlier before I read this but it didn't seem to do anything but I didn't rotate it either duh. I can try that.

On the bad render up above I used quite a few point lights for the lights on the Cryotubes but I remember reading something about the ability to make any surface as a light source using UberAreaLights or something like that. I looked for a tutorial or something to see what that was about but haven't found anything helpful so far.

hehe ok sounds like lighting is your real issue. First, realize that lighting is everything. You can have awesome sets and figures, posed beautifully, dressed well -and without good lighting, it will be lackluster at best. What you are using when you do not add lights is the built-in "headlight" on the camera. Its like having a video cam with a light built onto the front. Sure, it adds light so you can see -but that's it. No shadows, no subtlety, no nothing.

In general, you should have at least 3 lights going; a keylight (your main source of light), a fill light (to illuminate the angle not covered by the keylight, but never at full power. You want a darker side on your figure but not pitch darkness! So you use a fill to fill in the darkness but at around 50% or lower) and a backlight to highlight shapes.

Depending on the environment youre shooting in, these can be simple or complex to arrange, and larger environments usually call for more lights and can get very tricky. This is why I always have my layer compositing trick to fall back on as it can sometimes be simpler to light the environment separately from the figures.

But a really nice go-to set of high quality light presets is Lantios Lights. I'll link them below. One click and instant awesome lights. Still, these are best used in outdoor environments or very large environments and can present issues in close quarters. No preset will ever work in every single situation, and lighting will always be tricky -but also always be crucial. I'll post some examples. Note: Lantios Lights presets will really look amazing, and I use them when able, but they can be tricky and make renders take a long time. Search for some tips on using them, especially killing the raytracing on hair figures, to decrease render times if you choose to use them. Personally, I couldnt live without them.)

http://www.daz3d.com/lantios-lights

Start with at least those, but he has tons for sale -just do a product search for lantios.

Lighting is everything. Take some time to learn about it, be patient, and play around with it. You'll be glad you did, its worth the time. It will take your figures from 3d model to super model ;p

(click image to see full size)

Thanks as always for the advice. I picked up 3 of the Lantios light sets to play around with. I know about the raytrace and hair trick. That really helps especially if the shot isn't all that close up.

As far as long render times, I have an ipad, MAC, another PC, Nintendo 3ds, Kindle and Nook software installed on my phone, etc....I keep myself entertained. :)

hehe well post a render here sometime, Id love to see how you used the light presets. Personally, I love Lantios' stuff, its really my go-to light set when Im not using LUX

evilded777

whispers65, I don't own the Cryo set (yet), so I can't give direct advice on lighting that prop. But going with your stated aims, I'd first like to know what lights you DO have in the posted render.

Then I am going to suggest a book: Jeremy Birn's Digital Lighting and Rendering. Between Mr Birn and the Dreamlight Club, my lighting skills have improved dramatically. The Club isn't as active as it once was, but there is still a wealth of information there and helpful people. Get some of Dreamlight's free lessons from DAZ and see if you think you could learn from the format and style, then maybe take the plunge and get one of the heftier courses (wait for a sale...).

You can get there. Its going to take time and some effort, but you can learn the tools and tricks of the trade.

whispers65

evilded777 said:

whispers65, I don't own the Cryo set (yet), so I can't give direct advice on lighting that prop. But going with your stated aims, I'd first like to know what lights you DO have in the posted render.

Then I am going to suggest a book: Jeremy Birn's Digital Lighting and Rendering. Between Mr Birn and the Dreamlight Club, my lighting skills have improved dramatically. The Club isn't as active as it once was, but there is still a wealth of information there and helpful people. Get some of Dreamlight's free lessons from DAZ and see if you think you could learn from the format and style, then maybe take the plunge and get one of the heftier courses (wait for a sale...).

You can get there. Its going to take time and some effort, but you can learn the tools and tricks of the trade.

Actually they are the default lights that came with the set. I did add point lights see at the bottom of the Cryo Chambers. Other than that I was going to "Lighten" it up as it comes out pretty dark and add some other features. I think on the default lights there is an Uber light as well as a number of spot lights.

Jaderail

Just asking, because it's a peeve of mine. You folks do know if you Quote you can EDIT all the stuff not needed. Quoting a HUGE thing to just add one line bugs me to no end. I've read it before if I'm reading the thread.

Ademnus

Jaderail said:

Just asking, because it's a peeve of mine. You folks do know if you Quote you can EDIT all the stuff not needed. Quoting a HUGE thing to just add one line bugs me to no end. I've read it before if I'm reading the thread.

Oops, sorry -half the times I mess with quotes within quotes I get a bizarre mess. I'll be more careful in future.

evilded777

whispers65 said:

Actually they are the default lights that came with the set. I did add point lights see at the bottom of the Cryo Chambers. Other than that I was going to "Lighten" it up as it comes out pretty dark and add some other features. I think on the default lights there is an Uber light as well as a number of spot lights.

OK, not going to be much help with the default lights as I don't have the set. Wondering, though... do you have Poser lights and Studio lights available with that product? Stonemason's lights can be pretty specific and very often they light the prop, and to get figures in there as well, you are going to need more lights or some other solution altogether.

Proxima Shining

sgreco1970 said:

Oops, sorry -half the times I mess with quotes within quotes I get a bizarre mess. I'll be more careful in future.

It is actually quite easy. The very first "quote author" and the very last "/quote" belong together, then the second "quote" (counted from the start ) pairs with the second "/quote" (counted from the end) etc.

whispers65

evilded777 - I do start out with the default light set included with the scene and go from there. I tried a few things last night with different lights but when I went to render the program bombed out, threw an error message and exited the program. I then tried another way, same results. So I then stripped out all lights and put in one Uber and it bombed. So by the point I was like ok, it's not going to happen tonight.

I then loaded a default scene and default light set from scratch and rendered. And I think it looks great. I like it darker for mood, although when I upload or let someone else see it then it's too dark but looks fine on my screen. I normally don't show anyone much of anything anyway. I don't have a gallery anywhere or anything like that. I like the idea of renderings to help visual my novels better and give me inspiration for others.

Looks like I'm actually going to be off this weekend for a change so I'll have time to work on it and see how far I can get.

So for the CryoChambers I've been making any lighting changes, adding figures, etc outside in their own scene. Once I think I have what I want (at least the character set up) I add it to the Cyro Environment.

So basically at this point, I'm going to work on one part of the scene at a time and then composite together and see how that goes. It's all a learning process anyway.

whispers65

ok I took a break. LOL. This is not exactly the Sci-Fi pic I was working on and definitely not perfect but it was fun. I played around with the lighting and I think it came out decent.

Mattymanx

This is an older tutorial on lighting and cameras in DS but its still relevant.

http://digilander.libero.it/maclean/DStutorial.htm

Ademnus

whispers65 said:

ok I took a break. LOL. This is not exactly the Sci-Fi pic I was working on and definitely not perfect but it was fun. I played around with the lighting and I think it came out decent.

I love it!

evilded777

Very Harry and the Henderson's, nicely done. While the lighting in this could use some work, its a far cry from awful.

How did you light this?