Ring of Light Lux - Environment Lighting for LuxRender (Commercial)

InaneGlory

http://www.daz3d.com/ring-of-light-lux-environment-lighting-for-luxrender/
$12.95 On Sale for: $9.07
Enveloped in realism, the Ring of Light Lux is a bridge between two worlds: the realistic, real-world based lighting of LuxRender and the simple, easy to use and adjusted world of the original Ring of Light. The Ring of Light Lux is an all-in-one area light based environment lighting solution for LuxRender. The original Ring of Light was optimized for both DAZ Studio and Poser. Now the new Ring of Light Lux meshes seamlessly between DAZ Studio and LuxRender via the Luxus Plugin. Ring of Light Lux is a fully functioning stand-alone product designed and optimized for LuxRender, while still maintaining the status as a fully functioning DAZ Studio area light. Access between DAZ Studio and LuxRender requires the Luxus Plugin.

A User Guide is included with the lights

scorpio

Awesome Lighting set.

Added a point light for the lantern

InaneGlory

Beautiful render Scorpio!

Just to be clear on this, the original Ring of Light included both lights and background sky textures for both DAZ Studio and Poser but the LuxRender version is only lights, no background sky textures are includes. Why? I would have liked to but LuxRender really hates stuff like sky background or sky domes. The results you get are either unusable or unacceptable so, unfortunately, the sky textures ended up getting dropped from the Lux Ring entirely.

scorpio

Thanks - I really enjoy this light set for Lux its so easy to set up and get good results with.

glaseye

Love those images, esp that last one with the (main) light coming from the side.....

It is indeed easy to get good results 'out of the box', but don't let that stop you to experiment!
Don't forget that Luxrender itself also has some very nice options to fine tune your lighting.
(And also keep in mind that no matter how good the lighting is done, Luxrender requires a very delicate material setup for best results, something I've still got to learn.)

In this image I used a more or less 'out of the box' light preset from the set.
In luxrender, the Black Body Temperature was set to 5500 and the Film Response setting set to Kodak Portra 100T.
DoF was enabled

Rayman29

Are cameras parented to the lights?

InaneGlory

I'm assuming you mean parenting the area lights to cameras so that you can move the area lights around and point them easier?

No, I haven't done that here. In general that is a very good tactic for creating a more visual way of moving your average area light around, but the Ring of Light is anything but average and that technique won't work here. The Ring of Light is literally exactly what its name implies. Its a huge (2km diameter, 1 km tall) ring that surrounds your scene. This single ring is then subdivided into 36 different materiel zones, each of which is its own area light but each of these lights 'panels' are all still part of one single physical object so they can't be moved individually.

Rayman29

I was hoping you would have said yes. Great implementation though.

Rifful

Would this work in conjunction with a skydome that was made for Luxrender like a Reality background? What would you recommend for skiesto use with this light set?

scorpio

Have to agree with Glaseye2, I'm still struggling with material setups for Lux, although a lot of things transfer over very well.

I also have too much fun playing with the lights and different settings while the render is going on.

InaneGlory

cjdean said:

Would this work in conjunction with a skydome that was made for Luxrender like a Reality background? What would you recommend for skiesto use with this light set?

I've never seen a 'skydome' for LuxRender. There are quite a few products that use an infinite light and an HDR image that works as both a light source and a background image. You could use one of those and turn down the gain on the infinite light once your in LuxRender. Or you could do the same thing with a LuxRender Sun/Sky light. Or you could simply post-work in any background of your choice once you finish rendering.

InaneGlory

scorpio64dragon said:

Have to agree with Glaseye2, I'm still struggling with material setups for Lux, although a lot of things transfer over very well.

I also have too much fun playing with the lights and different settings while the render is going on.

Generally I've been finding that Luxus auto-converts UberSurface (or UberSurface2) better than it converts the default DS shader
Most of the time :)

One thing I've found lately is to manually convert most of your non-living/non-organic/non-glossy painted (like building, roads, boxes, etc.) items to LuxRender Matte while your still in DS. Tell it to copy your DS settings and then plug in the specular map (or bump if no specular) into the LuxRender Matte - Sigma channel. Set the sigma value to 30. You'll probably have to re-adjust the bump map value as Luxus never does this very well. LuxRender uses only one bump value for both positive and negative bump with a value of 1 meaning 1 meter. I usually set that at 1 or 2 millimeters (0.001-0.002) I did that to all of the castle in the 1st post and just about all of the background elements in these two promos

dpm316

This light set is great. Any chance for a Reality version? Unfortunately, renaming the light to RealityLight doesn't work.

Peace \/
dpm316

InaneGlory

dpm316 said:

This light set is great. Any chance for a Reality version? Unfortunately, renaming the light to RealityLight doesn't work.

Peace \/
dpm316

If you rename each material zone to RealityLight_01, RealityLight_02 etc. for all 36 material zones that should let Reality see each of these as an individual light source. From there you'll need to set up each light's power and efficacy manually in the Reality interface for each of the 36 lights and that should get you going in LuxRender via Reality.

dpm316

Thanks. I renamed all the surfaces, but then soon realized that the efficacy in Reality maxes at 220. :(

Peace \/
dpm316