Self-glow and Radiosity in DS4.6Pro
NoxCruor
Posts: 0
So I'm working on a render now, and I'm using the Mysterious Cave with Water. I've been wracking my brain for the past two days to figure out how to make the water emit a glow effect with radiosity. My goal is to add the glow, but also to use it as a bounce light on a character that is thigh-deep in the water. I've gone through the 3D lighting tutorials that I have, but can't seem to make it work.
Can anybody help? Where/how can I make the water emit light? Where do I enable radiosity?
Thanks!
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Have you tried turning the water surface itself into an uberarea?
Library > Light Presets > Omnifreaker >Uberarea
Ctrl+double click > ignore maps > ok.
Szark's mega thread/tutorial: http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/14536/
I have not. I was trying to use Dreamlight's training tutorials to help me create this effect. But I will certainly try this!
You won't get Radiosity from Area Lighting as Radiosity is more a global lighting effect which natively DAZ3D does have built in. But doing your way it will fake light bouncing upward.
If you just want indirect lighting, or bounce lighting, uberEnvironment will give you that.
Yes IDL will give you colour bleeding from one surface to another but it still isn't Radiosity. UE2 with the GI (Global Illumination) is about as good as it gets without making your own lighting in the Shader Mixer etc.
Ok, so let me explain what I'm trying to do here....that might help, because with everything I'm reading, I'm starting to get confused and perhaps a little overwhelmed.
I have the Mysterious Cave with water. The doors I've changed out and added two sconces on either side. My model is thigh deep in the water, quite a bit away from the doors and off to one of the sides in order to add depth. My camera is low, angled upwards where the new doors are on the left third of the image, while the model is on the right third.
My goal is to add a glow to the water. The glow will spread up the model and also supply small amounts of lighting along the banks of the water. I'd like the light to have a radiosity effect in order to light the rest of the cavern (or at least the walls) but I don't think that will be possible without amping up the intensity tremendously which would overpower the lighting on the model. So I am thinking I might have a low intensity of the water to keep the soft glow and shadows on the model, and I can use background lighting on the walls of the cavern, along with an overall light to help decrease the darkness/shadows in the rest of the image.
I also plan to have a light coming out of the doorway, possibly using it to help direct the attention towards the model, though since it will be behind her, it may add a kind of aura effect?
On the model I'm thinking that I will keep the basic three light set up (key, fill, and back) and since it would be brighter than the rest of the image, it should draw the eyes to that point.
So I guess part of my question is - does this sound like it would work? Or does it sound too complicated? Since you can't have radiosity in DS, but can try to duplicate the effect, would what I'm thinking work to produce this effect?
Or am I just confused?
If I'm reading this right, you want the sconces and the doorway to be your primary lighting, and for the water to act as like a light bouncer reflecting the light into the rest of the cave?
Well....not really. The light coming out of the doorway and the sconces would add a sense of realism, and I would be using the light to almost point to the model. If that makes any sense. I planned on illuminating the sconces like you did with the bridge, and adding a point light inside the doorway to imitate torches lighting the way down into the cave.
Does this make sense?
You could try the New Neon Shaders and adjust to the best you can get. I've not managed to get a water plane to do well for me as a Area light. It works as a light fine, but not so much as water anymore.
I don't have the set you're trying to do this with, so I can't reproduce it in testing.
This is just 2 cylinders, one white, one red. First Bastion's Breaking Waves, with his shaders in both the water and the dark underwater area.
The first image has 2 point lights, one between the columns above the water and one below, and a UE2 sphere set to GI Bounce Light.
The second image still uses the UE2 GI Bounce, but uses FB's included light setup instead of point lights.
Hmm...those images actually really help. It makes me think that I'm going to want to actually put an area light under the water and have it facing up.
That's what I'm rendering out right now. I think our thoughts synced for a few minutes. lol I'm using a giant plane as an uberarea with default settings just under the water surface.
That sounds like it might work. But to get the effect, it would probably have to be pretty large. If that's the case, wouldn't the intensity have to be dialed way up? Also, would we want the opasity to also be turned down to 0% so you don't see the light? Just curious. I should be heading back to my tent here shortly so I can also play with this idea.
Here's an idea for radiosity (*EDIT* MIMICKED radiosity...faking that natural bounce) - to get the effect to also hit the walls, what about along the edge of the water, placing another uberarea plane canted at 45deg towards the outside set to project far enough to where the falloff is pretty distant and hits the lower parts of the outer wall. All that would then be needed to add enough lighting is an overall light, and then the typical lighting that you would need for your character.
Thanks for all the help!
Here's another test, without an uberarea, and the scene view to show it. All 3 lights are linear points and the far rear one has a falloff end that extends beyond the camera. I added and scaled just a basic plane and used FirstBastion's water shader on it. You can see the red checkerboard pattern from the floor just slightly through it. There is UE2 sphere, with the environment sphere part hidden and it's set to Bounce. As you can see, I am getting a somewhat lit area along the bottom of the walls where it meets the water, which is most likely caused by a reflection of the wall itself.
Keep in mind that multiple dark surfaces most likely won't color bleed onto each other, either. I get better results with lighter surfaces accepting colors.
This was the only set I could think of offhand which mimicked an enclosed space with a door. lol
The render itself is using the 'proof' setting from AMR's render settings scripts, and I knocked up the ray trace depth to 4 for the hell of it. lol
I did load an uberarea, but just to get that headlamp blocker- I deleted the actual light.
Looks like you are in good hands...I will leave them to it. Good Luck
Oh, yea, sure, because I COMPLETELY know what I'm doing. :gulp:
LOL
Well from what i can see Vask you have a good grasp of things and I have found too much input from too many people can confuse the situation. Plus I am on holiday for a while to recharge the batteries and have some me time.
Thanks. :) I have to admit though, I have to give FirstBastion a lot of credit. I use and abuse the water shader from Breaking Waves any time I need water. Now if only the Poser version of that came with a water shader. >.<</p>
Enjoy the you time, too! Hopefully you time means render time. :P
Geezus I'm an idiot. There's a 'glow' shader in the shader builder that can be used easily to fake this. I forgot about the builder.
Forget the uberarea under the water, delete it, call it plenty of names as you kick it's butt out the door. lol
Create a plane just above the water surface, and select the plane in the surfaces tab.
Now go to Window > Pane > Shader Builder (not Mixer)
Extend Surface and go to Renderman Companion. Right click on Glow > Apply to selected surface(s).
The higher the attenuation, the less the amount of glow is produced.
Opacity just makes the glow more see through.
You do still need the UE2 set to bounce for this to work properly, otherwise everything comes in really dark.
I set the diffuse color of my water and the glow plane to the same color just so they blend together easier.
I also put the raytrace depth back down to 2. Putting it on 4 was killing my render time on the hair area.
In my shot, none of the glass in the doors are shaded with glass shaders, either. So I'm not getting any reflections/light bouncing through them atm.
Interesting, I'm going to have to try this when I get back to the tent. Does it still work if the item is submerged?
You're not going to need it submerged, as you can see it's completely invisible other than the glow from it, but in the interest of testing, it didn't work underwater in my experiments.
/edit
Also, in your case because of the shape of the prop, you can probably use a flattened torus rather than a plane.
Well bother. I wonder why it won't work under the water no matter what we do.
Ok, crazy newbie question...how can you create a torus?
Profanity edited out by a Moderator
The glow isn't an uberarea, so it's going to work completely different. The uberarea does work under water. It's only a slight illumination, but doing side by sides of renders that have it versus the same render that doesn't, there is a difference.
Create > primitive > torus. You'll have to do the scaling/flattening manually. The other option is adding in a 2nd water prop from the set and using that as the glow surface. Then it's the exact same shape as the prop water.
Same scene using AoA's Atmospheric Cameras (the fog) with the haze setting. Moved the girl behind the rear pointlight too.
Since the camera introduces the haze, the water is really brightened up as the lighting is bouncing off of the haze effect also.
Ok, wow. This water is resistant to everything for some reason. I decided that to get the best effect, I should probably have a 2nd water, opacity turned all the way down, and try and slap on the urban area light.
Here's what I did:
I selected the 2nd water, and went to the surfaces tab. I expanded what I could, and clicked on Diffuse on the left side of the pane. I then held down ctrl, and double clicked. I made sure that the pop up window said "Selected" and "Ignore". I ended up trying it multiple times with it saying "Replace" and still got nothing.
I had changed the parameters on the Diffuse strength to go as high as 50,000, and even had it turned all the way up and didn't get any results. I also adjusted the Intensity to be the same, and still got no where.
I turned Fall Off On, made sure it didn't go higher than 50, changed the shadow color to a dark grey like recommended and made the Shadow Intensity to 90%. Because the Diffuse Color also has a map on it, I even tried removing the map, changing the color, and still didn't get anywhere.
Just to make sure my uberarea works, I did it with a torus, and I saw something interesting. Only the inside of the torus lights up. The outside doesn't.
So my question is how do you reverse this? I'm wondering if the water is the same thing. The water might be a similar type mesh where it lights up inside the water, but the light doesn't project outwards.
Thoughts?
1: Area Light doesn't use the Diffsue channel to emit light so raising it won't do anything to help. It uses the Intensity Setting further down in the Surfaces Pane for light.
If you are wanting something to glow then you need to turn on the Ambient Channel and give it some strength. But my tutorail explains all this so I am wondering, still even after reading the two pages, what you are wanting to do or what effect you are after.
Fall off at 50 is 50 cm, just over a foot and a half, which means it will only be at full intensity for a short distance before falling off to nothing. Inverse Square Law applies here.
Torus should emit light outward in DS4.6 all the time. I think what you saw was the light emitting and lighting up the centre.
So remember to get a glowing object you use Ambient, if you want something to Glow and to Emit light then you need to turn on Ambient after appliying Area Light Base. Light doesn't mean Glow in DS4.6.
Also a nice trick is to put the Diffuse texture map in to the Ambient Colour Channel, leaving the Colour bar white and adjusting the Ambient Strength.
Ok, I think I see where the problem is here. I think it's been my lack of proper vocabulary. So let me start over.
I'm wanting to take the water and have it emit light in all directions. Similar to a linear point light where the fall off can be controlled. The goal is when a model is standing in the water, the model has light coming from the bottom, but at the same time, the water's light extends to the banks/shore.
Fall off - I did not know that it was measured in cm. This makes total and complete sense now.
Torus - what I did was create a box that was 5mx5mx5m. I placed a 2m torus inside the box and placed a camera inside. I kept the box white so that I could notice any light that would show up. After that, I added the uberarea light to the torus. You're right, the center space did have light in it projected from the interior of the torus when I increased the intensity of the lighting. However, the outer portions of the torus and along the base of the cube, even to about halfway up the cube's interior, remained dark. So I'm wondering how to make the entire torus emit light?
Am I making sense now?
I see what you're saying, as I'm getting a black band around the box. I'm not sure how to fix that other than turning shadows off on the uberarea completely.
For the image on the right though, I set it the ambient color the same color as the light and turned the ambient strength down to 50%.
Fantom ON, Shadows Active OFF
Problem with this, is nothing in your scene will throw shadows on the walls, either.
Try an area light disc, scale it as necessary, and set X-Rotate to 180 so it points upwards.
Here's a cube, an uberarea disc, and a plane with a water shader. The disc is 1 point above the ground, the plane is 15. I turned fantom on, and raytracing and accept shadows off on the uberarea disc so it wouldn't interact with the scene (I've seen to turn those off with invisible uberarea lighting).
I didn't bother changing the color of the water, but the disc is completely submerged under the plane.