How to simulate bouncing/reflected light in a scene?

SpyroRue

How do you tell get Daz to simulate reflected/bounced light (off the walls, floor, ceiling, objects etc) in a scene? I've been working on completely enclosed sets (interior rooms) and lighting it and the figures inside it is a nightmare. In 3ds max it does it by default and I haven't a clue how to make it happen in DAZ. Is there a setting somewhere that needs to be enabled?

Cayman Studios

Well, the simple answer is to just use a couple of Distant Lights as fill lights, with the shadows turned off, at about 20-40% intensity. I'm sure that's not the answer you're looking for - but it'll get the ball rolling!

Peter Wade

Daz Studio doesn't have a built in indirect light option like Poser and other 3D aplications.

You can simulate this using the UberEnvironment light that is included with Studio 4.6 Pro (it's in Lights:UberEnvironment in the library). This illuminates objects from all directions, I don't think it works out how light is reflected in the scene but it does do ambient occlusion which works out how objects have their ambient light blocked by other objects. You can also apply image based lighting maps to it.

You can also use low intensity shadowless distant lights as Cayman suggests. This is probably less accurate but usually renders faster. UberEnvironment has quality settings which allow you to set the balance between speed and quality, but the fast settings tend to produce very spotty lighting.

Richard Haseltine

uberEnvironment has a bounce/indirect light mode -though it is generally pretty slow. You can even create caustic lights in DS, though it involves using Shader Mixer for light, surface and camera.

SpyroRue

Ah, that's a shame. I've never tried the fill light idea before but will certainly have a try out of curiosity. I have used allot of uber environment, and I find its fantastic for pin-up or studio style renders that simply only has a backdrop prop and the character/ or no backdrop at all. But I haven't particularly liked the results with interior sets/rooms. I'm really surprised Daz doesn't have indirect lighting built in. It's essential for realistic lighting/shadows. Not to worry I guess. Thanks for the info Cayman and Peter :)

Machieltje

I think UberEnvironment GI is supposed to do just that but at render times close to infinity I'm not sure you'd want to use it. Now before the Lux crowd floods in; Lux does this out of the box however it does not support the 3Delight shaders so you's have to tweak your mats yourself or rely on the plug in (Luxus or reality) to convert the mats for you...

There's also an indirect light camera but exatly what it's supposed to do I'm not sure as I've not been getting the results I exxpeted in any of my experiments.

Edit: I meant of course Bounce and not GI :red:

SpyroRue

Richard Haseltine said:

uberEnvironment has a bounce/indirect light mode -though it is generally pretty slow. You can even create caustic lights in DS, though it involves using Shader Mixer for light, surface and camera.

I haven't heard of caustic lights before, would that mean all surfaces would require a specific shader? I tend to use a mix of shaders in any scene: Ds defaults, HSS and now AoA SSS

@ Mac , that has crossed my mind, and allot of people are making beautiful renders there, the set back is I'd need to learn and create the shaders, re create materials and I'd loose compatibility with curve based hair (garibaldi hair) or at least I'd have to export the hair to obj format. Hmmm ill play around more with uber environment for now and see if I can get results.

Maybe some day Daz studio will have IDL, surely it's not a render engine constraint.

Many thanks all :)

Rareth

Spyro, you can use Shader Mixer light to do what you need along with a shader mixer camera, they're not hard to set up, and you can get the effect you need.

Red cube inside a white cube, Shader Mixer spotlight (with shadows) and Shader Mixer Camera with photon mapping.

Renpatsu

UberEnvironment2 with point cloud rendering can be pretty fast actually, even in the bounce/indirect light modes, but it needs some getting used to with regards to the settings.

Rareth

Spyro said:

Richard Haseltine said:

uberEnvironment has a bounce/indirect light mode -though it is generally pretty slow. You can even create caustic lights in DS, though it involves using Shader Mixer for light, surface and camera.

I haven't heard of caustic lights before, would that mean all surfaces would require a specific shader? I tend to use a mix of shaders in any scene: Ds defaults, HSS and now AoA SSS

@ Mac , that has crossed my mind, and allot of people are making beautiful renders there, the set back is I'd need to learn and create the shaders, re create materials and I'd loose compatibility with curve based hair (garibaldi hair) or at least I'd have to export the hair to obj format. Hmmm ill play around more with uber environment for now and see if I can get results.

Maybe some day Daz studio will have IDL, surely it's not a render engine constraint.

Many thanks all :)

you only need the caustics shader on what would actually CAUSE the caustic effect. In the sample scene only the DAZ logo and Letters have a caustic shader applied, the Plane where the effect shows up does not.. you also need a shader mixer light (they cast photons) and the shader mixer IDL camera with caustics and photon mapping nodes.

SpyroRue

Rareth said:

Spyro, you can use Shader Mixer light to do what you need along with a shader mixer camera, they're not hard to set up, and you can get the effect you need.

Red cube inside a white cube, Shader Mixer spotlight (with shadows) and Shader Mixer Camera with photon mapping.

Oooo Thats exactly what I'm after!

Is there a tutorial somewhere on this? I'd like to learn it :)

Rareth

Spyro said:

Rareth said:

Spyro, you can use Shader Mixer light to do what you need along with a shader mixer camera, they're not hard to set up, and you can get the effect you need.

Red cube inside a white cube, Shader Mixer spotlight (with shadows) and Shader Mixer Camera with photon mapping.

Oooo Thats exactly what I'm after!

Is there a tutorial somewhere on this? I'd like to learn it :)

actually its even easier than I originally posted, what you need is just the IDL camera, I ran a test with just that and standard DAZ light and it worked

just go to Shader Mixer, Click File, New Shader. in the window that opens in the drop down select Camera and name it

right click in the shader mixer click insert -> Bricks (default) -> roots -> Lights -> Indirect Light (Camera)

then click Create.

nothing else needed to make an IDL camera

Rareth

Voila!! DAZ Caustics..

Note: this was the sample caustics scene, I changed the DAZ Letters and Logo to Glass, tweaked render settings for a better image, and changed the photon material in caustics from glass back to chrome (better reflections back onto the plane, since I'm not trying to get refracted light through the glass in this particular scene... and it came out better.)

SpyroRue

That is Awesome! Thank you so much :cheese:

Even saved the IDL Cam Shader for use.

I'll play around and no doubt post some renders soon.

Thanks again!

Nice glass material/shader btw

Rareth

Spyro said:

That is Awesome! Thank you so much :cheese:

Even saved the IDL Cam Shader for use.

I'll play around and no doubt post some renders soon.

Thanks again!

You're welcome :-)

have fun with it.

Takeo.Kensei

There are video tutorials on Youtube for caustics

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwCHxSTlOQo&list=PL2AA23F4C9E543CF6
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2lwC6HHTrU

SpyroRue

Takeo.Kensei said:

There are video tutorials on Youtube for caustics

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwCHxSTlOQo&list=PL2AA23F4C9E543CF6
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2lwC6HHTrU

Cool, Thanks Takeo!

Peter Wade

I've had a go with the IDL camera. It looks interesting but I did have a problem with it. I sometimes get a few random coloured squares appearing on renders. But the IDL camera renders I have tried have masses of these coloured squares on them, far too many to fix with a bit of postwork.

And the IDL camera does not play nicely with the Human Surface Shader. I tried a scene with G2F Roxi with her HSS shaders and she came out in bright colours. Is this a bug or is the IDL camera only compatible with some types of shaders on objects?

I am attaching a render of Roxi in a lift (an elevator if you are American) done with the IDL camera and HSS shaders.

Takeo.Kensei

Use raytraced shadows on your lights. It seems you used deep shadow maps

Peter Wade

Thanks for the tip, Takeo.Tensai. Using raytraced shadows got rid of the coloured squares. It also fixed the textures on Roxi which I wasn't expecting. I don't see how changing the way the shadows are worked out would affect the light being reflected from the objects. But then using a shader mixer to create a camera seems weird to me. It just shows that I don't really understand this stuff very well.

SpyroRue

Its all new to me in regards to the shader mixer... Check out Takeo's video links, They're very informative. It also explains the bloches you are seeing in your render, and she demonstrates making it high quality so the blotches are gone. I never use deep shadow maps anymore, ray trace is far more accurate, not to mention its common for deepshadow maps to cause render artifacts especially in detailed scenes (Red, Blue, Yellow pixels all over the place) But also that Sub Surface shaders kinda require Ray Trace else you end up with strange glowing areas on the skin (notably the face)