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I LOVE the lighting you got in that second picture- the dark shadows on the neck area but that left eye is lit up and stands out- and those surfaces! There's just the perfect amount of glossiness so it doesn't distract, but he's smooth to the touch which is unexpected for me- I think scaly is scary, but this proves smooth is MALICE!
And that drool......oh my!
I do have a newbie question on the previous post you did for me, when you answered the lighting question. You mentioned the KEY distant fill light- is that the same as a distant light? Or are you using key meaning, "Main" as in the main distant light?
Thnaks Novica
Yes I am using a Distnat Light for the Sun which is the Key light, Key meaning the main light source. Fill lights help fill out areas that are dark or in dark shadow, hence the word Fill. Then we have the other light terms like backlights, bounce and rim lights.
Yep, believe it or not (LOL) THAT I knew. (about using distant lights.) I have been using them- I just got thrown for a bit of a loop when you said the key distant light- and I thought, "Uh oh...did I miss something- again?" I even went to Create to see if it was in the dropdown! (STOP LAUGHING!)
As a general rule, people will refer to lights as a combination of standard photographic terminology and 3D lights as done here. The key light can be a distant light, mesh light, or closeup light such as spot. Technically one could use point light as a key light but this isn't common as it wouldn't work well in most situations (but there are exceptions.)
Fill lights can also be any of the above, including point, but is often a mesh light in more advanced setups due to it's soft effect that is often desirable in a fill situation. A fill can be a reflective surface however, no actual light at all (both irl and in 3D.)
Other concepts in lighting are in standard tutorials on lighting, but these I thought worth mentioning as they can be confusing to some.
Another quick tip for people new to lighting, some form of ambient light is often helpful and many people use UberEnvironment for this. Generally, the ambient is just a type of 'fill' as the shadows are non-directional for the most part. Even the 'with directional shadows' setting in UE is not really the type of directional shadows most people think of, but is rather small shadowing in the cracks and crevices of things. If one uses just UE the image will look flat, so start at about 20% for UE if using basic white and use at least a key light with shadows (preferably raytraced.) Night presets and anything using a color map will drastically reduce the UE ambient so one can easily crank it up, to 100% in many cases.
The Key light should be set to Shadowed, with softness desired. I generally use raytraced on all key lights. The fill lights are often set to no shadows if just providing fill as it will save on render time and the mix of shadows from them and the key are often not what one wants. Point lights or area lights for things like flames, bulbs etc.. often need to be set to raytraced shadows or they will bleed through solid objects and the image will look very strange. This is often an area of lighting problems, these types of lights without shadows. The shadows can be turned down, softened... if one wants but they usually need to be on to prevent light leaks.
Final note, when using UE, light leaks due to small geometry issues in the base mesh will sometimes show up when they didn't using standard lighting. I've had to build a 'shell' around props at times to block this.
Novica Nope never laughed but got a smile from the post as a whole. I forget sometimes and as Jaderail says I go in geek mode. And I was just being comlete with my meaning to cover all bases, But as Gedd followed this up with breaking it down further, well said Gedd.
Gedd thanks for that most excelent post. Top stuff.
It's been a bit but we both masters of GEEK SPEAK when folks need a simple answer. I'll let you have the Title of Geek. I'm trying for full blown Nerd. Pretty sure I can get it before long.
Nerd I thought you were there already..Yeah ok I am happy with geek Pete the Geek (insert appropriate smilie here)
Okay, I passed nerd along time ago, I'm after Leonard's title of King of the Nerds. Maybe then I can find me a Penny.
LOL Now that went straight over my head. Who?
While making another tutorial recently I thought of this idea, well I did have the words “I love you” in my head from Dreamlight’s theme this month too so that probably had something to do with it.
Using Stonemason’s Planet Lava I stripped out most of the Geometry (PC memory issue) and deleted all the lights except the Sun and Specular Only Sun (both Distant Lights).
Added Uber Environment 2 set to the 4 Hi Quality Preset using the light colour channel only (no HDRI map) set to a light orange at 40% using Occlusion with Soft Shadows. Occlusion Strength 75% and Maximum Trace Distance 25.00.
Then Two Point lights set to a light pale blue at 1500% Intensity with Ray Traced Shadows, Shadow Bias 0.10 and placed them up high either side of the bots.
The glowing parts of the Bot have Uber Area Lighting applied as too did the Lava Lake, I was happy to see Stonemason made the Lava Lake a separate mesh as that made it easy to apply Area lighting to it. I wasn’t sure how it would look but placing the texture map in to the Area Light Colour channel worked a treat. Set the Fall Off End to 500.00 at a guess and left it at that.
Postwork consisted of
Auto Contrast which didn’t change at all.
Unsharp Mask
50%
Radius 5 pixels
Threshold Levels 10
Slight tweak of the colour curves but nothing drastic
Rendered an Ambient glow only layer by turning off all lights and rendering. This will only work with at least one light, turned off, in the scene as the Preview light will engage when you render. Any surface that glows will render, everything else will be black. I then blurred this layer 5% and set it too screen overlaying atop of the main render layer. I then duplicated this blurred layer and blurred it some more 10%. That process gives a nice bloom.
Using a couple of Masks I added some smoke to the background and some to the foreground. The smoke in the foreground is so subtle you might not even notice it but side by side with the raw render and you would see it.
Oh the next stage was to add Uber Surface to the shinny bot to get a better metal look, instead of the plastic look it has now. But as soon as I tried to render I was left looking at my desktop.
That is some beautiful lighting my friend, and a great image :)
AWESOME work Pete. Thanks for the share. And the references from before was from The Big Bang Theory. The TV Sitcom about Uber Nerds.
Thanks Gedd and Jaderail, Jad yes I get you now...I have watched that comedy a few times in the past. Very funny too
Just playing about with Uber Surface and the anisotropic effects, specular 2 etc on nearly every surface here. I did some post work sharpness, just a touch, made a lot of masks as I had to render this in two layers and then composite in Photoshop which let me get the purple in. To be honest the background was an afterthought as I was only playing with Uber Surface.
Just love the Detail in Stonemason's Mech 2012 Enforcer http://www.daz3d.com/mech-2012-enforcer
I am more interested in what you think about the surfaces of the Mech more that the image itself. This is lit with two area light discs and Uber Environment 2 on IDL. This will always give soft specular given both are diffuse light but I didn't want a sparkly, shiny surface anyway, but something that looked metal, or not. LOL
I did the default render after the Uber Surface render and it surprised me the difference. But to be fair the walkway, GIS LINK btw, I took the textures in to Photoshop and used a Hue, Saturation filter as a layer to adjust the darkness and colour and then copied that adjustment layer in to the other GIS maps. Made then a charcoal black.
Really really awesome! The difference is amazing.
A quick question, How much longer did the uber surface take to render?
Well for the
Default Surface Render - 3 hours
Uber Surface - 30 hours
BUT this is on an old machine with very little processing power and DS3A AND I had seriously high quality settings for UBer Environemnt 2 AND Area lighting which always takes longer.
Example I am doing another render now same UE2 settings and two Uber Spots in the same places as the Area Discs were and so far it has taken 2 and a half hours to render 50%. Using the exact same Uber Surface settings.
Why Spots? These willl give better specular highlights at the same intensity settings as the Area Discs. Call it an excercise. :- )
I am sure DS4.5/6 will be faster.
That is a big difference, but honestly the result is worth it.
Will have to learn more about uber surfaces.
Well I had to play and put it in a proper scene. Thanks to some advice this image went from crap to pop in one move. Thanks Bruce.
Here I used six Uber point lights, three distant lights, one Uber Spot light and Uber Environment 2, using the night preset with some adjustments AoA's Atmospheric Camera, Uber Volume for the Laser beam. Mood Master for DS3 as I used DS3A to make this.
My homage to Stonemason's products, cool stuff.
LOVE it- and the depth of field adds so much to it!
Thx Novica I got some more advice from a good friend of mine, Bruce, and I think pulling the blue back a bit works better.
Nice one Szark ! really don't want to run into that one I must admit *grins*
It's a pussy cat really just hold out some WD40 and he will be putty in your hands.
I really should have added this was done in DS3A using a number of tricks and rendering different layers for compositing in Photoshop. Two reasons 1; PC memory and CPU power issues (as in not enough of both) and 2; I have more control, doing layers, in Photoshop than having to re-render the image again. I used AOA Atmo cams, Dreamlight's Mood Master 2, Uber Volume for the laser beam inside a cylinder parented to the Laser pointer on the Mech. The muzzle flashes, same thing props parented to the guns. Fire I used Jack Tomalin’s fire prop for the Library. I also added two planes and applied two flame maps made by using Ron's Fire Brushes and making transmaps for them both. They were then placed behind the Mech. The fire rendered taller as they are shown here as the smoke and spark postwork started to block out the upper parts of the flames which for me worked in my favour. TIP: Don't be afraid to lose detail for effect. The smoke was built up of many layers, parts erased where I hadn't made Masks. Some smoke layers have an orange to red tinge at the base to give the illusion of fire light.
If there is enough interest I can make a tut on how I made the last image. But it is a lot of work so the interest needs to be there. But if people think that image was not that good then I suppose it wouldn't help much if I did a walkthrough. I am just saying.
Just to give you some idea these two are renders straight out of Daz Studio 3A (The second image is minus the Mood Master layers). Apart from Mood Master 2 you can do this in Daz Studio 4.0 +.
I have to agree with the blue being downplayed- the main object is so powerful that it draws the eye even with the muted hue/tone. Lots of work on this one my friend!
Yeah I agree Novica thanks. As for the Mech standing, just shows what one spot light can do to make the world of difference.
Yeah thanks to Laticis for a few tips I am very happy with myself at the moment. Maybe not everyones preference but for me this was so much fun to make. I haven't had that much fun making an image for a while,well until recently. I like postwork, but I also like getting close with the final render. But as it stands now I am better doing layers. I am trying to learn more about Photoshop too. When I get a new PC I will be trying renders that won't need much postwork.
Zac Parrish on 3dbuzz.com- check out his photoshop videos (up to number 24 are free) but I think you are past video 24. He is SUCH a good video instructor- sadly, he left. We subscribe and have all 94 videos.
Off to check 3dbuzz.com out Novica thank you.
Like my previous image this has had a lot of postwork in Photoshop but again the light rays were rendered as a layer. Again I used Stonemason’s products One Tree Hill, Castle Ruins and a bit from his Modern Ruins 1. Been wanting to do a dragon image for a while...I feel better now.
Rendered in Daz Studio 3A. Uber Environment 2 and one Uber Spot light is the only lighting. But I did render an ambient light only layer for Photoshop to brighten the shadows a touch.
*squeels* I posted a comment over at DA, and if I could fave a image here I surely would with this one. Was a instant fave over there *smiles and hugs before giving a cake for a good job*