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I have successfully reduced the render time on Lonely Dawn to where I'm currently 62% in less than 2 hours. So I am not aboandoning it but I have perservered in trying to improve my mastery (or rid myself of complete ineptitude) in the art of lighting. I sat down and went to all the websites, forums, and Daz manual pages that I seem to use every time I need to light a scene and made myself a tutorial (yea, I actually did...I want to be able to reference what I taught myself when I forget it next time) on making mesh lights from primitives. So here is my second image cuz I needed something to make me feel that I'm doing lighting not render troubleshooting this month. This is rendered in Daz with iRay. The only Postwork was smudging an annoying firefly off her bottom lip. It is lit only by 6 emissive primitives most of which are inches from the figure and one spotlight hitting her right hip to give me a strong rim.
Trinity Advent
I thank all of you for your valuable input. I tried to improve my render following your hints. Here is version 2.
@ariochsnowpaw
I created bump maps for the sleeves and the underskirt to generate a touch of fabric micro structure, plus a normal map for the sleeves to create some more soft wrinkles. First I tried to mimic silk, but as the structure is so fine, it is invisible from this distance. So what I could do is add reflections, but they disturbed the ones of the vest / overskirt, so I went for a plain fabric structure. I like the result on the sleeves. Perhaps the fabric looks a little bit coarse now, but if I soften it or increase the tiling, the effect of the bump map becomes invisble. The skirt though lost a bit of its sharp contrast that matched the rather chilly and almost a bit unreal atmosphere. I think I liked the plain version, but I let the jury decide :)
@dtrscbrutal
Very well observed! This is the VRay render engine. Creamy light, shadows and volumetrics :) I arranged the scene in DS and exported it.
There were two small shadows on her chest that might have looked a bit unrelated. One next to her right wrist, coming from the collar, and another one at the neckline. I got rid of both of them. It really looks cleaner now.
I used a lightly emissive effect on the environment fog, to soften it. In the render engine, I applied bloom, glare and DOF. Still render times were very bareable, about 45 minutes for ~ 3K by 4K resolution. Because I suck at post processing, I did everything in the render engine, except a final little fine tuning of contrast.
@Kismet2012
Thank you! What a fine but important detail, how could I not notice that. I changed the diffuse map of the leaves to match them better with the environment. To me it looks much better now. Should the leaves be a bit brighter, too? Or a bit transparent? I don't think so, that would perhaps look unnatural.
I made some more minor material adjustments and cranked up render quality to account for the lighting conditions and the environment fog.
Edit: I can't upload the new version. Though the transmission is done, I still see "Uploading..." forever. I will try another day.
Edit2:
Not an Entry
@Fisherman_B - Genius is often compromised by practicality. It would seem the limitations of the bump map have made my suggestion a poor one. I do like the texture but I will have to side with your thinking...the original version gave a crisper, colder feel to the skirt. The pleats seem too soft now although I love the shoulders and arms. Pulling the green out of the upper right does help keep my eye from wandering there...hadn't noticed it until I compared them. Very nice render...sorry I messed up your skirt.
alright I moved the figure a bit to the left and added a (very) subtle light. I had a bit of a challange finding the balance between to hard to notice and messing with the blinds themselves though.
@no nose
Try lowering the Lumen on the main light which will soften the shadows from the blind.
tried messing around, but I found I wasnt really able to do that without making the scene to dark / the shadows to light.
@no nose
Use Tone Mapping to adjust for the light difference in the scene.
Very elegant pose, very nice materials! I think I can see your direction. After some minor tweaking of the lights (intensity!), you should have something like this:
Edit: Her arms are a bit problematic in combination with the lights from the sides, as they can't reach her face.
That's a great idea for a picture!
My first thoughts were - What is blindfold, what is shutter, what is clothing? A bit irritating. It's great though if this is your intention!
Our eyes are the most important spot in our face. If you blindfold her, you can perhaps emphasize something else by moving the shutter vertically and increasing the light intensity? Is there something you want to emphasize?
Edit:
Sorry, your update came while I was typing ;)
To change the appearance of the shadows, you can play with the distance between the shutter and the light source, and the directionality (does this word exist?) of the light source.
Hey, no worries :) Nothing is messed up. I am glad to try out things and follow your hints. I think I will render a third version with the initial skirt and the changed sleeves. Or perhaps only a very very subtle bump map on the skirt.
tried that, it seems to mess with the colors a bit to much for some reason.
yeah it's supposed to be like a blindfold over the eyes, and messing with the distance doesn't seem to really change the apperanace besides size
What type of light do you use or try?
the lighting setup was from this tutorial:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbR3GjVGHHQ
I see. If you want a spotlight to produce soft shadows, you want to play with the parameters in the spotlight's "Light" section, mainly "Light Geometry" and "Height (Diameter)". In combination with the distances between light, shadow caster and shadow receiver you should be able to generate the shadow softness you want.
Dance practice version 2
I have turned the girl round to face the window and added an overhead light. I have also added a light that comes in through the window.
I am using 3Delight
Hi, this is my submision. I found a tutoral on how to make an under water scene and finnish it off with postwork, which i have never done before. Turned out alright i gusse, also tryed to make the reander cute and cudle
yeah.
Version D here with some changes to the monitors, keyboards, and a light in the background behind the monitors. I also added his rifle on a surface under the left monitor and tried to add a spotlight facing the character projecting from the center monitor.
@testingtesterson35 Wow, I like that new camera angle! Great choice on the armor IMHO. The monster certainly changes the dynamics of the scene. Perhaps an expression change if you are wanting to go in that direction? Could experiment with the monster reaching past the cube to play the chase up.
@ariochsnowpaw I am glad you are sticking with "Lonely Dawn", it has real potential IMHO.
) Perhaps some enhancement of the mid-tones/dimmer highlights if wanting more glam and less mood.
I think the self tutorial is a pretty awesome idea, I keep a note book handy for similar reasons.
Your second image is great! There is a real elegance that carries throughout the image. The rim lighting is very good as is, but some slight tweaks could really take the image to the next level. I think the feathered collar would be amazing if it was back lit. Have you done any post work? Some shadows could be softened, screen right hip, and to a lesser extent her screen right biceps. (I know, I know, WIP
The posing is great and garment fit is spot on. Well done.
@Fisherman_B Thanks for the info. I look forward to seeing your final version. It is a great image.
@no_nose I will echo what Fisherman_B wrote, he is correct. You might also try changing the objects you are using to make the shadows to a material that allows some light to pass through, one of the frosted glass shaders is a good example. Might get you where you want to go. I also encourage you to spent some time experimenting with that light/shadow set up. Play with all the angles, colors, different lights. I learned a tremendous amount by doing things like that. Lighting really is the most key thing to a good render IMHO.
@sueya I don't really see the added lights doing much lighting. I suggest you make a commitment to what you want to be the primary light for your scene and get that working first. Until then shut down everything else as far as lighting. You can fill in the other lighting later, but get the main light source working how you want it to first.
@bastian2560 Welcome to the new user challenge! (I seem to be doing that a lot lately lol.)
That is a very cute scene, You have done a very good job with the underwater effect. Well done!
I apologize for being brief, but short on time. You might look and see how your characters align with the thirds guide and adjust if needed. Consider getting some light on the foreground objects. Perhaps move the fish to balance some empty space instead of hiding them, and brighten the light rays for more depth. All just suggestions or things to try.
You created is a very nice image with a great fanciful feel.
I hear you when it comes to forgetting stuff you have learned and troubleshooting rendering times when you really want to work on something else.
I love her dynamic pose and that feathered collar is adding lots of movement and interest.
The rim light looks great but it draws my eye to her waist when I really want to be looking at her face.
@dtrscbrutal
Thank you for your feedback, much appreciated.
Since I saw you render, I wanted to comment / discuss, but I did not want to do it in a hurry. Now is a good time :)
Your picture keeps me busy since I saw it. Which is great, because that's what we want to achieve, right? Touch the viewer, in one way or another.
I am totally torn between two percepts. The first one is - I absolutely love the color scheme. This alone makes the image outstanding. In combination with the warm lights it is unique, warm, soothing, attracting. The colors are on my mind, even when I am not viewing your render. Beatiful!
The second one is - when I saw it for the very first time, I had the disturbing feeling "what am I supposed to look at?" There are very different lights, shapes, reflections. My eyes are not really guided. The head, though perfectly positioned on a thirds intersection, is somehow unremarkable when viewed from a medium or bigger distance. It becomes more important, dominant, when I get closer, and the slightly different color and the reflections kick in. Looking at the figure, the right leg is dominating, because it has a well recognizable contour coming from the strongest of the lights. Next comes the right arm (these two body parts helped me to understand that there is a body in the picture), then the panties. All the objects seem to somehow fight each other, court the viewer's attentiveness. Finally the leg and perhaps the big ball (what is this object?) win. All this makes me feel restless, in a sharp contrast to the warm and even colors.
One idea I personally would try to implement is to create kind of a seam of background light around the figure to make it pop more. Like a corona. Like the background of the right leg. But that might be totally off, compared to how you want to her to appear.
Please don't get me wrong. I love your render. That's why I am trying to be detailed. I am describing the sentiment. If this is your intention, you succeeded brilliantly. Definitely outstanding in it's distinctiveness, I love it.
You never know if a change will work or not until you try it.
Your model is definitely the draw now. I checked the leaves for the change but they no longer distract me. Nicely done.
You have some nice rim lighting on her legs. I missed them when she was facing the other way. I am really glad you followed the suggestion of turning her around. There is some separation now between her and her reflections.
I haven't used 3Delight in a long time so am not sure what to suggest for the lighting.
That is a cute scene.
My first suggestion is to maybe remove the bubbles to the left? They are a bit of a distraction to me and I am not sure what the source of the bubbles is located. I love the bubbles coming from the swimming boy. The fish peeking through the seaweek gives a nice sense of depth.
Is your figure's left foot intersecting with the floor?
I like the switch to the window as well!
What kind of light do you mean when you say overhead? is that an uberarea light? I would suggest to replace it with a spot or even several spots, the Uber area light take a lot of time to render without adding much light. If you don't want the hard shadows from the spots you can adjust that in the shadow settings for the spoitlight, Most times when I use spots I go for a softness of 5 to 10%.
From you image I guess that the nice rimlight on her backside is generated by a reflection from the light in coming from the left far back. you can dial that up to pronounce that, you can "overdial " the intensities of lights in 3delight, as you are usign the reflected light here I suggest somthing of 120% intensity.
Do you use plain white light? You could play with a tint of colour in your lights like a light gray/blue tone from the right hand window and a tint of yellow from the spots.
If you have a chance to get the AoA advanced lights (these are for 3delight) I recommend them. they are easier to handle than the standart lights and render faster.
Good catch Kismet. It turns out that both of his feet were intersecting with the floor, even more so with the right foot.
Here's version E correcting that, and having the chair scaled up by about 10% so that he would still be seated without the chair floating above the floor.
I am quite happy with the changes. Thanks again! As we say in German, "vier Augen sehen mehr als zwei".
BTW From now on I will mark my renders as "Not an entry". I am enjoying the discussions, I like to see your and my work grow and how we discuss and improve things. I don't want to compete, I just want to be part of this. I hope this is ok for everyone.
Not an entry
Lady Moonlight, Version 3
@kismet2012, @ariochsnowpaw, @dtrscbrutal, thanks for your kind feedback.
I'd changed the position of the cloth that was intersecting her leg ( ^_ ^ ), also her look (different hair and top) and hope you could all actually 'see' my little hummingbird now :-P. I'm definitely about to change the reflection on her headdress (not quite sure if this will work though). Found a way to retire the background and rendered the image as png. Then I added the background and my sign as postwork in CSP. Still so much raw noise (my apologies, it has taken me like 4 hours in the different draft tries- around 7)
I'm falling in love and having so much fun with lightning... so much to learn from you and in the process!
All of my images are rendered in Iray (as I am just learning about Delight).
Mildness V02 (and yesh... there is a not so subtle pun applied-LOL)
I'm still curious about my Q on the entries and what it is considered 02 images... guess they are completely different compositions and themes, otherwise, they are only different versions (?)... hope someone could clarify this, if possible.
Many thanks in advance... Have a beautiful productive week!
P.S. @bastian2560 Welcome! Like your concept... I was also playing with water and lightning last Sunday- maybe the three characters will meet someday! (this is NOT an entry, I just want to share :-), could not resist! )
I thought I'd take on 3delight for this challenge - there are so many great older products, and it would be awesome if I could actually use 3delight instead of trying to figure out how to convert everything, plus I've picked up some Age of Armour lights and some subsurface shaders with really neat effects that I would love to use. And my laptop is so much happier rendering 3delight. Of course, I'm totally baffled by AoA, Uber, and normal 3delight lighting - I'm not even sure that I'm right and those are the 3 different groups of lighting! And some of them seem to work with some 3delight materials and not on others ... I'm hoping someone here will be able to help!
Here is my first draft, working off the Newsies them and Gene Kelly's dancing ... please ignore the way the girl is sitting mid-air. I don't know how to compose a scene if I don't know if I can even light the set...
The set is Stonemason's "Dark Places: Back Alley 2k9" - a realy neat, grungy older set that I have no clue how to light. It comes with default lighting, which is what I'm using, but you can see how limiting that is!
Here's a screenshot of the set from above. The default camera (which is what I'm using) is circled in red, the characters are circled in blue, and the alley walls (about four stories tall!) are highlighted in yellow. The small line of blue dashes is a wooden fence, approx 6' high. you can see it in the render behind the girl.
To top it off, I'm getting these 3 error messages every time I render:
So ... how do I light this set in a way that will give me some options? What kind of lighting can/should I use - AoA, ubersurface, or what? And why am I getting those errors when I render, and what the heck do they even mean?