Making an object in the scene into a light source?
RAMWolff
Posts: 10,212
Hi,
I usually buy stuff like this but I can't remember who made it and what it's called. But I need to know which product(s) can make any object in the scene (DAZ Studio) into a light source.
Is it under Lights or Light Presets or Shaders or Scripts.....
Thanks for the help!
Richard
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Comments
Was it Age of Armour's Advanced Ambient Lights? I was just reading about them in the Vengeful Spirit pdf; it seems like the lights can make an object appear to be a light source.
I have that set but when I selected the object that I wanted to become the light source it just loaded a new light into the scene. Purusing through the PDF I see there is a baking option for texture maps but not sure if that's what I want.
You can do this with the UberAreaLight.
Make sure that your object is selected in the scene tab AND ALSO in the surfaces tab, then double click the UberArea base icon and the object turns into a light source.
This is something I'd really love. So many times I get a prop that should have something glowing and it doesn't and lighting it proves challenging. I've begun using HeroFX to add planes with ambient lights to various items I want to light up. It adds some dimension to consoles and weapons, but that's probably not what your trying to do....
Thanks, I'll give that a try. :-)
Here are a few notes about UberAreaLight I had saved in a file that might be helpful, ignore if confusing:
To apply to a surface to make it emit light: Select the surface, then select "!UberAreaLight Base.dsa"
To see the light source itself, set "Ambient Active" to On, and set the Ambient color, and apply an image to the Ambient Color if you want the light to have surface features.
To change the color of the light emitted, set Color . Change the Intensity slider up to make it brighter; note some lights may need to be dramatically brighter to be seen, work with powers of 10 to start with. Opacity can also be used at the same time.
TODO I ALSO HAD THIS NOTE, BUT IT MIGHT NOT BE THE BEST WAY TO DO IT, VERIFY->To fix any graininess, especially in shadows: In parameters tab increase the samples parameter (at the cost of greatly increased render time). The value varies greatly depending on the light. I have seen 32 work for some lights, 1024 was needed for one.
There's some information in this thread including a tutorial link . http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/32902/
Hmm, can't get it bright enough. It loaded as expected and yes, I did have the object selected in the scene and the parts I wanted turned into a light selected in the Surfaces tab but it's very lowly lit. I even turned up the Ambient all the way up. Nada.
How far up did you try setting the intensity slider? I don't remember for sure, but I want to say I was in the thousands or maybe even 10,000s once. Also if the quality settings are low, you might be getting light in the form of brighter dots here and there rather than an even illumination, which had me going for hours once thinking nothing was changing because I was only doing a tiny spot render.
Ambient just affects the brightness of the object, not how much light it is emitting. I have found that to be 'bright enough' you have to up the intensity to very high values: over 5,000% as an example might be alright for a lamp, depending on if you have falloff enabled.
Well the Diffuse is set to limits of 100%. I would think that the shader once applied would turn that off so the end user wouldn't have to manually set that up. So I'm thinking it's not applied right? As you can see I have a front wall and two beams on either side of Dawn with this shader applied. Not exactly lighting things up and you would think with 3 items so close to her lit like that it would be over kill.
Not the intensity of the Diffuse slider; the slider actually labeled "Intensity".
Set the Intensity up to 5000, looks darker when it renders. Like I say, there is something off about this. I have the newest version of DAZ Studio installed, not the new Public beta but the newest stable version. My video card drivers are up to date and I have 32 gigs of DDR3 RAM. So not sure what's going on!
I would strongly recommend the Reality plugin. Using this plugin you can convert absolutely any surface in your scene into a real light source, plus adjust the light's color and intensity and even make Reality put a glowing aura around the light source. (I believe Luxus can do all this, too, but I've zero experience with it.)
I'm not one to show off, but below is an example of what I meant. It's rendered using Reality. The two laser beams were just two cylinder primitives which I turned into light sources, plus put an aura around them. Good, huh? ;-)
You can indeed also do this using the Luxus plugin. Simply select Luxus - Luxrender Light from the context options in the drop down. As an added bonus, Luxus also supports light types which Reality 2.5 doesn't offer. If Reality 3 ever makes its way to Daz Studio, here's hoping it comes with those extra options I'm now so accustomed to using with Luxus.
While LuxRender, via Reality or Luxus, is a solution it involves losing all the other features of 3Delight which may be too high a price.
Not to mention those lovely HD benefits from the new M6/V6 don't seem to transfer well to external renderers.
I would be interested in understanding what you mean by planes with ambient lights... I know what a plane is, but how do you apply the ambient light to the plane???
I can see the Ambient is ramped high, so my thoughts is which direction is the light being sent in? I believe it heads in the direction of the normals so is there a chance the light is being mainly directed 'inward'. I'm sure I've had something similar happen trying to set an eye texture to UberArea.
After posting, I stumble over this post which sounds like your issue
I would be interested in understanding what you mean by planes with ambient lights... I know what a plane is, but how do you apply the ambient light to the plane???
With HeroFX you can create an invistible plane with a number of different cel like images on them (usually They have the option to ramp up the ambient from 25% to 100%. This I find useful for creating the illustion of something with no light glows. While this was intended to make magical effects and other stuff, I find for that purpose this don't look realistic enoughl. but for lighting up sci-fi panels and robot eyes? Works well!.
Here is a quick example. The eye of the floater and cam bot were 'lit' using the herofx plane. Otherwise the surface of the mechanical eyes look flat and empty.
This is all I meant. =-)
With HeroFX you can create an invistible plane with a number of different cel like images on them (usually They have the option to ramp up the ambient from 25% to 100%. This I find useful for creating the illustion of something with no light glows. While this was intended to make magical effects and other stuff, I find for that purpose this don't look realistic enoughl. but for lighting up sci-fi panels and robot eyes? Works well!.
Here is a quick example. The eye of the floater and cam bot were 'lit' using the herofx plane. Otherwise the surface of the mechanical eyes look flat and empty.
This is all I meant. =-)
oh. okay. It is a nice effect.
Not to mention those lovely HD benefits from the new M6/V6 don't seem to transfer well to external renderers.
I am a bit bummed by this, is it really that bad for the HD figures?
In my opinion, LUX was always superior to 3Delight but with the new updates 3Delight is getting better and better.
Came across a very good looking render by Sorel so I dropped a pm for the settings.
I was astounded to read that is was rendered in 3Delight!
I let go of the Studio's internal render some time ago after I started using LUXUS.
Thinking I have to reconcider that, but it also means I have to get into all the 3Delight jargon again ><<br /> I'll try some testrenders and see how I will fare.
I have lost track of 3Delight's abilities to be honest.
Can you point out those features you are talking about for me?
Thanks Simon. After a great nights sleep I'm ready to delve into this again. I'll check it out now.
PS. Not into using Reality or Luxus. Thanks anyways for those tips on what's possible. I like rendering natively in DAZ Studio using 3Delight.
Still no luck with this. I loaded in a "tube" light source from the Uber set and that renders just fine. Tried the suggestions from the link but still have no luck with creating my own light source using an object in the scene. This should not be this hard.
Yeah, I'd gladly pay for a one click solution shader pack that just made stuff glow and magically worked right in nearly all lighting conditions.
I just like making art, I hate having to fidget with stuff like that. Damnit Jim, I'm an artist, not a scientist! :P
I have lost track of 3Delight's abilities to be honest.
Can you point out those features you are talking about for me?
Things like having lights selectively apply to the scene, or ghost effects, or toon effects - or specular-only lights, or objects that don't cast shadows. LuxRender is a light-simulator - if you are hapy for your scene to obey real-world rules, more or less, then it's superior to 3Delight; if you want to bend reality then it isn't.