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Let's Talk About Lights...

HyJinxHyJinx Posts: 172
edited December 1969 in The Commons

Good [Insert appropriate phrase for time of day here] Daz friends!

It's time for me to think about adding lights to my set, and I have a question for those of you with more experience. When comparing what's included with various products I've noticed that some of them include lights, I've also noticed that when some of you give credit for the renders you've created, you mention "light set included with X". So my question is this: What packages or characters are worth purchasing just because of the included light set? There's one I've seen mentioned several times that comes with a 3DUniverse character, but I can't find the thread that mentioned it and I don't remember which one it was.

So how about it, which light sets included with other packages have you found most useful?

Thanks in Advance!

Comments

  • MegonNoelMegonNoel Posts: 377
    edited December 1969

    I think a couple of 3D Universe's characters come with a light set - I have Toon Amy and she comes with a great one.
    I don't generally use pre-made light sets, but the few times I have I've used the one that came with Amy and I also used the Into the Woods set. I bought "Into the Woods" for the backgrounds, but the poses and lights are pretty useful.

    Just a word of caution - I love the light set that came with Amy, but like a lot of lighting it can really increase render times. I'm super impatient about render times so for me that's a real pain in the [insert body part of choice here] :-)

  • Lissa_xyzLissa_xyz Posts: 6,116
    edited June 2014

    I don't think I've ever used lights included with characters. For me it's Age of Armour or bust when it comes to DS.

    Post edited by Lissa_xyz on
  • HyJinxHyJinx Posts: 172
    edited December 1969

    MegonNoel said:
    I think a couple of 3D Universe's characters come with a light set - I have Toon Amy and she comes with a great one.
    I don't generally use pre-made light sets, but the few times I have I've used the one that came with Amy and I also used the Into the Woods set. I bought "Into the Woods" for the backgrounds, but the poses and lights are pretty useful.

    Just a word of caution - I love the light set that came with Amy, but like a lot of lighting it can really increase render times. I'm super impatient about render times so for me that's a real pain in the [insert body part of choice here] :-)

    Thanks a ton!!! Amy's on sale, so she's in the cart!

  • HyJinxHyJinx Posts: 172
    edited December 1969

    Vaskania said:
    I don't think I've ever used lights included with characters. For me it's Age of Armour or bust when it comes to DS.

    Thanks Vasskania! I've got a few of AoA items on my wishlist already, is there a light set in particular that you recommend?

  • Lissa_xyzLissa_xyz Posts: 6,116
    edited December 1969

    The bundle. They work great together.
    http://www.daz3d.com/advanced-daz-studio-light-bundle

  • CypherFOXCypherFOX Posts: 3,401
    edited June 2014

    Greetings,
    The bundle is probably the best idea. :) [Edit: Ninja'd...of course!]

    Seriously AoA's ambient lights are excellent, but the full pack will give you lots of capabilities. I just wish it were integrated better with DAZ Studio, so I could create a AoA Spotlight at the current viewport location, or distant light with the same directionality, the way I can a regular light.

    The problem is that you have the built-in 'stock' lights (distant, spot, and point in both raytraced and shadow-mapped form), the UberEnvironment lighting (which I never completely understood), the UberAreaLight which I use almost constantly, UberSpot and UberPoint which I own but really...never use, and AoA 'ambient', distant, and spot lighting. (Not to mention LuxRender light surfaces, Octane, the occasional ambient effect, and postwork...) All that, and different kinds of lights interact with different kinds of textures (like SSS) in different ways.

    It's crazy complex, and pretty much everybody who wants to stay sane finds a subset that work really well for themselves. Some folks go the 'use dozens of stock lights to simulate light bouncing', some go the 'use a single light for the sun and render with an unbiased render engine' approach.

    Lots of people have found that AoA's ambient light goes a long way towards being a good balance of speed and 'accuracy', throwing a few extra lights either stock or AoA-based into the scene, and so that's the subset that they've settled on.

    I tend to use (abuse?) InaneGlory's lights, especially the various studio lights, which are essentially hand-crafted lights using UberAreaLight with posing aids and a TON of options. I find I can scale them up and down and fit them into many rooms, and they work out okay. If not that, then I convert a bunch of surfaces (especially 'light tube' or fluorescent light tubes) into light-emitters with UberAreaLight. If not that, then I'm likely to fall back to LuxRender, or a pre-packaged lighting set.

    I found that ARTCollaborations' Andrea and Aaron character sets came with surprisingly nice lighting. The 3DUniverse light sets are excellent for toonier characters because of the way the edge light surrounds it, but they are a great example of a good light setup, despite the somewhat limited use.

    -- Morgan

    Post edited by CypherFOX on
  • kyoto kidkyoto kid Posts: 41,036
    edited December 1969

    ...a hearty second for AoA's Advance light set. They render faster than UberEnvironment lights and have more adjustments you can use to tailor the lights to the setting.

    The only downside is there are no separate skydomes available for outdoor scenes so you might need to pick up at least one of the UE based light sets as well. I would suggest Skies of Economy and/or Cloud 9.

  • ghastlycomicghastlycomic Posts: 2,531
    edited December 1969

    THERE! ARE! FOUR! LIGHTS!

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