Ring or circle Light for Studio?
JohnDelaquiox
Posts: 1,195
Does anyone know of an already made ring light or circle light rig for studio?
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I dont know if this is exactly what you are looking for, but here is one:
http://www.daz3d.com/ring-of-light-environment-lighting
I was actually thinking something like this
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=&sku=903326&gclid=CjwKEAjw-JqgBRCAyqjoic27nlQSJABBTpFE1rqcJ73IQE3OVzX4q4xy4GIXEt7-cPl-P_UBCC7UXRoCJgrw_wcB&Q=&is=REG&A=details
http://iaian7.com/images/2008/07/26/RingLight.jpg
http://www.kevinbradley-dp.com/2011/10/28/the-stellar-diva-ring-light-an-affordable-18”-circular-catch-light/
Hm, ok.
Do you own/use any modeling software like Hexagon or Blender? Such a ring should be easy to model. Then, in DAZ Studio, you simply have to apply the UberAreaLight to it.
Or you try to be creative with the built in DAZ Studio content. One thing that comes to my mind is to load the AreaLight Disc and place a sphere in the center, which covers the light in the center and therefore gives you a ring of light.
I don't have DS on this workstation but doesn't DS have a torus primitive? Can the torus be set to be a light emitter?
Yes, there is a torus. But the problem with it is that it would distribute the light in all directions if you apply a UberAreaLight on it. But you do not want that if you are going to create a light ring.
Greetings,
It's pretty trivial to select a ring of polys on one side in the Geometry Editor and assign a 'Light Ring' surface to the selected polys. Then invert the selection, name it 'Backing' or something. Then go into the Tool Settings panel, select the surface named 'Default' and right click and remove it.Now you have a torus with a light ring surface (still needs a UAL assigned to it) and a backing surface. I imagine a little more work to parent it to a camera, and you'd have a combination camera and light ring.
-- Morgan
This.
That's exactly how I did mine, except I used a disc (a cylinder with a Y dimension set near-zero) for my gobo ("go between", anything that blocks light) instead of a sphere in the center, and I then added a grid made up of a whole bunch of rectangles perpendicular to the plane of the discs. Just remember that the camera has to be slightly forward of the gobo.
I actually imitated my entire set of standard photographic studio lights using nothing but DAZ Studio primitives or insanely simple Carrara models.
In DAZ Studio you can make a ring light, real soft boxes (8 reflective panels, 2 diffusers) with grids (30 long thin rectangles in one direction, 40 in the other), strip lights, and honeycombs (bunch of rectangles at 60 degree angles instead of 90 degree).
I used something that could lathe a line (Carrara, but it's a snap in Hexagon or Blender) to make a beauty light, a snoot for a hair light, an umbrella, an octabank, and a big parabolic.
Greetings,
By the way, thanks for this. I decided to proof-of-concept it, and built a torus, selected some polys, set up surfaces, assigned a UAL, parented it to a camera so the camera pointed through the middle, and futzed with DoF and such, and it's working GREAT for closeups!
Probably the first viable light I've ever constructed for myself. :)
-- Morgan
Very good. But now you have to construct new eyes, or at least alter the material settings on the ones you have now. Specular color white, try about 30% strength, and strip the texture map.
Greetings,
Yeah, I fought with those eyes for a painfully long while... It's the 'Eye Surface' in Legacy, or 'Eye Reflection' in the 'Surfaces' view.The key problem seems to be the existing reflection is done in the opacity map. So I can't drop the opacity to zero, or...well, there's nothing to reflect the light. I can't put it to 100% because then it's pure white over the eye. So I have no real idea how to use the Eye Reflection surface. :(
I need it to be transparent, but still reflect light and/or have specular, etc.... I've got no idea how to do that. Maybe uberSurface?
-- Morgan
I'm a little confused, how does one apply and uber light to a surface?
Just like any shader, select object and its surface and apply.
InaneGlory has what I think you are looking for in one of his sets, his background I believe is in photography so he aims for that sort of lighting in his sets. Look at his Photostudio sets. Photostudio 3 has a ringlight and a beauty dish.
Has he moved his store to another site? I just checked his store here at DAZ, and it's empty.
Only if Fast Grab and several other categories have suddenly been dropped. I think the store software is having a bit of meltdown or some other issue.
http://www.daz3d.com/inaneglorys-photo-studio-3
Can this be done with a spotlight?
One of the links describe the purpose being able to shoot an image by having the camera in the center of the light.
In 3D art, you can place a light and a camera in the same spot and tell them not to obstruct each other - so maybe a spot light would achieve the same end result?
Put the camera in the center of that light: exact same position, or just behind or just in front - this might work.
Greetings,
It ends up being not as soft and broadly distributed. Specifically you get 'hotspots' on the models face, and the shadows are very edgy. It probably has its own value, but it doesn't (IIRC) give the same soft-light effect as a ring of light.-- Morgan
Greetings,
I'm having the devil's own time getting a good, clear reflected light in her eyes. Here's my best attempt so far, it's using UberSurface and a bunch of tweaks.
I'd love any advice on getting the light to reflect in the eyes, instead of faking it with a transparency overlay in the 'Eye Reflection' surface channel.
[Edit: You have to view it large to see the reflection in her eyes, and even then it's hard to see... It should be sharper and brighter, IMO...]
-- Morgan
I'll take a stab at solving "the eye problem" this weekend. As I recall, all DAZ figures including Genesis 2, use a simple sphere for the eyeball. Real eyes have a cornea that has a different radius of curvature than the eyeball, and the iris underneath has a different radius still. It may be possible to use a geometry shell and displacement map to act an actual transparent cornea with a reasonable index of refraction (say about 1.35).
The eyes are not simple spheres, I don't think any of the DAZ figures have done that - certainly not since the first generation.
Greetings,
Thanks muchly!There is actually a surface 'Eye Reflection' which seems to be at the right location for this, and covers over the eye, I just can't figure out what settings I'd need to apply to it to make it (1) transparent (so you can see the eye underneath), and (2) reflective/shiny (so you can see the reflection) at the same time. I put up a WIP on deviantArt of where I am currently with it, and you can see the hint of a reflection in her eyes, so I got that far, but it's nowhere near as sharp as the 'stock' reflections.
I don't know if that's because in reality you don't get sharp reflections in people's eyes, or because my surface material just doesn't have the right settings.
-- Morgan
Take a close look at Victoria 6's eyes. The outermost layer, the cornea, most certainly is a simple sphere. I already did that a few months ago, trying to find out why DAZ eyes have that weird "dead fish in an ice box" look in Reality or Luxus. But just for review, I'm plucking out Victoria 6's right eye right now and looking at shape and materials.
The index of refraction of the cornea sphere is way low, at 1.3, but that doesn't really matter, because refraction is turned off. This is a "good thing", because with the severe errors in the way the eye is set up, using refraction would make the pupil and cornea look like garbage. Reflections are also turned off, and this is another good thing, because with a totally wrong shape, any reflections would also be totally unnatural looking, way too large and distracting, and not changing shape at the junction of cornea and conjunctiva (the transparent coating over the sclera. It's not called out in DAZ surfaces).
There's a second sphere inside the cornea for the sclera, with a flat spot on that sphere that contains a flat iris and radically oversized pupil. The pupil has to be oversized, because without the curve of the cornea and a proper index of refraction, it doesn't get magnified, like a real one would.
This was a good exercise, because it tells me that a geometry shell isn't necessary. The cornea could be reshaped with either a displacement map or a morph, and then reflection and refraction could be turned on, and a more realistic pupil added. Salvaging the messed up eyes is possible.
Do you actually "need" the ring light, or are you just trying to get the white circle in the eyes? Honestly, the easiest way would be #1 postwork, or #2 make a custom reflection map to go in the EyeRelection channel. To get the "real" ray traced reflections in the eyes you have to consider camera angle and light position, and what works to get what you are looking for in the eyes may not look good on the rest of the figure.
Example, a transparency map like this put in the opacity channel of the EyeReflection gives this effect in the render.
There is a morph to curve the iris.
Not under the eye, the head, or the overall Victoria 6, there isn't.
I'll assume you mean a morph to curve the cornea (since the iris curve is subtle, complex, and unnecessary for the discussion at hand). If If there's one from a third party, does it take care of everything that's wrong with the eye?
* The cornea doesn't just need to "bulge", the radius needs of be correct.
* Refraction needs to be turned on, and the incorrect Genesis 2 index of refraction needs to be fixed.
* Reflection needs to be turned on and set to a reasonable value.
* The iris should probably be moved back about 0.5mm
* The pupil should be a hole in the iris, not a black disc
* The pupil needs to be resized to account for the magnification resulting from the corneal refraction.
* New textures for the iris are required, because many existing eyes have faux reflections that lie on the iris or the pupil, not the cornea.
You can't just fix one of these things. A new cornea shape causes everything else to look wrong, so you really need to address the entire eye,
in the surface tab, there is that setting called "Angle"... 89.90 is for a flat reflection based on the surface. Change this number to effect the 'Refraction' (angle) of the reflection. Dose that possibly help? As I and DestinysGarden discovered elsewhere, 180 gives a reflection off of a flat surface as if it was round (Convex).
Also, for a ray-trace reflection, the light dose need to be more focused (like a spotlight or point-light sorce) rather then a big "Soft Box" of sorts. "Specular" color & strength and the reflection slider affects the amount and color of the reflection as well. Reflections are not simple as I discovered the heard way.
(edit1)
slight clarification of "more focused". It's the thickness of the toroid, not it's over all size I was referring to.
Set opacity to 0, take out any trans map it had, set glossy to about 50 to start (raise it up as needed, you'll have to test.. for regular white dots from regular lights I use 80 but you'll need it lower to show the whole ring) spec color white, spec strength 100 (lower if needed after tests) VERY IMPORTANT: Set multiply through opacity to OFF! (that's probably your number one problem) go down to the bottom and set lighting model to glossy plastic. Don't bother with uber surface for this, it's just more complicated and you don't need any of its extra setting for this.