help with Easy Volume Camera
tomasball
Posts: 81
I'm afraid I'm missing some simple but crucial point. I have tried to follow the tutorial video, but not getting the expected results.
I create a new scene, I create a plane and a sphere. I go to my content library and load Easy Volume Camera, and select it as my point of view. There are no lights in the scene. When I render, I get nothing but black everywhere the plane would appear in the scene.
To experiment, I created a point light, set the intensity to 50, and set the camera parameters to "only flagged lights" and the flag threshhold to 99%. I see the whole scene with no atmosphere. When I set the point light's intensity to 99, the render comes out all black again.
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As you will have noticed you will need lights (and I think they need to be set to produce ray-traced shadows) to get the atmospheric/volumetric effects.
Let's try this:
Create a Primitive Plane - sized 20m (divisions should not matter)
Create a Primitive Sphere - sized 1m (segments and size should not matter unless you want it to look more or less spherical)
Load a Point Light.
Load the Easy Volume Camera and select as active viewing camera
At this stage they will be loaded at world center 0,0,0 so the light will be blocked by the plane and sphere, thus we will tweak some stuff!
To be sure we are both seeing the same thing change the render dimensions to Square
Now, let's lift the sphere, so adjust the Y-Translate of the sphere to 50
Now the light, let's put that at Y Translate 250 and Z Translate 50 and X Translate 75 (it may well disappear - don't worry!)
Next we go to the EZ Camera and set it to react only to Flagged Lights, and let's keep the value at 99% for now
Now we need to adjust the intensity of the Point Light to 99%
With all that done, we can do a test render ...
Not very effective, is it? Part of that is down to the fact that a point light is not the best to use in this example, and part are the settings, so ...
Go back to the Point light and ramp up intensity to the limit max of 200, then don't forget to adjust the flag value on the camera. Whilst we are at the camera let's also up the Volume Strength to 50%.
Give that a go and you should see the effect.
Okay, I followed your instructions exactly, and all I get is a rendering that is completely black, except where there is nothing in the scene, as in beyond the edge of the plane. I set the point light to ray-traced shadows, as you suggested.
That is just bizarre! Can we confirm what version of Daz Studio you are on? What happens if you render using a 'standard' Daz camera?
I'm running Daz Studio 4.6 Pro. If I render the scene with a regular camera, it comes out like expected...a half-illuminated sphere over a plane. If I use the Easy Volume Camera, but set it to use flagged lights, but don't set the point light intensity to match, it renders like a normal render with no atmosphere. If I set the Easy Volume Camera to "all lights" or use flagged lights and set the point light intensity to match, that's when the black turns up. Almost like it was doing the opposite of what it should...putting dark where light should be.
One other thing to report. If I crank the point light up to 200, and leave the Easy Volume Camera set to "all lights", the render has one white pixel where the point light is.
I have tried uninstalling and reinstalling the volume camera. Rebooting my computer also.
The volume effect does require there to be geometry behind the scene - it will not show up against a background image or empty space as I recall.
yes, I know there needs to be geometry behind the scene. In my case, the camera is pointing at the sphere from slightly above, with the plane visible beyond the sphere. Everywhere in the scene that has the plane behind it renders as flat black. Everywhere else renders as default blue.
Also worth noting is that if I use the "Volume Camera" instead of the "Easy Volume Camera" I get a renedering like I would expect, with atmosphere and volumetric light.
Is there a way to select which light sources are volumetric if I'm using the "Volume Camera" instead of the "Easy Volume Camera"? Does that require "Advanced Lights"?
Check to see if there are any errors in the log file after rendering - Help>Troubleshooting>View log, and scroll to the end.
This is what I read:
Rendering image
3Delight message #141 (Severity 1): D2045: PixelFilter reset to 'box' 1x1 (display driver requirement)
Saved image: C:\Users\Tom\AppData\Roaming\DAZ 3D\Studio4\temp\render\r.png
Finished Rendering
Total Rendering Time: 31.83 seconds
Loaded image r.png
Saved image: C:\Users\Tom\AppData\Roaming\DAZ 3D\Studio4\temp\RenderAlbumTmp\Render 6.jpg
If I set the Volume Strength on the Easy Volume Camera to 0, I get a normal render. If I set the volume strength to 0.0001, I get all black
Do you have Progressive Rendering checked/turned on in the Advanced Render settings.
I don't think that the Easy Volume Camera works for me when I have that enabled.
That was it! As soon as I hit "restore defaults" on the render menu, everything started behaving. Thank you very much!
May I repeat my other question? If I am using the "volume camera" is there a way do set which light sources are volumetric?
I believe there is a pair of parameters along the line of start and distance which allow you to only have lights starting (I think) within those distances to be treated as volumetric.
Good to know!
Two questions about that: Where is the "light category box", and isn't that an option with the Easy Volume Camera, rather than the Volume Camera?
no it is in AOA's. "Light" Parameters hence the words “light category box”. :) If you don't have AOA's lights then you cannot do it.
I think I phrased that badly. Let me try again. I see that the Easy Volume Camera has the function to choose lights that are flagged "foglight". Does the Volume Camera do that as well?
No what you are seeing is a Preset that will add the phrase "foglight" to his lights when they are selected. The flagging is controlled via the light not the camera.
No, what I'm seeing is a setting under parameters for the Easy Volume Camera that allows you to chose "only category foglight". I do not see a similar setting on the parameters for the Volume Camera.
That is strange as I don't have that in mine. Time to investigate.
well that was weird. I uninstalled them with DIM, deleted it and reinstalled and now I can see the flagging you mentioned and no the Volume cam doesn't have the same function Sorry about the confusion my bad. Been a while since I have used DS. :(