I bought all the things! I'm an artist now...
Sera
Posts: 1,675
...Right?
In all seriousness, I am blown away by the creativity some people show with their renders. I am not nearly so creative, but I like to think my lighting and composition have gotten better over time and with the help of a few products (and tutorials). Ever since I got Render Studio 3 - HDRI, I have been using it constantly. I just got Infinity Hdri Lighting the other day, but so far it's also been very useful. The magic 8 point lighting system taught me what different lights were supposed to do (like Key, Fill, etc), how to reduce the harshness of shadows (this has been huge!), what light damage is and how to avoid it, and how to create complexity with shadows. I don't always use those techniques, but they are nice to have in my toolset.
What's your favorite lighting solution? What products, tutorials, or ideas have helped you step up your game? Has anything helped you to ramp up the creativity factor or do you have any methods you used to get inspired?
Seriously, pointers would be appreciated. I need all the help I can get.
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You're doing great :) My favorite lights are the Pro-Studio HDR Lighting System (I use the first set, even though I have 2 and 3.) Paper Tiger's lights which have the X-ray feature (going thorugh walls IIRC) are also good. Some sold here, some at Rendo.
I never got that to work, the x-ray feature... not sure what to do to get them to work.
I use the a few light sets like Aurous Iray Lights ( https://www.daz3d.com/aurous-iray-lights ) and parent the lights to a plane primitive, and rotate the primitive to move the lights around. I change the light colors too, to match the characters or the background.
For me, the important thing is the light color. Because from what I know about traditional art coloring, it's not advisable to highlight with white, because it "washes out" your colors, an "off-white" or some other color work out better. A lot of people here use white lights in their renders and the result is the same; their renders look washed out. I also experiment with the light intensity.
@Novica: Thanks! And thanks for the tip about Paper Tiger's products. They look really good! And they are currently on sale through the 16th. I will be monitoring my budget to see if I can pick one up sooner rather than later. I also put PRO-Studio HDR Lighting System on my wishlist. I have overlooked that product in the past because of the limited promos, but after looking at the gallery images made with it, I am really impressed.
@MimicMolly This is really interesting! I will start experimenting with lights that are off-white and other colors. I also like the tip about parenting lights to a plane. It's one of those things that seems obvious in retrospect, but for whatever reason, I hadn't thought of it myself. I like the Aurous Iray Lights. They seem to be really good at providing golden, magical light. It's just a shame that you only get 10 HDRIs with it, when comparably priced products give you twice that or more. Oh well, that's what sales are for. Wishlisted.
Funny enough, I´ve recently been thinking about portrait lighting and bought some new ligthing products.
I think I´m not too shabby at lighting but I had been relying on the same few tricks and products for a while now and felt like I needed to freshen things up a little.
So I´m gonna take this as an opportunity to write about some of my favourite lighting solutions both old and new (to me), and post some simple renders. Nothing too deep, basically a few micro reviews. Perhaps this will be useful to someone.
ETA: The forum software screwed with the compression of my uploads again. Very irritating but I don´t have the patience to convert everything to PNG and re-upload everything again :/
IDG Vibrant Light Probes by IDG Designs was a XMas freebie back in 2018. It´s a set of HDRIs that´s great for well lit, no-fuss no-drama scenes with a simple, pretty background. I don´t think it´s currently available anywhere but if you happen to have it in your library it´s well worth a look.
Ultra Genesis Studio Vol. 1 is available for free every now and then and worth picking up when you get the chance. This product pairs emissive rigs with low-key HDRIs. The rigs can be further manually adjusted in many ways and can also be used independantly from the HDRIs. Positioning and rotating the rigs can be a little tricky. But it´s quite a versatile product if you have a little bit of patience.
Two free HDRI sets that provide nice, basic lighting: ITF Studio HDRI Pack 01 by In The Flesh and SC HDRI Lights by Second Circle.
Warm Light by ElianeCK combines simple HDRIs with spot/point/distant light rigs and gives beautiful results in her signature style. I think it´s a great product and really easy to use. The only thing you need to know is that the HDRIs are extremely simplistic and can´t really serve as backgrounds, even for the most simple portraits. So you need to either set up a cyclorama-style prop or apply an image in the environment tab.
Mystical Wisps by Orestes Graphics is a set of gorgeous HDRIs that provide dramatic and colourful light and also serve as very pretty backdrops. The HDRI-to-price ratio isn´t the best here but the HDRIs really are high quality.
Tenebroso Lighting by Marshian isn´t specifically made for portraits but can be used for that if you´re looking for high drama. This product consists of an emissive prop and a variety of materials that can be applied to it. Just place two or three of these props around your characters and pick some materials at random; you´ll get really interesting results and it´s a lot of fun to play around with it!
@Hylas: I very recently got Tenebroso Lighting but I haven't had a chance to mess with it yet. Your examples for Mystical Wisps look nice, as do the examples for Warm Light. Those are probably my favorite of all your images (the warm light ones I mean). It's a shame I missed out on the freebies in 2018, but I will be keeping an eye out for Ultra Genesis Studio Vol. 1 to become available for free (how does that happen? Does it show up in the weekly freebies?). I have the ITF and Second-Circle freebies, but again I haven't had a chance to mess with them yet.
This image:
looks especially nice. Is that from the Second Circle set or the InTheFlesh one?
I think that was 07 Soft from the ITF set.
I haven´t seen it in the bi-weekly freebies. It´s more of a Today Only: Use Code XYZ to get one select DAZ Original for free! kind of thing.
@Hylas who is the character you are using?
That´s Bernat by Sithlordsims, who sells on Renderosity.
Skin and head morph out of the box, I tweaked the body morph.
@Hylas Thank you