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If you only select lights of all the same type, then the usual light parameters are available and you can adjust them all at once. So if you have a group of only bulb lights, and select them all, then you can change them all at once.
If you select lights of different types, then parameters will become unavailable.
Light Sets in Maya are hardly any better - they give you an automatic "point at"... and I'm done.
But that's my point....I don't think it controls lights by group. Only by type of light. So in a given scene, a master light with only Bulb selected controls all the bulb lights in the scene. There's no way to specify or assign a master light to a specific group of lights. Or am I all wet on that?
Nowhere in the Master Light control does it say what Group it applies to. I think it applies to ALL lights in the scene of the selected type.
I think you're mistaken Joe. I experimented with just that, on an interior scene at one point. Only physically selected lights were effected. I had a couple groups of spot lights arranged in an array and grouped into two separate groups. I wanted one group to have one hue, and the other group to have a different hue. I selected the first group, used Master Light to change the hue, then I selected lights in the second group and used Master Light to change their hue. Both groups of spotlights had different hues.
My render is done now, so I can check to see if I'm remembering it correctly.
Master Light applies only to your selection, not everything in the scene. But it only has "generic" parameters.
If you select a set of spotlights, you can adjust any *general* parameter. You can't set most effects (you can change soft shadows), and you can set spotlight gels
Okay, I can confirm. If you have two groups of the same light type, such as spotlights, you can select one group and use the Master Light to change their parameters, leaving the other group of spotlights untouched.
In my example, I created one spotlight and duplicated it many times, then put half of them in Group 1 and half in Group 2. I selected Group 2, then the Master Light and changed the hue and brightness.
I checked Group 1, and the default settings were not touched.
The Fox and I have been cross posting!
Yeah: peer-review and all.
Carrara was equivalent to Maya (and frankly better), once upon a time. The parade of companies who purchased it didn't keep up with development...
But Maya full edition these days is $3600-ish. I stepped down to LT, since I only really use the modeling... that's a "steal" at $500 a year.
I paid $485 for Carrara 7 Pro (cause I was a total dumbass and paid full full full price for it :P)
Nice to see you back Fenric. Don't worry about paying full price. Just shows you had faith in daz at that time.
I also paid full price for C7. I wasn't that familiar with DAZ at that point and didn't know about all their sales. I didn't really frequent the forums until I bought C7, even though I had C5 for awhile.
Oh really??? Wow, thanks guys. I've been under a big misconception for a bunch of years on this Master Light thing.
I guess the fact that there never was a clear "Master Light" object in the scene, like a "Group" or whatever, that listed what lights or groups it was affecting, made me think that it affects everything. And I still can't figure out why, if you select, say, a group of bulb lights and apply a Master Light, it gives you the option of having it affect light types other than bulb lights...weird Carrara confusion....
Cool. Now I have to re-think everything since the beginning of the universe and stuff :) :) :)
It would be nice if you could make a group of lights a "Master Light" group. Just select the group and the General Tab has the same basic settings as the Master Light control panel.
Amusingly, it was after a careful researching of Carrara, Poser Pro, and Shade that I picked Carrara.
"You don't know what you don't know"... I am a very experienced software developer, starting in Assembly language and moving on... I'm rather newer to 3D graphics, though a tiny bit of POV-Ray [at least was] my fault at one point - they had asked for help with the ray-shape intersection algorithms, and I found a really glaring bug. But that is so far removed from modern times it's not even amusing...
Carrara is immensely frustrating in that DAZ just won't put the time into it. I remember the days of Infini-D and Ray Dream, back when an SGI Indigo (about the speed of a Pentium II 200 MHz) with a Reality Engine card (somewhat less than one-ten-thousandth of the capability of my NVidia GTX 580) ((**sigh**)) ... and they made "The Last Starfighter"... Heh... you can get a gunstar (or at least, really really close) on Rendo these days. What was my point, again?
I paid one day of my time of Carrara. I paid another for a year's subscription for Maya LT, and another for Poser 2014. I've paid a day for Photoshop SIX TIMES - close on a WEEK now, and my most expensive software of all... and the most worth it.
Yeah... DAZ Studio is free... heh.
I'll pay another day for Carrara 9, if I need to
and for Poser 2015/16/whatever, without hesitation
and for Maya LT (in May.. it's annual..)
Not Messiah, done with them: I don't do animation
And I'm sticking with Photoshop CS6 for now
and FilterForge 3
(Oh, and I'll buy 3D-Coat 5 for half a day, most likely, whenever that is.
And Dogwaffle 5 for not quite an hour, whenever (thanks, Dart - that's your fault!) )
How many days can you spend? Because that's really what it comes down to - TIME - I spend hours, days.. money is just a smaller-grained counter. If something comes up at Rendo that costs less than I can make it for, then I consider buying it. If I get the impression that I can make it quicker, then that thing doesn't even hit the wishlist.
What is your time worth?
Does the software you buy augment, or hinder, that time?
Joe, that was the funniest line I've read in months. Laughing out loud holding my stomach!! Very funny!
Joe, that was the funniest line I've read in months. Laughing out loud holding my stomach!! Very funny!
Funny? Dude, I was serious. It throws my entire world into disarray.
Nah, I can't see you going that far... :D
Joe has some very insightful and inspiring commentary, and tremendously valuable reminders about real workflow instead of "common sense", and checking your picture against real photographs (or just looking out the window, for goodness' sake!). Nah, we don't always get along (he doesn't like my furry pictures), but listen to the guy
*Then* do what you want anyway. You can't break the rules 'til you know them. After that... heh heh heh
Joe, that was the funniest line I've read in months. Laughing out loud holding my stomach!! Very funny!
Don't worry Rashad, I haven't forgotten your scene. Work, errands and migraine, kept me away from it.
Agreed. Joe is easily one of my favorite people in these forums because like myself, he really likes to dig deep and to always strive for the next level. Joe understands the value of "classical training." Learn the basics first and build upon that. He advocates wisely that being "result" oriented will lead users to overlook the importance of the "process." Process oriented work however, is typically the academic preparation one should gain and only once attained should they then even consider setting specific goals. I am a good example of that myself. I've been "studying" Carrara for years, but I haven't published anything because quite frankly, I am still focused on the process and couldn't care less about the results, just yet..well until recently I should say. Most new users really don't want to faffle with an application for two+ years learning the basics before they start posting images, most people need some sort of more immediate validation of their efforts and so it can tend to lead people toward result oriented thinking which hurts their growth over time.
If I could boil down most of Joe's comments to user related questions it'd be him saying simply:
"Slow down buddy, don't beat yourself up. Give yourself to time to learn before you start comparing yourself to the big boys, cause at this early stage in your development the fight isn't fair. Luck alone shouldn't be the reason your render turned out well, you should be conscious of the choices that lead to the result, so that you can repeat it as needed. Realize that the knowledge takes years to learn and relearn, so the sooner you get started the better. Learning never stops and technology is always changing, so you've got to constantly increase your learning to keep pace.
I would not be able to disagree with any part of that. Joe's alright in my book. And little does he know I'm going to start a thread soon about an issue we discussed long ago...procedurally generated skin texture templates for painting skin in Carrara. I've got to prove that photo references arent the only way to build a texture once you know the elements of skin and how to draw your own wrinkles and other imperfections. That's for a few weeks from now.
Fun fun!
And in this case just like in many. I too held a misconception about the Master Light, fearing it would as Joe assumed, edit more lights than I would have preferred. I do think finding a clearer manner of interfacing, such as adding a tool to the Instances list would be smart to avoid confusion. Once again, JoeMamma2K to the rescue!
EvilP,
Thanks for keeping me posted. I am indeed very interested in your feedback and suggestions on further improvements and optimizations. I have a few more sample spaces such as the sponza atrium that I want to upload with examples of how these arrays function in all sorts of indoor situations. I am going to start the outdoor part of the discussion soon so keep an eye out.
And thanks to Fenric as well for popping in!!! I feel very glad to know how well respected Carrara once had been. Maybe we can still get you to write a plug-in or two, a sort of backward way of continuing to develop Carrara.
I really wish I hadnt entered the game so late. Oh well.
Joe,
I find that even in scenes where the fake GI takes roughly the same time as full GI, if there is hair or other transmapped objects in the scene it is still often better to use the fake GI because it allows for exclusions that full GI doesn't allow for.
Ah yes. I'm a moron. I rendered Rashad's latest scene as is and forgot to record the time. I did think to do a screen cap of the scenes where I made changes.
So, for Rashad's un-a;tered scene, it was around 16 minutes to render.
My first experiment was to reduce the number of fill lights as I did in the first scene. This time I did remember to increase the grid size in the replicator to distribute them all over the room. I turned off the cross screen effect and the soft shadows on the ceiling lights. To help sell the idea that these are bright lights, I enabled the 3D Light Sphere, set it to realistic with an intensity of 75%, a radius of 125, and a quality of 50%.
The first image of the room is the one I altered as described above.
The second image of the room should be from Rashad's scene, unless the forum software screws the order up.
The screen capture of the render setting is for my set up.
With my version, you'll notice hard shadows due to the ceiling light having soft shadows disabled. You'll also notice no banding on the wall above the windows on the left. Increasing the quality of the soft shadows will more than likely take care of the problem in Rashad's scene.
So, I wanted to compare the scene with hard shadows and a shadow buffer. Since a shadow buffer does not respect transparency, I changed Rashad's glowing bulb stand-ins to not cast or receive shadows. They're already excluded from the bulbs, but I wanted to make sure there were no issues. Render times were similar to above, with the hard shadows, and I thought I had taken a screen shot of the final render time, but I can't find it. Oh well....
I set the shadow buffer to have a shadow map of 2048x2048 which for me is the maximum. I encountered very bizarre render artifacts, and I can't tell you why, except to say that it is particular to the shadow buffer. I have shadows of light bulbs. I suspect they are shadows of the glowing bulb stand-ins, but how is a mystery as I meticulously went through them and disabled shadow casting and receiving, I suppose it could be a bug where the replicated bulb avatars are casting shadows, but that seems unlikely. Can anybody else replicate this issue?
Now, I wanted to see if the reduced fill lights, plus soft shadows effected render times. It did. I reduced Rashad's fill lights by the amount in the screen shot. The one with the higher value is Rashad's setting.
Rashad had 750 lights, I had 320 lights, so less than half. With soft shadows re-enabled at the default value, my render time was around eight minutes and change, slightly less than half for my estimation of how long it took to render Rashad's un-altered scene.
So, with soft shadows re-enabled on the ceiling lights, set back to Rashad's light diameter and quality set to good, this is what I came up with and the render time.
Very very nice work! I really like how this turned out.
Does it fit in an email, can you mail it to me so I can play with it myself? Thanks much.
Having played around with these 3D Fill Lights a couple of times do you think this is an approach you may adopt in future projects? If so I'd love to see how you will use them.
Very very nice work! I really like how this turned out.
Does it fit in an email, can you mail it to me so I can play with it myself? Thanks much.
Having played around with these 3D Fill Lights a couple of times do you think this is an approach you may adopt in future projects? If so I'd love to see how you will use them.
Thanks Rashad!
I think your fill light method could greatly simplify the process of simulating interior indirect light. For an interior, I could see using it. I want to play around a bit with the reflected lights from outside, and try shape lights instead.
Could be interesting to selectively place a rig like that in key areas in an outdoor scene. I think a light dome would be more efficient for the overall scene lighting, but for areas of shade under trees for instance, it could come in handy. In fact, I think I may have a test in mind....
BTW, I forgot to mention I changed the hue on the fill light's color chip so there was more of a tan element to it, and adjusted the brightness to .85%.
I'll post the scene to Dropbox. I changed the title to Indoor-Light-Study-2.2-for-C7.2 so that you don't overwrite your file.
There's no registration needed to DL from dropbox if anyone else is interested.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/7370483/Indoor-Light-Study-2.2-for-C7.2.car
Thanks Rashad!
I think your fill light method could greatly simplify the process of simulating interior indirect light. For an interior, I could see using it. I want to play around a bit with the reflected lights from outside, and try shape lights instead.
Could be interesting to selectively place a rig like that in key areas in an outdoor scene. I think a light dome would be more efficient for the overall scene lighting, but for areas of shade under trees for instance, it could come in handy. In fact, I think I may have a test in mind....
BTW, I forgot to mention I changed the hue on the fill light's color chip so there was more of a tan element to it, and adjusted the brightness to .85%.
I'll post the scene to Dropbox. I changed the title to Indoor-Light-Study-2.2-for-C7.2 so that you don't overwrite your file.
There's no registration needed to DL from dropbox if anyone else is interested.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/7370483/Indoor-Light-Study-2.2-for-C7.2.car
Thanks! I'll check this out later tonight.
Oh and for outdoor scenes Domes are usually best, but there are some situations where the 3d fill type of light can help in areas buried in shadow by the canopy. It depends on the way the vegetation is layered.
Why, I do believe we are on the same page! And I thought I was the only one that skimmed! ;-)
Perhaps getting ahead of discussion here, but this is a camera angle of an outdoor scene that I think could benefit from the 3D fill light technique that Rashad has been using and discussing.
This uses no 3D fill lights at the moment. I have two sunlights, one with soft shadows that excludes the water and one that does not use soft shadows and lights only the water. I also use a dome with thirty replicated distant lights to simulate GI, and two distant lights that point straight up and exclude the terrain, rock outcrops and water to simulate reflected ground light. One is a gray-green color and the other is a gray-brown color. I am not using ambient light.
I would be very eager to see that scene with a fill light Evil, I think you are probably right that it would pull some of the hidden detail out of the darker 'corners' of the render.
Here's the one with the light rig, I should mention that I have not used gamma correction on any of these outdoor renders.
I like it, it does indeed let the eye notice more details that might otherwise be hidden.
Thanks Jon.
I did try with gamma correction by the way, but it looked washed out. It could be because of other lighting tricks I use or the haze in the atmosphere throws it off. Just a note, gamma works best in scenes that use GI according to what I have read. It's more linear. Light and shading tricks sometimes aren't linear and can throw off the effect. For instance, I use a couple lights with less than 100% shadow intensity which is definitely not considered a linear work flow.
That makes sense Evil, I would have thought adding Gamma would make it unnaturally bright in that instance.
A larger version of the last image. No changes, except a 1% reduction in the fill light intensity, so 4% with a gay-green color.