Iray light settings

kaotkbliss

I was getting a pretty good handle on Iray lighting when it was still in beta but continued to use 3delight when it went live as I wanted to get a project finished up before switching over to Iray.

Well I got my project finished, but was too dark on other monitors so I would have to go back through and redo the lighing on all my scenes. Ok, so this would be a good time to just completely switch over to Iray.

Well all the settings I knew for Iray are gone. The sun setting, the lighing measurement (changing whatever the default formula was to a straight watts unit so I didn't have to mess with obscenely high luminus numbers), etc.

Is there a way to display these light settings again?

AJ2112

Did you select IRay render engine in render setting ? 

kaotkbliss

yep and turned on photometric under the light properties, but the only 2 settings I have for photometrics are Luminous Flux and Temperature (K).

There used to be a ton more in beta, one of which changed the lights unit of measure so I was able to change it to watts which was a ton easier for me to imagine what numbers to punch in for the brightness I wanted (soft light, I could use 40 watt or 60 watt. real bright I could go to 90 or 100 watt, just like real-life light bulbs)

KA1

Iray defaults to having an environment HDR for its dome lighting, near the top of the environment settings you can select the little picture with a sun on it (ruin something or other it's called) and change it to none on the pop up, that will change the iRay settings to the sun with longitude lattitude and time of day etc, adds quite a few options. For the scene lights you should be able to switch their emissions settings to watts in the emissions tab which defaults at cm2.

kaotkbliss

ok, something's wrong with my installation then because my lights don't have an emissions category, nor does my render settings have the ruin setting. The only setting that has any kind of picture is the Environment Map.

 

*edit*

I had just gone and uninstalled/reinstalled Daz studio through DIM too because I thought there might be something wrong, but that didn't change anything.

KA1

Actually the emission setting might only be on emmissive objects, I tend to light scenes with mesh lights or emmissive primatives. In the render settings tab do you have a few tabs down the left including Environment, Tone mapping, Progressive etc?

kaotkbliss

here are the categories I have under render settings as well as a spotlight

KA1

The picture on environment map, click it and switch to none, that'll switch to the longitude lattitude sun settings etc

kaotkbliss

Thank you, that will at least help me get started on getting the lighting right.

I may be mis-remembering the spotlight settings as I was using both emissive and photometric lights durring my learning process.

KA1

I think the watt option is only there for emissives, I seem to remember the spotlights throwing me out with that initially too!!

Szark

KA1 said:

I think the watt option is only there for emissives, I seem to remember the spotlights throwing me out with that initially too!!

Correct

 

You also have in the Render Setting Pane under Presets a Sun Dial that allows more control over where the sun is. Load the Sun Dial and expand it in the Parameters Pane and select the Sun Chain to adjust the position.

Deke

My problem with the iray lighting process is the inconsistent manner in which lights are set up and controlled. There are the familiar friendly light icons. Or you can turn any surface into an emissive. Or you can deal with HDRI and domes and so forth in the render-settings controls. I vote for consolidation so that all lighting things have their controllers under the same panel.

 

kaotkbliss

I was nearly there back in beta. All I needed was a sun and maybe a spotlight or 2 for dramatic shadows or to lighten up a particularly dark area on a character.

Add some emmissives for neon lights or torches and the scene was done.

 

The majority of the lighting came from where it should, the sun, the other's were just less important "touch up" lights.

I hope to get to that level again. I'm obviously rusty LOL

Tobor

I think the thing is, Iray lights are more consistent with real life, but real life isn't always uncomplicated. Other physical attributes come into play. Here's an example: one lumen for a point lamp appears to be far dimmer than one lumen for a spotlight, because of how the light is projected into the scene. With a point light, that one lumen is spread 360 degrees into 3D space, so this light output power is spread out considerably. For a spotlight, the same one lumen is concentrated into a smaller area. The light looks brighter. You can't have realistic settings if all the light types behave the same way, because in real life, they don't.

Emissives cover a wide swath of illumination, including some that don't exist in reality. It's actually a nice thing that they provide different ways to express light output. The emissive might be a light bulb, which is more like a point light. Or it can be a TV screen, or perhaps the glow from someone sinister character's eyes. Whether you choose watts or lumens, or pick a unit that considers output by surface area, it's the same power being produced. Find a luminance unit you're comfortable with, and stick to it. I think I only use (k)candles per meter-square, as I've gotten used to what numbers I need to produce the effects I want.