Best Light Tutorial(s)?
mwokee
Posts: 1,275
The more I play with lights in Daz, the more I realize there is greater potential for which I am ignorant.
What are the best tutorials, web sites, YouTubes, products, whatever, for learning lighting?
Thanks
Comments
It may help to say whether you are using Iray or 3Delight?
I actually would like to learn both. I'm having mixed results and need to learn the detals of the light functions and tools.
I think it's better to concentrate on one at a time, as there are a number of conflicting approaches between the two. What works in one, produced no or substandard results in the other, and vice versa.
If you're already familiar with the fundamentals of photography, and setting up real lights to take a good picture, then Iray may be the better to start. Many of the concepts are the same virtual and real world.
Conversely, I know many folks who aren't familiar with photography concepts find 3DLight easier to grasp.
But definitely apply your time to just one for now. Master it, then move on to the next, if you feel the need.
I actually do professional photography on the side but I probably would want to start with 3Delight since I've been using that more and find the rendering times for iray to be horrendous.
Thanks
Well, it's been my experience that when an internet question goes unaswered, it's usually a dumb question. If the obvious is in front of me, I am blind to seeing it.
Either way, there is a "Today Only" sale which includes lighting tutorials, up to 80% off so I loaded up.
Now I have homework to do...
Dreamlight has some amazing tutorials. I would highly recommend anything he throws out there. Just be careful of his software though, as a lot of it is for older versions of Daz.
Tutorials:
Daz studio illuminated is very good. It has hours of content and Covers the different types of lights and 7 point lighting setup. Then on his site he has Daz studio light master. I don't have that, but it seems to cover similar ground with some advice for lighting various types of scenes- from horror to action.
Daz studio advanced Iray lighting - for iray. - I've just bought it, but haven't watched it yet. I'm sure it will also be good though. I'll have to get back to you in a few weeks.
Go check out the Daz store and his personal shop. He has a number of over the shoulder tutorials on creating and lighting various scenes. I would also recommend signing up to his news letter as he sometimes has vouchers that aren't reflected on his store. Eg he just had an 85% off sale. (He emails often though. I don't mind, but some people may not like that,)
In this case I think the question is just too broad.
I usually advise people to learn the lighting techniques that photographers use and emulate those setups, but it looks like you did that already.
Re rendering times for iray to be horrendous. There are a couple of things you can check.
1. Do you have an nvidia graphics card that has Cuda cores?
2. If so, is the card selected in the Render settings>iray>advanced tab. Doesn't always get set by default
3. Again in render settings> editor is optimization ( i think thats it - away from my render machine) set to speed rather than memory?