February 2024 - DAZ 3D New User Challenge - Lighting and Light Effects

Linwelly · February 18

@Yina yes we have the "something went wrong" bug again, usually the comment still went through. and unfortunately I can't remove the post but It's not really important.

I like what you did with the next version, that really gives the viewer a feeling for the space

suffo85 · February 20

Here's my second submission for the month. It really should have been my first submission, but the gel and gobo lights sounded so cool I had to play with some, lol, and one thing lead to another....

This one is more in line with what was asked for :)

I used your (Linwelly's), provided example as a starting point, and then decided it was time to branch more out of my comfort zones and so I actually did some post work this time. Just as little as three months ago I wouldn't have been able to do a fraction of this lol, so even though it may not be too terribly much, I was pleased with it. I used more tools in Gimp on this singular render than I have ever before. Smudging, blurring, gradients, multiple filters, and almost everything I had to cut out had to be done with the lasso tool (free select).

Been going further out of my comfort areas a lot here lately, converting clothes and hair back and forth between G8 and G9, and tackling dForcing things with weight nodes... hands on is a good way to learn.

Anyway... I appreciate all the patience everyone has had with me learning Daz from the ground up. :)

Title: Sweet Nothings

Challenge: Beginner

Software: Daz Studio 4.22, Caesium Image Compressor, and Gimp 2.10.36

Always open to suggestions for improvement. :)

Linwelly · February 21

suffo85 said:

Here's my second submission for the month. It really should have been my first submission, but the gel and gobo lights sounded so cool I had to play with some, lol, and one thing lead to another....

This one is more in line with what was asked for :)

I used your (Linwelly's), provided example as a starting point, and then decided it was time to branch more out of my comfort zones and so I actually did some post work this time. Just as little as three months ago I wouldn't have been able to do a fraction of this lol, so even though it may not be too terribly much, I was pleased with it. I used more tools in Gimp on this singular render than I have ever before. Smudging, blurring, gradients, multiple filters, and almost everything I had to cut out had to be done with the lasso tool (free select).

Been going further out of my comfort areas a lot here lately, converting clothes and hair back and forth between G8 and G9, and tackling dForcing things with weight nodes... hands on is a good way to learn.

Anyway... I appreciate all the patience everyone has had with me learning Daz from the ground up. :)

Title: Sweet Nothings

Challenge: Beginner

Software: Daz Studio 4.22, Caesium Image Compressor, and Gimp 2.10.36

Always open to suggestions for improvement. :)

nice experiments again! though at the moment I have the impression that the poswork added shinies overpower the main topic, the view on the girls face, esp the lens flare origin point in the lower left, so I think you either need to power up the light sources in the render more or move the origin point outside the image so we see only the break points of the flare.

As well for the light you added in the left upper corner, this looks like it should give some rim light to the character, but it doesn't, so mybe you can try actually adding a light in the scene in a similar spot, for the light source to be visible in the render that woulde need to be a mesh light, and if you manage to create some rim light on the character with that, it would pop out your character even more

suffo85 · February 22

Linwelly said:

nice experiments again! though at the moment I have the impression that the poswork added shinies overpower the main topic, the view on the girls face, esp the lens flare origin point in the lower left, so I think you either need to power up the light sources in the render more or move the origin point outside the image so we see only the break points of the flare.

As well for the light you added in the left upper corner, this looks like it should give some rim light to the character, but it doesn't, so mybe you can try actually adding a light in the scene in a similar spot, for the light source to be visible in the render that woulde need to be a mesh light, and if you manage to create some rim light on the character with that, it would pop out your character even more

LOL wow it took me much longer to figure out how to create a mesh light then I care to admit.. I had bought a set like two months ago or so I think, but like the gel light, I decided I would make my own. I wasted a good day trying to figure it out before caving in and Googling it. I was already making my own lights, so I figured it'd be as easy as just ya'know, making it invisble (trial by fire!! lol). Nope. First I tried cutout opacity, then I tried using a custom alpha channel texture, then I tried refraction, then I messed around with my transparent texture more in the LIE editor (lol), then I tried the simplist of all, just turning off visibility. When all failed, I meticulously went through every menu and hamburger menu Daz Studio has. When I didn't find it there, I resorted to pulling out one of the mesh lights I bought a while ago and dissecting it.. only it held onto its secrets. In the end, I never would've looked for the script that did it if Google hadn't told me to...

I like the mesh lights much better.. point lights and spot lights in this scene were putting a weird moisture effect on the G8 model which I had to remove afterwards in Gimp. I didn't have that problem with the mesh lights.

I'll keep trying at this for a while longer, but this is the best I've come up with so far. I think if I keep messing with the positioning of the lights I can get a better rim/outline. I had to make a second mesh light, when I had gotten a really good outline of her with the single mesh light there wasn't enough light on her face, and then when adding the second light it took some away from the rim/outline. I think I need to find a better balance between the two lights for a better effect of the outline.

This is more challenging then I thought it'd be initially... but I did waste a lot of time trying to make my own light when I could've just used the ones I'd bought a while ago haha. :)

Linwelly · February 22

@suffo85 you tried and experimented and I'm sure that you found some other things on the way that will help in the future, so time well invested, I'd say. And just to drop that here as well, the most simple of meshlights is s simple plane made emissive in the surface setiings, it's how I make my mesh lights 90% of the time.

I like the results of your experiments!

berriboy · February 23

Here is my first entry using gobos.

Title: What is it?

berriboy · February 23

A second entry, this time using a gel that I made myself.

Title: Under Fire

jako101182 · February 26

A portrait of Agnes Mason.

This is my entry into the intermediate challenge. The gobo used is the blinds in the scene. With the other lighting i used a warmer colour on one side and a cooler colour on the other, to try and create some extra contrast in the picture.

:D

Linwelly · February 26

that's an interesting way to create a scene with fire illumination, it's a bit confusing though in this case, since with the lights falling on the plane behind it looks like the fire is on the far side from the character but the light does not come from there

berriboy said:

A second entry, this time using a gel that I made myself.

Title: Under Fire

Linwelly · February 26

jako101182 said:

A portrait of Agnes Mason.

This is my entry into the intermediate challenge. The gobo used is the blinds in the scene. With the other lighting i used a warmer colour on one side and a cooler colour on the other, to try and create some extra contrast in the picture.

:D

that's a great soft light scene you made there, very well nuanced lights with the cooler and the warmer tones

SilentTraveller · February 29

Image Title: Crime Scene
Software Used to Create the Image: DAZ Studio 4.21; Paintshop Pro 2023 for some postwork
Beginner Challenge: Lighting
Main assets used:

Desert Motel Room and some assets from the associated bundle by Polish, et al.
Izanami by Mousso
Yonni by Emrys

Uploading this at the last minute as a competition entry but would appreciate any feedback for improvement. Going for a noirish feel, albeit in colour. The only direct light in the room is coming from the TV screen with emission luminance and colour temp properties set. Indirect light coming from the light props illuminating the walkway outside the room and some from the moon, which is simply a spotlight with a slight tinge of colour for “drama”. Hopefully it’s not too darkly lit for most people’s screen settings. Film grain effect due to the lack of light in the scene is an artefact of the original render and is intended to contribute to the noir atmosphere. If anyone is interested in any of the props or settings used in the creation of this scene, please feel to ask.

suffo85 · February 29

Finalized work on my submission, would've had it in sooner but it's been a busy end of the month for me.. no postwork, I liked the way it rendered out. I did the original one with a lot of postwork because it was just really dark lol, and I felt like I needed to add more into it. To get the full silhouette effect I had to use three lights in the end. I kept trying with two, but one would always overpower the other no matter how much I tried to tinker with them or change brightness of one or both. Someone more experienced could probably get this effect nailed with just a single light haha. :) There were a few things bugging me about the last render, mainly the eyes. They just didn't look good. I didn't think the lips could look as well as they could've either, so rummaged around for materials until I found some nicer things for her. I really appreciate the suggestions given to me this month, they turned out to be good challenges for me. :)

Beginner Challenge

Title: Sweet Nothings

Software: Daz Studio Public Beta Build 4.22.1.88, Caesium Image Compressor

.Format: .jpg

Linwelly · March 1

SilentTraveller said:

Image Title: Crime Scene
Software Used to Create the Image: DAZ Studio 4.21; Paintshop Pro 2023 for some postwork
Beginner Challenge: Lighting
Main assets used:

Desert Motel Room and some assets from the associated bundle by Polish, et al.

Izanami by Mousso

Yonni by Emrys

Uploading this at the last minute as a competition entry but would appreciate any feedback for improvement. Going for a noirish feel, albeit in colour. The only direct light in the room is coming from the TV screen with emission luminance and colour temp properties set. Indirect light coming from the light props illuminating the walkway outside the room and some from the moon, which is simply a spotlight with a slight tinge of colour for “drama”. Hopefully it’s not too darkly lit for most people’s screen settings. Film grain effect due to the lack of light in the scene is an artefact of the original render and is intended to contribute to the noir atmosphere. If anyone is interested in any of the props or settings used in the creation of this scene, please feel to ask.

A bit late to change something for the Fabruary challenge but I still wanted to give you some feedback. I like the concept very much with the reduced and limited lighting and I think the idea wors as well since the eye follows the brightes spots fors, (the moon and the entrance with the man coming in and only then explores the scene. I still would think a bit more light on the female character would be good, you could then aid the idea by adding depth of field with the focus on the area you want the viewer to notice first

Linwelly · March 1

suffo85 said:

Finalized work on my submission, would've had it in sooner but it's been a busy end of the month for me.. no postwork, I liked the way it rendered out. I did the original one with a lot of postwork because it was just really dark lol, and I felt like I needed to add more into it. To get the full silhouette effect I had to use three lights in the end. I kept trying with two, but one would always overpower the other no matter how much I tried to tinker with them or change brightness of one or both. Someone more experienced could probably get this effect nailed with just a single light haha. :) There were a few things bugging me about the last render, mainly the eyes. They just didn't look good. I didn't think the lips could look as well as they could've either, so rummaged around for materials until I found some nicer things for her. I really appreciate the suggestions given to me this month, they turned out to be good challenges for me. :)

Beginner Challenge

Title: Sweet Nothings

Software: Daz Studio Public Beta Build 4.22.1.88, Caesium Image Compressor

.Format: .jpg

great finalising work, rim light is a tricky beast but you found a way and it turned out really good!