Help with cartoon renders - floor black! SOLVED

Octavia Moon

I am trying to render a character (see image below) but am at a loss why only one part of the floor is lit...and why the background is so dark?

I am using a camera with DOP settings - which seem to be working ok judging by what is in and out of focus...

I have a distant light....and have tried a point light set at the darkest point in the render scene and also tried a spot light - none seem to work.

I've tried changing the render settings...the camera settings...and some of the settings on the floor itself but nothing seems to make a blind bit of difference and at this point, since I have no clue what's causing it, I've given up...

It's a cartoon render BTW.....

Sorry to be such a nuisance and keep asking things....

OM :)

EDITED TO SAY: I have also tried Uber Environment....which I have only just pruchased so don't know it well.

Chohole

To attach an image to a post you need to go to the field below the type screen, and where it says "attach" on the left hand, there is a panel which says "browse" clickk on browse and go to where the image is on your hard drive and click on that to attach it to your post.

Formats acceptable are jpg, png or gif, and max size is 2000x2000.

JimmyC_2009

First of all, Posting an image is simplicity itself. when replying to a thread, you will see the Browse button as shown in the image below. If you are only posting one image, type your message, use the Browse button to find the image on your PC like you find any other file. When the path to the image appears in the window, click on Submit Post.

Octavia Moon

Bless you both....I did try it but when I previewed the post the image didn't appear so I assumed that was wrong...anyhoo. I have now edited my first post...many thanks :)

JimmyC_2009

OctaviaMoon said:

I am trying to render a character (see image above) but am at a loss why only one part of the floor is lit...and why the background is so dark?

I am using a camera with DOP settings - which seem to be working ok judging by what is in and out of focus...

I have a distant light....and have tried a point light set at the darkest point in the render scene and also tried a spot light - none seem to work.

I've tried changing the render settings...the camera settings...and some of the settings on the floor itself but nothing seems to make a blind bit of difference and at this point, since I have no clue what's causing it, I've given up...

It's a cartoon render BTW.....

Sorry to be such a nuisance and keep asking things....

OM :)

You will almost certainly need to point your Distant Light at a downward angle to light the floor. The arrows on a DL only show the direction that the light is coming from, if you have it parallel to the ground, it will light you figure, but not the floor. Try using the Rotate tool on it, you should be able to see a change in the viewport.

DOP, I think you mean DOF (Depth of Field)? You are correct, that should not affect the lighting at all..

A good way to place a light is by ticking the box 'Apply Active Viewport Transforms', which is another way of saying 'Put the light where the cameara that I am looking through now is placed'. Use your Perspective view to go to where you want the light to shine from, and use the above method.

You can also select your Distant Light in the Camera drop down tab, and look through it as if it were a camera. Whilst looking through it, you can use the camera controls to adjust it too.

Octavia Moon

Thanks, Jimmy....

The distant light is placed above and to the right of the scene and is rotated down....but I will give it another go with the suggested settings....

Thank you...and yes, I meant DOF :)

Octavia Moon

I've tried all the things suggested to no avail...have even set up another scene, with 2 x distant lights, a spot light and a point light...everything in the scene is beautifully lit, looks great, but the floor still has a dark arc of shadow behind the figure ...???

EDIT: Ok....have just tried rendering in the default mode and the floor is bright and light....so this dark shadow on the floor is a quality of the DS Cartoon Renderer....I can't imagine why it would do that or how to get rid of that effect?

Any ideas, anyone?

JimmyC_2009

What floor is it that you are using, maybe I can load it too and see what is going on?

You could also select the floor in the Scene tab, or using the Surface Selection Tool, Tools > Surface Selection (Alt+Shift+M), look in the surfaces tab to see what the diffuse colour is, and lighten it up a bit? You can also change the Ambient colour to something other than black as well.

Octavia Moon

Apart from the Bedouin scene in the above image, I think it's from Poserworld...I have tried with an office - I think it's a Maclean interior.

I have tried altering the colours and intensity of various surface settings, including the ambient, diffuse...

I thought this might be useful:

The first image is rendered on 3Delight default.

Second image is on 3Delight Cartoon.

Last image is of the render settings for both.....

This is clearly an effect of the cartoon rendering - I hadn't noticed before but the desk top is also dark. I know I read somewhere that lights can seriously adversely affect toon rendering - although with the default lights (i.e. no added lights) it seems to be the same...I'm at a loss!

JimmyC_2009

I tried this with a Plane Primitive in DS4P, the toon renderer does that circular thing on that as well.

I experimented with Shaders, and the ones I tested do taht as well, except for pwToon. When I applied a pwToon shader, it covered the whole plane with no circular mark. I don;t know what the answer is, or why DS does it that way, but pwToon shaders seem to work.

Octavia Moon

Thank you so much, Jimmy....

I have PWToon but I prefer the way the Daz Toon Shaders work on the skin...but you've given me a place to concentrate....

I guess my way forward is to use the shaders on all the surfaces and render with the non-toon renderer....?

Many Thanks

OM

Octavia Moon

Update for anyone else encountering this problem....

http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/artzone/pub/tutorials/dazstudio/studio-toonshaders

I recommend the above....

Basically you need to select the surface that is causing the problem and (after applying the toon shader - I used the Daz defaults) you need to set the outline threshold to 0 -although you can experiment with slightly higher.

As the above tutorial says....

Now, I’ve mentioned this before, but we’re finally seeing it now. The floor is mostly blacked out. Now, deep shadows in the corner are fine, but I don’t want the floor to look like this (Or at least, we’ll say that, there are cases where if you have a dark scene it can work to your advantage, but fixing it is more important). A brief note, despite what some people will say, this is not necessarily a bug in the shader. This behavior is correct for a surface tilted this far away from the camera, since lines are based on geometry. In this case it simply happens to be an unwanted result of intended behavior.

To fix it, we have some options. If it were important to have lines somewhere on a surface where this is happening, you would want to do several test renders using outline threshold values of less than one until you get the right balance. However, the floor is a separate surface here, and has no detail that needs lines, so setting the threshold value to zero is a quick and certain way of solving the problem, as we see here.