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Do you have any news for us... pleeeeease - waiting for a letter.
Cider. Mead.
Be still, my heartcredit card!
Would have posted an update sooner but it's not in a pretty state to look at atm, sooo some things to keep in mind:
- All of the architecture is in Daz now, some of it stil with temp textures or unfinished Geometry (some walls, floor and such) which makes it ugly to look at, hard to find new angles for images that don't have unfinished stuff someplace :p
- With all the pieces in, the space is closed so until there's better lighting... it won't look so hot.
- Plus it's starting to look like a big, empty, sterile space. Until the props are all in and the floor dirt/debris overlays + cobwebs it won't change much :/
- Roguey has almost finished bringing all the props into Daz with a first texture pass tha I need to go over, but I won't place them in the scene until I've had time to make sure the models and morphs/rigging are fine.
- Some other stuff we will be adding (but haven't started yet) is 3D scanned stuff: different breads, meats hanging around, cheese... typical stuff. Some bowls with stews are already done.
Wahoooo. Thank you for your message
looks sooooo impressive 
Really looking forward to this
Floor and missing walls are in place now.
I just bought your fantasy bedroom, and hooooooly cow man! I've seen so few interior scenes with lighting as good as that and that render that quickly to boot.
Do you have strategies/tips/tricks for lighting interior spaces you could share?!
Also, if this tavern renders half as well as the bedroom, it's gonna be a dream to work with!
OdinVonD - The tavern will be larger with more items which I imagine will affect render times negatively, but it's built the same way (same techniques, optimizations etc) for what it's worth.
Not sure I have much in the form of lighting tips to be honest, it's something I never dealt much with myself until I started doing Daz products...
I think a lot of the kudos have to go to the Iray denoiser. The last renders posted went on for around 2 minutes before the denoiser kicked in. It's an empty room right now, but still nice compared to pre-denoiser times.
I don't think I have any technical tips that would help with lighting performance as that is something I only worry about when I'm done and feel things are looking good... then I go back and see what can be done about perf and try to find compromises I can live with.
As for visual tips... what works for me, at least for now, is just trying to keep things as natural as possible and then maybe adding an little extra something, but first, always fill in the real light sources and see how far that gets you before throwing stuff to fake lighting.
In the bedroom and the the Euro Apartment, the only light sources were always the 'real' lightsources (lamps, fridge, chandles, day/night light through windows etc). I think that helps shape the lighting and shadows in a way that matches what our brains would expect from the set up we're seeing.
If you have a lone round lightbulb but you're faking the emissive light with a large plane (I've seen the results of similar setups in the gallery) then the lighting and shadows cast are always going to look off.
So, one advice would be to always try to imitate life, then add on top of it as needed to create more drama or whatever else is lacking.
- I also like to work with 2 opposing light sources, 1 cold, 1 warm, one always stronger than the other. In the bedroom and the Inn/Tavern, the colder light from the windows is the one that dominates with the warm candle light usually lighting up the opposing sides with less intensity.
In the night versions of the scenes, it's usually the opposite. Warm candle light dominates, cold blue night light adds the contrast to that.
Since the bedroom has windows on both sides, I made the lighting on the left side (fireplace side) warmer and stronger than the lighting coming from the right side to mimic sun and shade sides. (Same at night to mimic moon and shade side). So when you put something or someone in there, they won't be blasted with the same light intensity and tones from both sides.
- If the room only had windows on 1 side, I would have probably put more candles on the opposing wall in the default set up.
- Don't use giant lights that flood the whole scene. Large emissive planes etc will give you the same effect as a camera flash. It just flattens everything. It's better to have more, smaller light sources.
- Put lights behind windows, not in front of them so the window frame can help break up the light and add some shadows.
- Try to have the lighting create shadows, shine on surfaces and contrasts. Some things look prettier when they're half hidden in the shadows etc.
This only works tho if materials are properly done, with decent PBR values that will react to the light in a natural way. I spend a lot of my texturing time spinning lights and looking at how the light reflects from different angles and make sure that scratches, dirt, dust, wear, polish etc all have an impact on it... to some healthy extent, I'm not obsessed either.
- It's easier to start from black and add lights until it looks good, then start with too many lights and try to tune them until they look as good.
Hope any of that helps :p
Great info! Thanks so much!
So one more question: I did a render in the bedroom setting before, but then I went to re-render it (and hadn't changed any settings so far as I could tell), but when I tried again, every time the post-denoiser kicked in, it caused DAZ to crash. As far as I can see it's only for the scene I did with the fantasy bedroom. Any ideas as to why that might be? My solution for now is to just not use it.
Are you running a different version of DS than when you created the scene? Different versions require different video drivers.
- Greg
No, haven't updated. It was only a day apart. Drivers are up to date as well.
OdinVonD - Never heard of that happen... I imagine it keeps happening after a reboot ?
Maybe try loading different render settings or set them all to default, then turn the denoiser on and see if it works.
Also, there's 2 bedroom scenes, day and night versions, does it happen with both ?
I can't really think of much else right now, the denoiser isn't exactly rocket science with flickle requirements...
If all else fails, there's always the stand alone version of the denoiser. I often just render things normally and then drag & drop the render into the denoiser. If you want to set that up let me know and I can probably find the links again or make a zip with the apps.
Here's some other things to consider/try:
Don't let Windows Update select the drivers to use. Re-install drivers from nVidia if Windows did it's thing last night.
Are you close to maxing out the memory of your video card? If you did add characters before re-rendering, it could have put you over the edge when the denoiser kicked in. Along the same lines, what other programs you were running that take up VRAM could have changed.
Also, I find Iray preview mode to cause problems on my setup when I actualy do go to render. I set the preview mode to texture shaded, close DS (this setting is saved with DS and not with your scene), then re-laucnch DS and open the scene for rendering.
Hope you figure things out.
- Greg
Looking forward to playing with this, Mario! Been scheming in my head about exactly how to create a crowded scene full of figures all decked out various gear.
- Greg
Let'shope your adventurers don't get killed off before we finish this thing Greg :p
- Most of the new props/furniture in the images only have WIP textures, will get a final pass soon.
- The bar mdoel is still WIP, just threw it in there to see how it fits.
- Entrance door texture is WIP too.
- The wooden dividers (with the little shields on top) can be opened up. There's a morph that hides the wooden wall part and you're left with a more open space which looks pretty nice too.
hey! Where is my tongue? Oh... I see... on the floor
WOW!!!!
WOW that's so going in my cart when it comes out
Looks fantastic
Seriously, an instant-buy
Looks great! A "must have" for my upcoming project.
I, personally, cannot wait- this is perfect for my s/o's storyline and I can picture several instances where this would be perfect for promos.
DarwinsMishap - It should make for a nice Background for promos I'd hope :)
Been mostly texturing props, and some other things have been added, some with, and some without final textures -_-
The red shields on the wall by the stairs will be painted differently eventually (right now they're borrowing the textures from the Bedroom).
Renders still render within a decent 2-4 minutes at their current size. If you sharpen them a bit in PS after the denoiser they look pretty nice already.
I want this so badly
It's like waiting for Christmas morning!
OdinVonD - At this rate we may not be done until Xmas morning -_-
Added the tables and some of the content. There will be some food bowls, bread etc added later.
There's more progress but nothing really mindblowingly new to see.
The foam in the mug has a morph to make it look empty or various degrees of full.
Can't speak, can't breath... beautiful!!!
I'm at the office and it's 8:30 in the morning here, but all I can think about now is a cold beer ;)
- Greg
This is looking better and better the more we see of it! If it does take you until Xmas morning then at least it will be a nice New Year present