JACK TOMALIN APPRECIATION SOCIETY [JAS III]
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I still consider myself a complete and utter newbie when it comes to lighting. It's arguably one of the most complex parts of a scene, and can make or break your final image. I always find myself incredibly jealous of some of the promotional renders you find with a lot of products, simply because I have difficulty matching that standard in my own work.
That being said, I have 'cheated' a few times and used lighting presets which work wonders, especially under Lux.
Yea, it's a art form in itself.. but like everything, patience and practice will help - so just stick with it.
And there's nothing wrong with using presets too, that's what they are there for :)
lighting is one of my favorite things to do. granted I use Poser, i think lighting is way harder in Studio
Being a Poser user for some years made moving to Daz a rocky road, but I've barely used Poser since switching. Largely this is due to Genesis, but now that I've got my hands on Reality 2.0, I'm finding the overall quality of my renders has skyrocketed. It's like the old British advertisements. Daz gets your whites whiter than white :D
Also, since this is a JAS thread, I wouldn't be doing my part if I didn't at least include one render with his set pieces in.
Nice! Ah GIS.. :)
I'm actually using quite a few of your other items in my main project too, but I can't lift the lid on that yet or the gremlins will eat my soul.
I'm actually using quite a few of your other items in my main project too, but I can't lift the lid on that yet or the gremlins will eat my soul.
Ooh sounds interesting.. look forward to seeing the results, when the gremlins give you the nod ;)
These are good, straightforward tutorials on lighting by a bloke who works at Pixar and adapted from his book on lighting.
http://www.3drender.com/archives/index.htm
I find Poser lighting difficult as I can't find the lights to pick them up and move them. They also seem to move with the camera which is a pain if you want a front and back shot of something. With DS at least I can find the lights and they stay put.
It's a difficult area though. I've been photographing for years but only outdoor, mostly buildings and landscape, so I've never practised artificial lighting. It's probably why I find Vue the easiest app to use as it's mostly working with one light as the sun and maybe a highlight on a figure or item.
As for Poser lighting, I hear you. One of the biggest difficulties I faced using Poser was finding point lights in any given scene. It's especially difficult when you're dealing with more complex areas for animations and need lights across a wider area. One of the things I love about Daz is that you get a transform/translate gizmo, so even if you can't see the light, the gizmo makes it easy to position and rotate.
Being a Poser user for some years made moving to Daz a rocky road, but I've barely used Poser since switching. Largely this is due to Genesis, but now that I've got my hands on Reality 2.0, I'm finding the overall quality of my renders has skyrocketed. It's like the old British advertisements. Daz gets your whites whiter than white :D
Also, since this is a JAS thread, I wouldn't be doing my part if I didn't at least include one render with his set pieces in. Nice she looks thoughtful. GIS I keep thinking how to use all the GIS series and since going back to DS3A and finding with my RAM maxed out I can do so much more than I could before leaving it for DS4/4.5. That last image proved to me what DS3A can do that DS4.5 can't on my machine. So I may be able to get the ideas in my head out at some stage next year.
I've been using GIS in Vue. Everything imports well. I don't have trouble with Jack's sets the way I do with many things. Vue has a problem with the way it reads .obj format that makes curves where there should be hard edges. So imports from DS and Poser can mean a lot of frigging about to get things to look ok. Not that happy with the composition here but it was a first attempt.
Well that's good to hear my stuff works well in Vue :)
Personally I can't get on with anything Poser - especially the lighting.
This image uses Jannah, which I think is one of Jacks, and Kingdom of Marakesh; not completly happy with how it came out
And for me it's the opposite! I can get lighting the way I want i DS, but in Poser everything looks flat, boring and dull, no matter what I do, even with commercial light sets and max render settings.
And for me it's the opposite! I can get lighting the way I want i DS, but in Poser everything looks flat, boring and dull, no matter what I do, even with commercial light sets and max render settings.
Same here :)
I've found the free Poser light sets over at RDNA fairly good for basic things. They need a bit of tweaking and some of the colours don't work well on people - unless you want greenish tone flesh. I do wish the lights in OpenGL gave a better idea of the brightness as it often feels like stumbling around in the dark if you don't want it overlit. It's not my final renderer so I only use it for pics of texture sets.
This is one of RDNA's moonlights with a bit of tweaking.
Same here :)We found the chink in Jack's superhero armour and found he is just a plain ordinary hairy bloke. ;) Now I feel so much better knowing that. :P
Love the outfit especially the top.
The top and sleeves are Far Journeyer by MAB and Will Dupre - http://www.daz3d.com/shop/far-journeyer with one of my textures (at ShareCG).
The original has a flap thing and knickers but doesn't seem a good thing to take long journeys in. So I adapt it when I use it. The texture sets are for all the parts, even the ones I never use.
Same here :)
...raises hand. I find positioning/aiming the basic (not UE) Daz lights to work very similar to theatrical lighting. Distant lights are simply"floods" and spot/point lights speak for themselves. The only thing missing is the falloff (save for point lights).
This is why I wish Dreamlight would update LDP for 4.5. Much simpler (and more logical) workflow than UE or other IBL light systems.
Using the lighting control globe in Poser seems so strange in comparison though in Pro2010 I can take more advantage of ray tracing and AO as I can render in background mode.
Point lights falloff
http://www.daz3d.com/shop/uberpoint-light-shader-for-daz-studio/
http://www.daz3d.com/shop/uber-lighting-bundle
+1.. Uberlights are excellent once you get your head around them :)
...but they don't work like "normal" lights as they still require the appropriate IBL sphere for the setting to make their ambient effects look "right".
Not so with LDP. which is built with the standard Daz lights.
Besides without the appropriate render engine and hardware to support it, "true" photo real rendering is a an exercise in futility. Lux may be good, but standalone engines like VRray, Indigo, Octane, Renderman, and Maxwell are superior in comparison (which is why they cost the big bucks).
I've been playing around with Reality a lot lately and wanted to see how well it could cope with Sacraments stained glass windows. The lighting isn't optimial, hence the 'fireflies' and other artifacts, but I think the initial results speak for themselves. I'm looking forward to seeing how far I can push it to get some truly breathtaking results.
Looking pretty sweet there ;)
Yea I used Reality in a couple of the Sacrament promos.. slow going, yea, nice results :)
One thing I neglected to check before rendering it before was whether there were any ACSEL shaders already designed for Sacrament. I've since installed them, so I should at least have the right 'feel' for the scene. A lot of what you see there is with my own personal tweaks on the materials used. The stained glass window was the hardest part to get right.
The light streaks were done in post - they are Lightwave renders, which helped too, but I find usually doing things like that afterwards give you greater control (and means you can tweak stuff without the need to re-render)
The stained glass effect looks right to me. Here is a photo of the same thing.
I have to admit, I've never used Lightwave, so I know very little about it. Interesting that it was done in post though, it gives such a striking effect it's hard to imagine it as more than one image! Since I'm making heavy use of the set lately, I really want to get the best out of it so there's a lot of tinkering with the materials to fine tune it for Reality. I'm getting a RAM upgrade tomorrow which should help me a lot with larger sets. My poor PC has been struggling to keep up lately :p