Why is v6 so illuminated before being rendered

ScottBreton

hi, I am a traditional media artist and am experimenting with using 3d software to develop compositions. I recently bought the Victoria 6 for Genesis2, which looks quite impressively realistic when rendered, but I am wondering why it is not modelled like the other figures and props while building the image? It looks as though there is a strong ambient light at all times. I can still detect the direction of the light sources, but it is not as obvious as for the previous figures, which seem to be illuminated only by the lights you insert into the scenes, which I find quite useful. see image for V6 versus V5

Lissa_xyz

Check the surfaces tab as you're probably right. There is an ambient setting that some people crank up by default on skins. For the most part it should be off, set to black, and at 0% since you can use lighting to insert the ambient rather than forcing it via the texture.

ScottBreton

Vaskania said:

Check the surfaces tab as you're probably right. There is an ambient setting that some people crank up by default on skins. For the most part it should be off, set to black, and at 0% since you can use lighting to insert the ambient rather than forcing it via the texture.

Thanks Vaskania, but when I looked in those settings, the only one that was different to what you suggest was the colour. Settin that to black made no difference. But anyway, can I confirm, the way that my Victoria 6 is appearing in Daz is not the way it normally loads?

Lissa_xyz

Come to think of it, if I'm not mistaken, V6 loads by default with subsurface active. Another cause will be a white subsurface color with a high strength value.

Subsurface does tend to look like utter crap until you render. The viewport never reflects what the render will look like with some surfaces/shaders.

Totte

I think it depends on what shaders you are using (HSS, SSS) on V6 and how those are interpreted by DS in the4 visual feedback in the work area window.

Best way to see that if you render and it do come out naturally when you do. For me on an old ATI 5770 Card and Mac OS X, HSS or SSS shaded figures are usually shown much lighter in the work window.

ScottBreton

Vaskania said:

Come to think of it, if I'm not mistaken, V6 loads by default with subsurface active. Another cause will be a white subsurface color with a high strength value.

Subsurface does tend to look like utter crap until you render. The viewport never reflects what the render will look like with some surfaces/shaders.

Thanks heaps Vaskania - as I dialled the subsurface strength down, out came the modelling! The skin now appears very close to what it does when I render, which is much easier for me as a novice. It also means that coloured light actually shows up.

Khory

For the most part it should be off, set to black, and at 0% since you can use lighting to insert the ambient rather than forcing it via the texture.

If I recall correctly the setting needs to be on, 100 and set to black for some types of lighting. I think its uberlight but I won't swear to that.

jestmart

The new SSS shader's SubSurface Color causes that, it acts like ambient in the viewport but looks right when rendered.