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Just thought I would give everyone a heads up that I submitted an update yesterday. I'm not sure when it will be released... maybe after the weekend.
The update includes a tuneup on the SSS shadow sample function. It was previously not as optimized as it should have been. The Renderer's SSS pass calculation pause should be faster after the update.
A slider was added so that you can now pick any surface diffuse, ambient or index or reflection value for flagging, not just 99% or IOR of 1.1. This allows for much more flexibility and control over various settings for different surfaces.
I added an AO color picker so you can have shadows in colors other than black. Black usually looks the best but it is always good to have options.
Thanks again for all your support.
Oh those sound promising. Looking forward to the update.
Oh thank you. I really appreciate having more flagging options and a color picker. I hadn't gotten far enough in to find the other thing, but I'm sure I will appreciate it as well.
...thank you. Looking forward to it. The surface slider will help a lot when using multiple AALs. Been playing around with a night scene which can be tricky when it comes to lighting so it isn't too dark or appear overlit.
Whether they do or not, these are an UberEnvironment level of "Must Have" from now on. Things are possible with these lights that are nowhere possible without them, and that is a very big deal.
This is great to hear. Your user guide is very helpful. Will that get an update to include the new feature descriptions?
Can you give us a tip on how you did the promo with the sun bounce and sky light? You already explained that one has fall off and the other doesn't, but where do you place the lights for a large scene like that.? Are they up in the sky or at ground level? I'm really not very sure in general where to place the light.
I've also been having an issue with specular light from the ambient light making my characters' eyes gray. My solution has been to set the ambient light to diffuse only, but is there a better way?
Thanks for making such unique products.
This scene would have been a lot more complicated to set up without AAL
The Roman pool scene?
The ambient that provides the overall blue sky light has no distance radius (set to 0 to ovride and illuminate everything) and is right in the middle of the scene. Like UberEnvironment, where the sky ligh is placed is not important because it is illuminating and shadowing everything equally.
The ambient light with falloff, that simulates the bouncing of the direct sun, is at ground level in the back right corner of the pool... above, but in about the middle of, that back, right, white square section in the bottom of the pool. If I remember correctly hehe.
Essentially the trick is to see where the directional light is hitting and what it would bounce off of. So if you had direct sun light coming in through a window of an apartment you might get a good effect by placing an ambient light right in the center of where the sunlight hit the carpet and use a strength and color appropriate to the surface the sunlight is bouncing off of.
In the case of the Roman pool, the light is bouncing off of water and polished white marble so the simulated bounce light is strong and white. But if you were doing something like the apartment and it had blue carpet, then you might use a pale blue light color and a lower strength, because carpet is less reflective than polished marble.
Also, if you get too much of a "Hot spot" near the bounce light's center, like on the carpet, you may try moving the bounce light up off the ground a little bit so it isn't quite so strong right on the carpet.
As far as the grey eyes issue I am not sure. Do you mean on the eye surface or on the iris? Can you post an example?
One thing i can say is that the specular in the advanced ambient light is more broad than from other lights. This simulates the specular from a larger light source like a softbox or meshlight. Other than off specular for the light as you mentioned, you can increase the glossiness of the eye or you can flag whichever eye surface has the issue and tell the light not to illuminate it.
Very cool Jabba! Are those Andrey Pestryakov's plants? I just picked them up. I haven't tried the yet but they look great. I have been needing something like those for a long time. I hardly ever do outdoor scenes because I always needed so many random plants to fill them. Now maybe I can :)
Oh and I didn't answer Barbult's question about the user guide. I have an update written with the new features (and some typo fixes hehe) ready to upload but will wait until the light update appears. Don't want people to scratch their heads wondering why it has different buttons then the light they are currently using. Although, there are not that many changes so don't worry, it won't be like learning a whole new light.
Yes, the plants and ground plane from his new "Nature - Plants Pack 1" and while they're transmapped, they rendered quite quick with them flagged at 99% diffuse to use the alt sample rate on them (at least that's how i approached it for that render).
I've seen the "grey eyes". It affects mainly the pupils.
Here is one of my gray eye experiences. I fixed it by changing the ambient light to diffuse only. No other change was made. I'm not sure what part of the eye it is. I don't think it is the pupil, though, because it looks bigger than that. It doesn't seem to cover the whole iris, though. I tried changing to several different eyes, but the ones I tried all had the issue in this scene. This eye texture is David5Eyes01M.jpg. It's late here, so I can't test anymore tonight.
So it's just the specular that's causing it? Thanks, that's nice to know.
This light is totally AMAZING. This was an experiment in speed. I put three or four sets of Andrey's plants on his ground plane, added the snail, one advanced ambient light, default except changed to Hitmode primitive. No flagging.
I did levels and some sharpening (which I would do anyway), and if this were more than a speed test I would have added some other plants to 'hide' some of the dark shadowing toward the back.
I have an i5 at 3gz and this render took 1 minute 9 seconds. That's all because AMAZING.
I am finding the AOA Advanced Ambient Light indispensable when using Light Dome Pro - R
I now include an AOA Ambient Light in one of the custom light groups in every render. If I could I would remove the lights LDP-R uses for its ambient render layer and save the render time :)
The layer created is always gorgeous and when mixed with the other layers really makes the image pop. At least to me it does.
The WIP image is the AOA layer and the other is the final image once combined
Huh. I just downloaded it. It's in an installer. One of the bitrock .trx installers. I thought they'd phased those out?
Nice renders Jabba, Spit and Vanguard.
Here's a scene I'm working on. I have three AAL and one distant light.
Soft and lovely. And the skillful use of the lighting hides the fact there are several lights in there. Very well done.
Huh. I just downloaded it. It's in an installer. One of the bitrock .trx installers. I thought they'd phased those out?
Really? I'm not seeing any updates.
The manual downloads are showing a 1.0 trx in exe and zip formats.
For manual download DAZ will not make the exact version that the DIM uses to install available, but will have a installer program instead. This is because manually installing it can cause problems as files go into the Program Folder and the Content Library from what I've been told. Which is why you still have installers for some products.
To my knowledge there are no more .exe's. They have all been converted to .zip
I've still got a number of .exe's in my account that are waiting to be converted to DIM, which is what I believe was meant above. It's mostly older product or items that aren't the store anymore. The last one I had to specifically chase down was the posemaster people pack when I wanted to reinstall it, but I get a couple of items a week popping up as "new" rather than updates.
The Grey eyes does just look like the glossiness on the irises and pupils is low. Those are concave surfaces so they create broader highlights than convex surfaces with the same glossiness. Add to that, the ambient light creating broader highlights causes just too big of a highlight for the eyes.
If you still want specular for the other surfaces, you can control-select the iris and pupil material zones and either turn up the glossiness or lower the specular strength.
Or you can set their diffuse strengths to 99% and just tell the light to not illuminate any thing with 99% diffuse. That might make them look too dark so you can either use the first method or make a copy of the light (with copy and paste) but set it to the opposite, where it only illuminates surfaces with a 99% diffuse then set it to be diffuse only. That way you get specular on everything but the irises and pupils which will still be illuminated but by diffuse only.
The first method is probably easier though.
I'm glad to hear you like it :) Primitive hitmode is really fast but, as you noticed, transmapped items cast darker shadows that they should when in this mode.
A compromise is to set the light to Primitive Hitmode but then flag just the ground plane and set it to Shader Hitmode. That should make it so the ground gets more accurate shadows from the plants but the plants themselves should render really fast. It won't be as fast as everything using primitive hitmode but should still be faster than only shader hitmode.
Yeah, I don't think the update is through quality assurance yet. It will probably be a few days before the update appears.
Thank you for the tips. I'm doing a new scene, and I'm using your suggestion of the two lights and 99% diffuse. It is working well. I may try the other suggestion the next time. I look forward to the update with even more options for light control.
Absolutely welcome :)
Oh and a third option is to set the light to diffuse only and use a regular DS spotlight for just the specular.
Plugins are still exe and anything that install into the program folder will still have a exe installer for them, even though the DIM can install them.
I filled a support ticket asking why the DIM version of the Advanced Ambient Light couldn't be downloaded manually from my Product Library and was told that because it had files that go into the program folder it he DIM version wasn't available for Manual Download as a person could put the files in the wrong place and that separate manual installers were made if you weren't using DIM. So the exe was made.
DAZ is still making exe files for somethings. However the manual exe version may not be available right when the DIM version comes out., and may get released a few days latter.
That may be the best option for me. In general, I don't think of ambient light as having a specular component. I have no idea, though, how ambient light in the real world behaves - specular or not. Would a distant light also work to provide the specular, or is there a reason that spot light would be better?