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...as I don't use UberSurface shaders, or HSS, not sure what would cause this either.
I do use the different SSS shaders for characters but that behaves well with the Advanced lights.
First off, I want o thank you for these lights(all of them).
I decided to take an old scene from Studio 3 and import it into studio 4.6. It has V4 and V3 both with standard skins with my own specular and defuse recipe and a Cafe prop with a Backstop scene. I changed out the Uber Enviornment light and removed all the other distant lights then added just the Advanced Ambient light and the Advanced Distant light and 2 linear points for the Sconces then I tweaked some of the materials to highlight the hardware and globes.
here is the final render:
The only thing that didn't come out too good was the grainy hair on V3(the waitress) other then that I'm very pleased with the results which only took 31 minutes to render as opposed to 1 hour and 20 minutes with the original lighting. It shows you can breath new life into old scenes and if I up the samples in the hit mode I'm sure I can clean the hair up at the expense of a tad more render time.
Once again, Thanks AofA.
thanks for the suggestions everyone, very much appreciated I might try some of those and see but I wanted the hear from the man himself so I will keep waiting.
That almost looks like bad anti-aliasing more than shadows. Is there a reflection map in the surface that might just be reacting differently to these lights over UE?
Nope Ray Trace Refections and like I said Uber Lights don't give this only dzpoint Shader lights and AoA Spots do.
Just for comparison's sake. I chromed out Glitchie-poo here (such a sport lol) with Fisty's Hardcore Utility shiny metal raytraced versions (they use Ubersurface). They do have a bump map for texture, which causes the pixelated look.
First image uses Inaneglory's Photostudio Lights 3P (Uberareas)
Second image uses a 4-light setup. 3 spots and an ambient from DT's new preset pack- DTAL-ThreePointC.
Ground plane is one of the props from Photostudio w/ the back wall hidden, basic environment dome (from LDP-R- deleted everything but the dome, used to get a reflection)
All light quality settings are in their default state, exactly as they load in from their respective presets, and my render settings are from AMR's "high quality" setting. There is a color difference due to the slight color variation caused by DT's presets. I didn't set them to pure white.
/edit
Re-read your light setups on the prev page. Doh! I don't have Uberpoints, just uberspots and uberareas. /facepalm
Either way though, I'm not seeing any jaggedies in the AoA setup on mine.
/edit2
DT's presets do load in with shadow softness at 300% for one of the spots, and 1000% for the other 2. They also have a 360 spread angle to act as point lights.
Thanks Vask for doing that. Funny thing is it is only that leg. I am not too bothered myself but when teaching others I really need to pin down what it might be. I will continue my testing and see what happens.
Have you considered render settings? Take a look at this old thread. Reducing the Pixel Filter Width value can fix some artifacts.
One setting I didn't change, thanks I will have a try tomorrow.
If you own AoA's metalized glass shader, read the section on correcting artifacts in that documentation, too. It has some suggested values for using the Gaussian filter to eliminate some high contrast artifacts. I haven't tried those settings, though.
no I don't have it as my tut is about Uber Surfaces but it is on my wishlist to get...eventually. Thanks again for the tips
http://www.daz3d.com/metalized-glass-shaders-for-daz-studio there is a link to the User Guide
Great, Klask. Here is the direct link to the render settings section of the user guide from the page Klask referenced.
Edited link to point directly to render settings section.
Hi Szark,
I'm fairly certain it is simply blown out highlights. Have a look at other areas of the image and see that highlights are stronger in other places too like on the knuckles of the legs and some stripes across the body.
If your surfaces have strong specular and reflection but little diffuse (as they should for metals) then the light is probably just too bright and over-driving the highlights. This can also show up on reflective surfaces when using high contrast HDRI backdrops.
Remember, with squared falloff the intensity of the light is thousands of times brighter at the source. Narrow curved surfaces, like the rods of the legs, cause specular highlights to drop intensity over a very short distance as the surface curves away. So you may have one pixel in highlight that calculates at something like 4000% white and a pixel right next to it which is 20% grey.
The sync filtering of the renderer is designed to give a little more punch to detail and tries to figure out how this super strong contrast should be represented. The filter actually makes the pixels around the highlight darker than they should be (to bring out detail) which, in this case, makes the edges of the highlight appear aliased.
Switching to the Gaussian filter can help remove a lot of that but you often lose other detail which you wanted to keep. The best solution is to either turn down the light's intensity, move it further away, or lower the specular strength on the surfaces.
Actually, a third option is to just duplicate the light, set one to diffuse only (keeping the squared falloff) and the new one to specular only but use no falloff. Though before trying this method of adding another light, try dropping the intensity of the existing light and see if that fixes it without darkening your scene too much.
Cool looking image by the way :)
Thanks for the links guys...much appreciated.
AoA. Nice explanation thanks and there is no Specular at all on any of the Spider surfaces, Diffuse is at 70%. I will give it some more testing and report back and thanks for the image comment.
PS Maybe Diffuse light might be logical since specular isn't being used I will give it a shot too.
I been trying the Advance lights out, liking the results a lot! and faster render times.
Just came across an issue when using a Figure on a reflective plane using the Advance Ambient Light.
I get a bright reflection/highlight between the plane and figure.
Picture posted showing Ambient lights and then with the plane doubled using the same light setup.
Turning down the ambient strength on the light off it goes away, but you lose the ambient.
Fixes that seem to work to look correct:
1. Double the plane
2. @Muon Quark found that using a cylinder instead of plane it does not happen.
This does not happen with the other Advance lights or the Standard Daz3D lights.
* Getting Grey eyes also, but that goes away if using Diffuse only.
Is there any way to control the spec in The Advance Ambient light?, could come in handy for Ridick effect eyes :)
Just need to get Atmospheric Effects Cameras (Why couldn't these be apart of March Madness)
Actually your lights need to be standard in Daz3D... Well that's how much I like them at least.
Fusion, can you post what your ambient light's bias value is set at? The bias value controls the size of the areas occlusion is allowed to render (lower bias settings will allow the light to cast shadows in smaller cracks and crevasses). Distance between your foot and the plane may be too low for the default bias settings to occlude, leaving the bottom of the foot lit by the ambient. It's my assumption that the ambient light behaves the same in this regard compared to the other lights so for other advanced lights to render differently it's a bit strange, but I think it is worth lowering the bias to see if it helps.
Ambient Bias Setting was tested also, spent hours trying to figure out why it was looking different.
Pictures posted with Ambient settings.
Single picture is using the double plane with the same light setup at Ambient 0.05, which looks the way all the other lights do.
Edit:
Ambient Bias 0.00 using the single plane looks very close, but you get the strange looking skin (could be good for a zombie effect) ;-)
Well I didn't get the same effect with the dragon that I posted earlier in this thread. I did however, get the same effect that when I put a hand on the reflective surface. I think it might have something to do with the skin? I turned off everything I could think of on the skin but still got that light between the skin and the surface. Hopefully someone can help figure it out.
Thanks.
This is basically the same 'problem' that allows dynamic clothing to fall through the 'floor', allows light leakage at corners, etc...it's got a lot to do with mesh density. Large, low density (and you don't get much lower than a single face plane) mesh objects just don't play well with a lot of things. The 'light ring' is probably there without the surface being reflective, but not as noticeable...reflections would enhance it.
I just ran through several different 'environmental' lights and they all show it, to some degree, with a single face plane. It is more noticeable with the subsurface shader on AND a high subsurface strength. Also camera angle has some impact on how noticeable it is and so does the size of the plane...larger being more noticeable. (And yes, I really had to play around with some angles to get it to be more than a 'hint' of something going on.)
Creating the plane with a number of divisions should also solve the problem, in addition to using something with 'thickness'. Even 1 division made it less noticeable. Without reflections, it is less, too. It would probably show up with any light, if conditions were right...but they are easiest to get 'right' with ambient/environmental lighting. Bias settings can only take it so far without impacting other aspects of the render.
What was the surface made out of?
Hi fusionla,
That is just the bias as DT and MJC said. Shadows are calculated a sight distance away from surfaces to prevent the muddy effect you see in your render with the 0 bias.
Even though the shadows and bias are calculated in very similar ways in all of the advanced lights, the effect is noticeable in the ambient light because the light is coming from all around rather then from just one direction like in the spot and distant lights. In most cases a distant or spot light will be coming from the top so not shining light onto the bottom of the feet.
With the ambient light shining light from even under the floor, the feet check to see if they are in shadow and begin calculating slightly away from the foot's surface which is below that plane so the feet think some light is hitting them from below. As MCJ pointed out, the effect is stronger when using SSS because not only is the bottom of the foot illuminated, the SSS is then scattering that light further into the foot.
As you noticed, the easiest solution is just to place another small plane a centimeter or more below the feet. That will ensure that the second plane will block any light which might fall within the bias range. You can also make the floor with a flattened cube to correct the effect.
As a side note, that us why Studio Paris's walls are made with cubes rather than planes. This helps prevent "light leaks" in the corners due to shadow bias.
Oh and the gray eyes... That is likely just the specular hitting the pupils. The advanced ambient casts a broader specular, more like a mesh light. You can set the ambient light to diffuse only which will turn off specular. Actually, a more correct solution is probably to set the pupil's specular strength to 0% since, as far as I understand anatomy, human pupils should not have a secular component :)
Again good job with the lights... Finally getting good results in DAZ3D without needing Luxrender ( that was a pain to get the surfaces to look right with all the different shaders)
Yes I learned to get around issue using a double plane (node instance).
Eyes fixed with tuning down the spec on the Eye surface or raising gloss higher if leaving the Advance Ambient light On default.
*Side not, is there away to do HDRI lightning with the advance light?
(Been able to kind of simulate it using the Advance spot light gobo)
Good to hear.
There is no HDRI functionality in the ambient light but I have been working on something to cover that :) Though it can be used as a sky light, the Advanced Ambient Light was more intended for local soft lighting rather than a full environment light.
Yeah, I'm more inclined to adjust the eyes instead of go diffuse-only... those skins won't highlight themselves, hehehe
Oh, HDR experimentations... yes, that would be a welcome addition to the set :)
...yes, I do notice a slight difference swapping out a UE sphere for an AAL. There is a bit of "photographic quality" that is lost as there is no "environmental background" to be picked up in reflections and such In many ways it "feels" more like I am using the old LDP2 (outdoor scenes) or SLP (indoor scenes), though with far fewer total lights involved (in my book, neither being a "bad thing").
Again I find the tradeoff for a bit more of an involved in setup being shorter render times which means less heat stress on system components.
Thought I would jump in and try my hand at all the Advanced Ambient, Spot & Distant Lights.
I've been having a ball with them. So much so, I decided to post a WIP for you all to see. I'm very impressed with both the render quality and the time for the renders to complete.
Bear in mind the I have the "Hitmode" on all lights set to "Primitive"......the render only took 4 minutes 15 seconds...awesome! Will prolly be higher when I bump the "Hitmode" to Shader.....we'll see.
There are 7 Advanced Ambient Lights, and 1 uberEnvironment Area Light for the Light Bulb. I'll post all the settings for each later on. There is absolutely no Postwork on this image it is as rendered. Render Settings are pretty low too...
Next phase is to add a Volume Camera and an Advanced Spotlight..........can't wait......
I purchased this light set during this months sale and have been working at learning it. While I have not delved too deeply into the more advanced settings, I have started to pay with things like falloff, shading rates, occlusion, the AO bias and other of the settings. The big thing for me is that I am getting much better results with vastly shortened render times. Thank you so much for making these products!!!
I used both the Advanced Ambient and Advanced Distant lights for this
Thanks Daikatana and Stiks. I'm so glad to hear you are happy and getting good results.
I only work with AoA lights
perhaps someone can give me a hint how to not lose to much expression in the face
because of the lights smoothing factor
A sample image would be more helpful, if you could........hard to visualise otherwise.
Don't understand what you mean by " Smoothing Factor". My image above is "as is"......no " Smoothing Factor".