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A couple of "maybes"...
- maybe ambient light is too high, try reducing ambient to 40-50% intensity so that it doesn't overpower directional lights.
- maybe lights need to be repostioned to a more stark angle if shadows are set really soft and/or reduce softness of shadows.
- maybe all of the above.
Of course, could be none of these, but that's what first sprung to mind based upon your comments and having no visual reference to go on.
Problem:
Had purchased all lights separately. ( work great, by the way).
Spotlight and Ambient appear as stated in Light Presets: Age of Armour.
But cannot find distant light there or anywhere.
Have installed 4 separate times, know it is installing because at the beginning
of installation, see the message do you want to uninstall previous version.
Getting frustrated,
Thank you
Try installing it with the DIM.
Found it. had a thought while writing email.
On a previous installation of another product I had pointed the installer to studio>my library>runtime.
On this installation the light went by default to the same place and created a folder called Light presets in the Runtime
area. So cut and pasted to studio>my library.with the other lights.
All is well.
Thank you ,was getting "hopped up)
After loading Advanced Ambient into one particular scene (but, frustratingly, not every scene), ambient occlusion broke in general - uberenvironment2 (and Advance Ambient) rendered as if 'ambient only no raytracing' was selected. Drove me crazy. The 'solution' was to go to the 3delight render settings and click 'restore defaults'.
That's odd.
In just one scene huh? I'm guessing maybe ray trace depth may have been accidentally set to 0. Glad you got it working though.
Expression test
AAl light on 70
notice the shadows around the eyes
AO is 100
daz distant light
G2F with headlamp
if you have hints I will try
now with AAL 40
and ADL 40
Ruphuss,
When you have any surface that uses a transparency like eyelashes close to another surface, it is best to flag both and have the alternate hitmode set to Shader Hitmode.
thx matty
didn't thought about the lashes and their shadows at all
You're welcome.
All DAZ figures have double layered eyelashs. As a result this can create unwanted effects with AO such as what you're seeing.
Flagging the eyelashes and using Alt Samples of 0 may also work without having to flag the face surface too.
What a coincidence, I read this post as I was finishing some tests, I bought the bundle weeks ago and have not used them until today. I employed this technique to get the hall behind the young elf to render darker using the fallout from the ambient light. This is just test with a one ambient light and one distant light as sun shinning thru the skylights.
I just got the The Advanced Ambient Light little time ago, some way missed it thinking it was another HDRI carousel ..but
I need to congratulate you on this BEST light ever and that is only set I ever purchased ... heads down !!
it is almost like direct light with the illusion of pathtraycing .. amazing how the shadow of the distance light together with the ambient actually give you impression of a direct light rendering as closer as you can go to , quality and fast rendering indeed
love how it works with the shader surfaces and 3Dlite
I think I can say goodbye to UE2 for now as this bundle give em everything I need for fantastic renders ..
Also was very much surprised to see specular in the AOL light ..
congrats on the fantastic work
below 2 images with Advanced Ambient light and Spot lights from the bundle
Cath
@Mec4D Just posted the Maleficent in your tread for the wizard:)
@Age of Armour Now that I got the reflections working ok I can use these lights with the faster render times.
Just could not get the flagging to work with you Metalized Glass Shaders.
Yes, I'm liking these lights a lot!
Bring on the HDRI... Wallet is waiting
Here are two pics I just finished up.
coming back to face expression
mec4D : expression on the face of the first pic is good
the render looks like 2 layers: body and armor, that does not really fit together well
fusionla: first pic the face has nearly no expression at all beside mouth and eyes
second pic just nice
The first pic is the character Maleficent from the new movie (took forever to morph her), I was trying to go for the look she usually has.
It's that almost blank smile, but can I trust her if I turned my back on her? No..... :)
And thank you for the comment for the 2nd one.
The first pic is the character Maleficent from the new movie (took forever to morph her), I was trying to go for the look she usually has.
It's that almost blank smile, but can I trust her if I turned my back on her? No..... :)
And thank you for the comment for the 2nd one.
I am just talking about expression and sometimes you do not want expression and thats ok
its not about good or bad
Thanks for posting all the great renders everyone. I really love the magical look of your armour renders Mec4d!
Hi Ruphuss,
Now that I see the examples I understand what you mean. That is the intentional look of the ambient light. It is meant to simulate the very soft lighting you get from very overcast skies, light bouncing off of walls or if someone was surrounded by "Soft Box" lights.
However, it is extremely rare to see this type of light by itself in real life, though you could do it by building a room with glowing walls. In real life you generally have directional light sources, like the sun or spotlights then have light bouncing off walls or scattering in clouds which contribute that ambient light look.
I generally set up 2 main lights, a directional light which sets up the base feel for the scene then an ambient light to fill in the shadows a bit so it directional alone isn't unnaturally harsh. The intensity ratio between those two lights makes a big difference in the contrast of the shadows and the overall look. So 10% ambient intensity and 100% spotlight intensity would look very harsh, like someone inside being illuminated by a flashlight. 80% ambient and 60% directional might look more like someone outside on an overcast day. 40% intensity ambient with a pale blue and a distant light with 100% intensity and a pale yellow color is a good starting point for setting up outdoor daylight.
Ill post an image showing some colors and ratios I've used in the past for various renders. Note that those renders were all done at a gamma of 1.0. If you use a higher gamma you will probably need to use lower light intensities.
I have all three versions of the lights, I have been trying to use them again, I had no problems using them before, but now after moving my Daz Studio install and my library to an external hard drive, I want to try to use it again, But now I add the lights to the scene as I always have, and when I hit render there is no light at all.
This is where they are installed.
Any ideas?
Having the presets on another drive should not be a problem. However you need to make sure the scripts and shader code files are someplace where DS can find them if you moved DS itself.
Easiest thing is, if you are using the DIM, try reinstalling the lights. If not or that doesn't work look in the folder where DS was installed (The DS program not the content) and see if you have the following files in subfolders of the DS program location.
By default DS installed to C:\Program Files\DAZ 3D\DAZStudio4\
...\scripts\support\AgeOfArmour\Light\
AoA_AddShaderMixerAttributes.dsa
AoA_AdvancedDistantLightAttribs.dsa
AoA_AdvancedDistantLightDef.dsa
AoA_AdvancedDistantLightParams.dsa
AoA_AdvancedSpotlightAttribs.dsa
AoA_AdvancedSpotlightDef.dsa
AoA_AdvancedSpotlightParams.dsa
AoA_AOLightAttribs.dsa
AoA_AOLightDef.dsa
AoA_AOLightParams.dsa
Also ensure that you have:
(DS install location) ...\shaders\AgeOfArmour\Light\
AoA_AdvancedDistantLight.sdl
AoA_AdvancedSpotlight.sdl
AoA_AOLight.sdl
Please let me know if that fixes it.
I think that did it, I guess the DIM put them in the default spot even though i had instructed DIM to install to my external HD.
Thanks.
thx to Age of Armour
I really appreciate your help
thx to Jabba also
I made the other day usage of the AO .. and also shot some color pics.. the color one with DOF rendered in around 1 minute only
and it do exact what I need , especially the assignment to the surfaces do the magic .. the shading is so good
Looks great Mec4d! Wonderful to hear you are getting such fast render times too.
Glad you got everything working again Malandar. Sorry the installation is a bit of a pain.
Tauriel from The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug.
The lights are doing a fantastic job, checkout the trees in this one, the leaves are not too green as too look extremely fake and I get a nice dark atmosphere inside the foliage of the trees, and I didn't have to mess with this particular old growth tree set (circa 2004?), which I usually have to with other lighting.
Updated: The first image used a white distant light, this one has a subtle color added to the distant light and I extended the ambient light radius to get more ambient light under the trees. I tried postwork but I was getting a darker image, just adding some color to the distant light made the colors of this image jump out with no postwork needed!
Before and After the Arrival of the Slime Beast
Used all three advanced lights in these, some small amount of post work
Very nice! In that slime beast picture, she sure reminds me of Danica McKellar.
Nice :) Can I ask what hair the boy is wearing?
Thanks barbuit and temporal.ranger
The boy's hair is Micah hair with some morphs active to make it shorter.