Indoor lighting difficulties
Hello All,
I hit a brick wall when it comes to indoor lighting. I got a few packages to put together a Christmas themed environment for my character below. To my dismay the results of the render were overly bright and it is washing the colors out and it just looked unnatural for a indoor room. Further, I have noticed a glossy glare on the wall of which that shouldn't be. So I tried another alternative and that was to light the wall sconces and I didn't have much luck with that either. In trying to find a way to light them, I did find a light option for the room under 'Lights', after I turned the filters off. In the texture mode of the view port, everything just suddenly got VERY bright. So much so that now the texture mode looked very unnatural. But from the look of it it seemed those wall lights were now lit. So I tried a render and low and behold the first picture below is what I got. It was nearly pitch dark! In fact the only thing visible are the candles from the Christmas Tree.
I would appreciate any advice as to what I can do to fix this so it looks normal. I worked most of the day on this to get it together and completed for Christmas and while the room and my character came out good overall, there is definitely something going wrong with the lighting:
The room package I bought is the Holiday Nook: Sku # SKU:11599
Looking at the package on in the store (the last picture I submitted below), THAT is the look I am trying to get in terms of how the wall lights light the room. I am looking for something a little brighter than that though.
Any assistance would be appreciated.
Thank you.
Geo
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Go to Render Settings> Tone Mapping and check the setting. It's probably at the default of 13.0 which is the value for a cloudy bright day. Indoor scenes need a lower value, probably around 6.0 - 8.0. If you have Iray preview switched on and change the Tone Mapping value, you should see the scene brighten up, and you can tweak it from there.
Are you using Iray or 3DL for the renderer?
The Holiday Nook is a 3Delight textured set. If you render it in Iray, the surfaces will be too glossy in most cases. You can either convert the surfaces to Iray with appropriate shader settings, or reduce the glossiness value of the surfaces. To do that, select the item in the scene tab, then go to the surface tab, and select all surfaces you want to make look less glossy. Lokk for the "Glossines" and reduce the value.
In regards to the light, if you are using the lights that come with the set, they most likely will not work properly in Iray. Things will look properly in the preview window, but not work in the render. The light that blows out everything appears to be the headlamp of the camera, which will start lighting the scene when you have no other lights (spot or distant lights) in the scene.
You can try have a look at this thread: http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/110771/natural-iray-lighning-for-rooms#latest and some more examples here: https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/59766/lights-gloss-and-shine-on-skin-iray
But those thread are both a bit older, so details in the layout might have changed.
Hello!
I am not by my machine now, but I know ,,,I was rendering it in Iray for certain. I will check those other settings and that link when I get home.
Thank you.
Geo
That set is for 3DL so if you want to render with Iray you will want to convert the shaders and redo the lights. There is an addon that does all of this for you if you would rather use that than do the conversion yourself https://www.daz3d.com/holiday-nook-iray-addon
Yes, this helped with brightness and I can see more of the woman, but the side with the tree is now overly bright and the woman's right side gets blasted with that light from the tree. The tree is lit with candles so the brightness is just not believeable. If I dial the settings up around 11, it does balance the tree out more, but then the left side of the woman is too dark. The first attachement below shows the setting change, but this is still in Iray. I am going to do as what BeeMKay said and switch over to the 3Delight renderer. I put the light package back on and now I am rendering it......waiting.....waiting. 3Delight seems to be painfully slow as the render is drawing in block by block. Also the texture view is grossly bright. I want to see how the 3Delight render comes out. While that is 'cooking', I have another question. What are the effects of having Iray items in a 3Delight render?
(time ticking)
I am going to give this about a half hour and see what the 3Delight render looks like. So far I can see one of the lights coming through and it looks good. (It is rendering from the top down). The tree also is looking better as it isn't overly bright. But I have to see when it gets to the girl. In terms of rendering time, I already like Iray better. I might spring for that converter as I need to get this done for tomorrow. I will come back and edit this once the 3Delight render is done...or at least most of it. Meanwhile I will look at somet of those links above.
Edit: I decided to have dinner while the 3Delight render was....rendering. When I came back to my computer, I discovered that it was hanging. It locked up. It looked liked the process was going very slow. So I am going to need to do something quicker. I think for now I am going to try to go back to Iray and try to dial down the gloss settings. I guess with 3Delight you need a high end graphics card which I do not have. So far the rendering of the top 1/5 of the wall was looking good with 3Delight, but I noticed that only one of the wall lights were lit (front left fireplace), but the tree was not lit. I think I am using an Iray tree so that could be an issue, but I don't know why all four of the room lights are not lit.
I was reading some of the links above, but this is obviously something that is going to take some time to master. Right now I am just looking for the quick and easy way to get this room lit, the lights lit, the tree lit and the woman lit. Am I asking too much? Would I be better off trying to go with an outdoor setting? I do have a snow covered gazebo that I can use. BUT I need an environment to put it in.
Thanks,
Geo
Hello All,
In an added update, I am curious if I should invest in this lighting package:
https://www.daz3d.com/idg-easy-iray-studio
I am mainly curious if one of you have this, have used it and can give me an opinion on it.
Thank you,
Geo
Your tips are precious!
You're talking about 6-8 tone mapping: would you have too much noise in that case?
I usually set 12 and remove the ceiling (very noob move, I know...)
In other cases I just fill the room with strong point lights (about 9 of them)
Great topic, I am adding a post here to help me find this information later.
LOL! I didn't think of that one, but I ran into a similar situation recently with a skydome in an "Easy Environments" scene that was giving me trouble. I found removing said skydome restored my light. But I really wanted to use that skydome. When I used a different skydome...it worked.
In my scene above I used two additional lights in the room with the lower tone map setting. I was wondering though...would you know how I could get the wall lights in that room lit? It is the Holiday Nook scene and the room has four wall sconces in it. I would like to light those, like this:
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/uploads/FileUpload/66/a5bc2a5e3d877cbe08737414bea0ce.jpg
Thank you,
Geo
Emissive Shader on the bulbs of the wall lights, Diffuse map for the Emissive map set to 2750 and adjust the Lumen to get the light you want. To get ambient light make the ceiling Emissive, use the ceiling diffuse map for the Emissive map and set temperature at 2750 and adjust the Lumen until you get the light you need.
I am hjaving trouble finding the emissive shader. I looked through several tutorials and it doesn't seem to be in the place as show in the videos. One guy shows it to be under a menu item labeled "Scripts". I don't have that menu item. Then another fellow locates it under the shader tab and says that the "Iray Uber Shader" has to be loaded to get access to the emission parameters. I looked under my shaders tab and cannot find this 'Uber Shader'. Yet another guy says that the Uber Shader is in the content library..."just type in uber in the search box." Okay, so I did that and again, it isn't showing up.
Any advice appreciated here.
Thank you,
Geo
In your scene any surface can be emissive if you are rendering in Iray. Click on any surface in the scene and go to the Surface Tab. Scroll down and you will see the Emissive section, click on the colour picker and change it to white and it will open up the light settings. You can also use the diffuse map in the colour channel to get the right colour e.g. a fire.
Really, that is it? So I don't have to worry about this Uber Shader that the tutorials reference?
Thanks!
Geo
You need the Uber Shader if there are any surfaces that have 3DLight shaders and not Iray ones. It should say Iray Shader at the top of the shader tab, if it doesn't then apply the Iray Uber Shader. You might have to apply some of the 3DL material jpg's afterwards.
I have noticed that when I create a primative, such as a plane, I have it selected both on the Viewport and in the Surfaces tab. When I go to the surfaces tab and scroll down, the emissive parameter isn't there. Going to Content Library under shaders, I can't find anything there. Now as with the carousel preset, I decided to look under My documents within Daz Studio and I went down to the preset shader folder. Low and behold that is where it was! Not only the Emissive preset was there, but also the Uber Shader. I just clicked on the emissive one and then my plane 'lit up'! From there I was able to see the emissive preset on the Shader tab. Opening that up revealed the settings you mentioned. So I was able to dial in what color temperature and intensity and I was good.
What is cool was that I was trying to light up a skylight dome so it would cast a good amount of light on the staircase below it. What is cool is that the ironwork on the dome also casts a shadow below, it looks awesome!
BTW, can I move that emissive shader someplace where I can get to it easily? I know some people have created a 'scripts' tab on the menu bar and put it there. I don't know how to do that.
Thank you again for your help.
Right click on the Ubershader icon and select Create Custom action from the box that pops up, this should place the uber shader in the tool bar under Scripts, you can do this with anything it doesn't have to be a script.
I have the Iray Uber Base shader in the script menu for convenience. Right click on the shader icon and at the bottom of the pop-up menu choose Create Custom Action and the script menu will be created and a link to the shader will show when it is opened.
Ok, Got it! Now I have the scripts tab too and the emissive shader is in there.
Thank you!