Loading...
> >

Iray canvases and mesh lights.

Dave63Dave63 Posts: 49
edited January 2019 in Daz Studio Discussion

If a scene is primarily lit with mesh lights, how are those to be handled when using canvases? Are they light groups? Can they be set up with LPE? Or is the emissive material to be treated as emmision (will that still light the scene)?

If one does not include them in the node list at all, do the emission values and candle power still affect the render?

Post edited by Dave63 on

Comments

  • shaneseymourstudioshaneseymourstudio Posts: 383
    Dave63 said:

    If a scene is primarily lit with mesh lights, how are those to be handled when using canvases? Are they light groups? Can they be set up with LPE? Or is the emissive material to be treated as emmision (will that still light the scene)?

    If one does not include them in the node list at all, do the emission values and candle power still affect the render?

    The only way I have gotten them to work is by using "Emission" for the canvas type and then for the "Nodes" I make sure to have the emissive light AND any/all objects that I want to show up in scene that the selected emissive light is hitting. So, if I have 3 emissive lights in the scene then I will create 3 separate canvases of type "Emission". On the first emissive canvas for the "Nodes" I will make sure to ctrl+click one of the 3 emissive lights and select, in addition, any objects in the scene that I want to have show that resulting light for. I repeat this step for all the other separate emissive light sources, again reselecting all objects in the scene AND whichever emissive light for that node setup.

    Hope that makes sense. It is late and I may find a better way to say it tomorrow when I re-read it lol.

    One thing I have never had luck with is the Environment default. When I am using an HDRI it will only pick up where the horizon is, so basically just a top bar. I am sure there is an LPE that would solve it but I have not researched.

  • Dave63Dave63 Posts: 49

    Thank you for the information. It will save some puttering around with those things. Do you usually have IES set on your mesh lights, or does that make no difference in canvas settings? 

    (I am still hoping light paths will work too, because the compositing would be simpler, I'm guessing. Only tutorial I could find combining mesh lights and light paths was for Maya--and they grouped meshes just as you have suggested in that..)

    I seldom use HDRi scene lighting because it would take many gigabytes to have the right one for each situation. It is why I'm currently fascinated by mesh lights, and thinking of faster ways to render them. They are always the right light for the situation they are set up to replicate. 

     

     

  • shaneseymourstudioshaneseymourstudio Posts: 383
    Dave63 said:

    Thank you for the information. It will save some puttering around with those things. Do you usually have IES set on your mesh lights, or does that make no difference in canvas settings? 

    (I am still hoping light paths will work too, because the compositing would be simpler, I'm guessing. Only tutorial I could find combining mesh lights and light paths was for Maya--and they grouped meshes just as you have suggested in that..)

    I seldom use HDRi scene lighting because it would take many gigabytes to have the right one for each situation. It is why I'm currently fascinated by mesh lights, and thinking of faster ways to render them. They are always the right light for the situation they are set up to replicate. 

     

     

    I have not tried any IES profile for them. I have only applied using the emissive iray shader. I only use mesh lights for scenes that I know I will send to Octane plugin for DAZ so that I can then apply the blackbody emission shader, within Octane's library, to it for lighting within an Octane scene. Mostly I use HDRI and spotlights within DAZ unless a scene has preset lights that I prefer.

  • JonnyRayJonnyRay Posts: 1,744

    I'm not 100% sure these will have the information you need, but there are a couple of discussions about Iray light paths here in these forums...

    What I have gathered is that they are supported, but you may need to do some manual fiddling with them to get them to work the way you'd expect them to.

  • Dave63Dave63 Posts: 49

     Thank you! Those were very informative and led to lots of other resources which finally led to an understanding of what is meant by "regular expression" in terms of Iray. 

    Short answer is yes, LPE can be used with mesh lights: "Scene illuminated by "plane 2" emissive only: <L'plane 2'>.*E" 

    Thank you

  • shaneseymourstudioshaneseymourstudio Posts: 383

    Thanks for the links!

     

  • JonnyRayJonnyRay Posts: 1,744

    I'm glad I remembered to bookmark them and that people found them helpful. :)

  • evilded777evilded777 Posts: 2,465

    Oh god, do not use Emission.

     

    Create their own light groups. Treat them like actual lights, it will work so much better than Emission. I do it all the time.

    See this: https://www.chariotswheels.com/3d-rendering/tutorials-and-examples/176-daz-studio-iray-canvases-an-addendum.html

  • Dave63Dave63 Posts: 49

                      Thank you for the tutorial. In depth tutorials on less well covered subjects like canvases are always welcome. Sickleyield and Snow Sultan's Tuts are great. An expansion on the subject like yours really brings canvases out in the light, though( sorry for the pun).

                     Have you used LPE? More semi short example based info on that would add a lot to  people's rendering arsenal.

  • JonnyRayJonnyRay Posts: 1,744
    evilded777 said:

    Oh god, do not use Emission.

     

    Create their own light groups. Treat them like actual lights, it will work so much better than Emission. I do it all the time.

    See this: https://www.chariotswheels.com/3d-rendering/tutorials-and-examples/176-daz-studio-iray-canvases-an-addendum.html

    The video was well done. You weren't nearly as "annoying" with your vocal presentation as I think you thought you were. If you post some more, I'll definitely subscribe.

  • evilded777evilded777 Posts: 2,465
    Dave63 said:

                      Thank you for the tutorial. In depth tutorials on less well covered subjects like canvases are always welcome. Sickleyield and Snow Sultan's Tuts are great. An expansion on the subject like yours really brings canvases out in the light, though( sorry for the pun).

                     Have you used LPE? More semi short example based info on that would add a lot to  people's rendering arsenal.

    I still haven't got my head around LPE, and from what I have seen I find Canvasses to be a superior use of my time and effort (at least for light balancing).

  • evilded777evilded777 Posts: 2,465
    JonnyRay said:
    evilded777 said:

    Oh god, do not use Emission.

     

    Create their own light groups. Treat them like actual lights, it will work so much better than Emission. I do it all the time.

    See this: https://www.chariotswheels.com/3d-rendering/tutorials-and-examples/176-daz-studio-iray-canvases-an-addendum.html

    The video was well done. You weren't nearly as "annoying" with your vocal presentation as I think you thought you were. If you post some more, I'll definitely subscribe.

    Well thank you. I was going to do more videos, but ran into some technical difficulties when I couldn't merge my intro video with the screen captured video. I have some better tools now but I stil have to learn them.

Sign In or Register to comment.