Lighting Help Needed...
Hello All,
I am a new user with Daz Studio having joined in December. For the most part I have been figuring out much on my own and I have been creating my own characters, doing my own poses and such. However, one area that continues to give me trouble is lighting. It seems as when I use the existing skydome within Daz and render outdoor scenes, I am fine. I know how to adjust the 'sun' angles and pitch (time of day) and usually everything comes out fine that way.
Indoor lighting continues to give me trouble, many times with the renders coming out too dark. They also take twice as long to render (if not more) and I usually do not get the results I want. Case in point in the attached render below:
Here I am trying to highlight two characters, one in the foreground, one in the background. While this is an outdoor scene, it is INSIDE the canopy of a tree and much of the ambient light from the skydome is blocked. I have tried to use a distant light and home in on the characters more, but again, this was with limited results. I placed three additional lights in the scene. There is one coming from the left, another from the right and a third on the character in the background. After pumping the luminance levels really high up, the scene still looks very dim, particulary the foreground character which has TWO lights on her. The character in the background has only one light on her and it is set the same, yet she is by far better lit. But looking around the scene, the tree house to the left and the surrounding areas are not lit well.
What I am looking for is some kind of standard approach to lighting in shaded or indoor spaces that would yeild very good results. I have seen numerous tutorials and light packages in the Daz store and I am wondering if any of those are worth it? I don't want to spend money on something if I do not have to. I have already spent a small fortune on Daz since I got it in December.
Any advice would be appreciated.
thank you.
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Comments
I can suggest to you this. One of the best items I've ever bought for Daz. It's incredibly useful
https://www.daz3d.com/iray-ghost-light-kit
There's also a second pack here
https://www.daz3d.com/iray-ghost-light-kit-2
+1
Iray ghost lights are outstanding for interior lighting.
Do these packages offer something more than setting up a sphere or plane as an emissive primative?
I have followed this tutorial and it mentions ghost lights:
There was another one on Ghost Lights but I didn't finish this one yet:
But I do want to know what is a balance between the best and cost effective way (both time and money) of doing this. So I am not sure if a tutorial or package I would pay for is better? Or would I be wasting money? I don't know. Dealing with lights isn't like buying a dress for one of my Daz ladies. Everything is in plain sight and I know what I am getting. From what I understand, most of the lights themselves or the creation of such lights can already be done in Daz. But again, I am new and just learning. Perhaps the packages have different lights that are NOT in Daz? Perhaps I should look at more tutorials on YouTube? Again, I don't know. I figured it would just be best to ask those that do know before I waste time and money.
Thanks
EDIT:
I just found this instructional video. Is this the kit mentioned above?
Now in the case of a room that doesn't have windows. Would it be best to make the ceiling a ghost light and aim it down or would it make the ceiling look weird?
I know I did this trick once with a skylight dome (Titanic Staircase) and it seemed to work, but in that case I was able to put the emissive plane above the dome. So that worked well here:
https://www.deviantart.com/ravendiablo/art/Lady-Evelyn-Titanic-Beauty-784968150
But that was an Iray set to begin with. I tried this in a 3DL room and all the walls became shiny, so it didn't work there. But even so, the one plane didn't cover the whole staircase as you can see the darkness in the bottom right corner. But considering that I was banging my head on this one for hours until I realized that I could light the dome from the top side, I was happy when I got the results above.
Hi junkingeo, I understand all you share. Depending on scene, every scene can be lit differently. Many ways to create lights and many light products. Lighting can be overwelming, experimention is the key to learning lighting. From my experience, Iray ghost lights are the best to assist in lighting areas, without applying visible lighting such as lamps, candles, etc.... I cannot explain Iray ghost lights in detail, but this forum support thread, may help you understand how Iray ghost lights work.
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/137231/iray-ghost-light-render-and-support-thread-commercial ;
Here are two good examples from the thread.
Here's an example of scene I did, and why? I used Iray ghost lights. The scene is lit with an HDRi sunset and one lamp, you can see above her head. Similar to your image. Ceiling light that came with the prop, was unsatisfactory to me, I had to crank up lumens, to light the room, but then overexposed. Same with lamp. To me a quick fix was using Iray ghost lights. I applied 1 horizontal above her head and 2 vertical lights front and side of her. 2nd image is result of Iray ghost lights. Not perfect, but much better
Hope all the info helped.
I highly recommend HeroineAdventure's Iray Interior Camera: https://www.deviantart.com/heroineadventures/art/Iray-Interior-Camera-V1-3-758604718
It allows more HDRI light into the scene by "cutting away" the off-camera geometry. It also seems to speed up renders as well (maybe because the added light or less geometry needed to be read by the scene, or maybe both).
I use that camera for most of my renders and definitely recommend it. :)
Also you mention using Distant Lights in your original post. Those are not good options for fixing lighting problems. Distant Lights cast like like the sun. Although you think they are focused somewhere, they are actually casting light equally across the whole scene. If you want to use a light to highlight someone, you're better off using spot lights.
Wow! That is an amazing difference! Do you have a screen shot of where you put the ghost lights or perhaps do a render of them visible so I can see where they are positioned?
Ok, I downloaded that and will give it a shot and see what happens.
I saw some of those earlier DM packages I like come with one and the tree house came with one too, so I figured I would use it. I thought the light would be somewhat directional like the stock Daz skydome is.
In the above scene I am mostly using spotlights. I was only using the distant light to get some light throught the branches of the tree. I was trying to position it to the side where the characters were. But it didn't really work. It does seem like using the Ghost Lights as AJ2112 demonstrated and perhaps giving that Iray-Interior-Camera a shot.
Thanks!
Hi friend, I don't have treehouse, but did a demo of outside light coming in, using Iray ghost light. An individual can place as many ghost lights they desire, anywere in the scene, to help illuminate dark areas. In first image doctor office is dark, no lights. 2nd image, I placed ghost light outside of window, removed blinds, cranked up the lumens, for demo purposes. 3rd image, ghost light is invisible. Reason Seeker273 and I recommend ghostlight, to illuminate your treehouse scene. There are other way's of doing this, what we share is 1 method. Hope this helped.
Hello All,
Well with all of your advice and what I found on You Tube, I nixed all of my previous lighing in my tree house scene with the two female fairies. In their places I put in two spherical ghost lights. One is situated in between the two ladies and mostly illuminates the fairy in the back. The second is situated right behind the camera and illuminates the fairy in front.
What I did was use a "node" of the original sphere to make a copy of it as per instructions in a You Tube video. This way all I had to do was to adjust the settings on the parent (main) sphere and the other would follow. It took some doing as I was somewhat 'in the dark' as the effects of the ghost lights only show up in Iray mode. I don't have a GPU and just going with CPU power and the slightest change causes the whole screen to re-render. So it did seem a bit harder to set up than a regular light, of which you can easily look through like a camera to position it. However, I have to say that the results of just using the ghost lights is shocking. Check out the render below. Wow! What a difference!
Same scene but with only TWO ghost lights as opposed to the 4 lights I was using in the first render above. So I nixed the three spot lights and the distant light. The skydome is still on though, but as I mentioned, it has very little effect because of the huge canopy of the tree.
Get this, the render took 70 minutes! Another eye opener considering that the initial render above took 2.5 hours, which to date was my longest render. So these two simple ghost lights cut the render time down dramatically! What's more is that not only are both of my characters well lit, but so is the surrounding areas! This IS great!
Granted there are some things I still have to tweak as I did want to show more detail on the first fairy's mid section. But for a first shot out, I can't complain. This IS far better than using traditional lighting.
I did have a bit of a hard time to set this up in textured mode (at first) but that was because I was using a regular camera and not the environment one, so I was turing the headlamp off and on when entering / leaving textured mode. So next time I will just stick to the Environment camera.
So I just need to do a bit more practicing with these ghost lights then.
Thanks, All!
Geo
I downloaded this a while ago but forgot about it . I know not what sorcery this is, but the camera is fantastic for enclosed rooms and spaces. Highly recommended.
I know that all too well. I have dl'ed stuff when sales were good and back to back. The other day, I came across an item and said to my self, "I bought that already?' .As is I downloaded that camera too, but didn't install it yet, as I been to mesmerized by the newfound knowledge of using ghost lights. I will try it thougjph, when I get the chance. Right now there is just so much going on in my world is of DAZ Studio.