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Lighting is the most Important Factor for Great Renders

GnotMeGnotMe Posts: 131
edited December 1969 in New Users

I purchased Advanced Ambient Light (actually Advanced Light Bundle) about a week ago and I can’t believe how much better every render looks with the default settings or some small tweaking of the 2 or 3 parameters. I used to struggle with the fact that other lights gave me silhouettes if I changed my viewpoint and never looked as good as all of the examples on the DAZ3D web pages, or those done by other people. Furthermore it is far faster than any other light I have ever used and is not over the head of someone who knows very little about all of the myriad and difficult to grasp concepts.

AoA also has the distinction having a link next to the product description for the User Manual. Rather rare and almost unheard of for DAZ3D, contrary to the readme.txt available with every product on Renderosity. It is a SUPERB product.

It’s the single most important tool for getting really, really good looking renders. As expected I recommend purchasing Age of Armour’s Ambient Light to everyone.

Comments

  • barbultbarbult Posts: 24,259
    edited December 1969

    I agree, it is a nice product. There is a big discussion thread here http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/27675/
    You might find some useful tips there.

  • reserv888reserv888 Posts: 1,143
    edited December 1969

    Thank you for the tip drdancm. Checked it out. Looks great. Going to buy it.

  • reserv888reserv888 Posts: 1,143
    edited December 1969

    This is kind of embarrasing... :) but I can't find these new lights.
    Install manager has installed them, but I can't find them anywhere.
    Where are they?

  • dHandledHandle Posts: 617
    edited December 1969

    I found mine in the Content library tab under (I am running a PC) Daz Studio Formats > My Daz 3D Library > Light Presets > Age of Armour > Ambient Light and Spotlight are both here.

    I did find an Age of Armour folder under products, but it is an empty folder: no content in it.

    Hope this helps...

    "D"

  • JaderailJaderail Posts: 0
    edited December 1969

    In Products its A> its Advanced Ambient they both list for me.

  • dHandledHandle Posts: 617
    edited December 1969

    yeah...I think I must have something set wrong in the DIM. AoA's Ambient Light folder is there, but it's empty.

  • barbultbarbult Posts: 24,259
    edited December 1969

    Just reimport the metadata for the light and it will show up in the product listing in Content Library. (At least that worked for me.)

  • dHandledHandle Posts: 617
    edited December 1969

    hmmm...how does one reimport metadata?

  • Scott LivingstonScott Livingston Posts: 4,341
    edited December 1969

    To re-import metadata:
    1. Go to your Content Library pane
    2. Click the Active Pane Options icon (the one with the little triangle and four lines)
    3. Choose "Content DB Maintenance"
    4. Select "Re-import Metadata"
    5. Click Accept

    To find the lights in your Content Library (works even if Smart Content isn't working)
    1. Go to your Content Library pane
    2. Navigate to the folder where you installed the lights (mine is DAZ Studio Formats>My DAZ 3D Library)
    3. Find the Advanced lights in: Light Presets>Age of Armour

  • reserv888reserv888 Posts: 1,143
    edited December 1969

    @dhmohr and Jaderail
    I had the same problem. The folder was empty.

    @barbult and Scott
    Thx for giving the solution. Re-importing metadata solved it.

  • reserv888reserv888 Posts: 1,143
    edited December 1969

    Hmmm....new problem.

    Don't know what I am doing wrong but the Advanced Amber Light and the Advanced Spot Light doesn't affect the render at all.
    It changes the lighting in the viewport but doesn't do anything in the render.

    The manual also speaks of some parameter settings I can't find (like "Shadow samples" and "Max Error"). They are not in the parameters tab and not in the advanced render settings.

    Any ideas?

  • Scott LivingstonScott Livingston Posts: 4,341
    edited November 2013

    It sounds like perhaps the lights did not install properly. That problem has affected a fair number of people. Age of Armour (the PA) has a thread here with some help on solving it: http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/31239/ (Sounds like the bottom line is you may need to re-download and re-install)

    Post edited by Scott Livingston on
  • reserv888reserv888 Posts: 1,143
    edited December 1969

    You are gold, Scott!

  • dHandledHandle Posts: 617
    edited December 1969

    Wow! That fixed a lot of things!

    Thanks Scott!

    "D"

  • GnotMeGnotMe Posts: 131
    edited December 1969

    A quick tip on Using Advanced Ambient Lighting:

    1 Be sure to download/and or print the manual (part of the product, but also link on product sale page description - (On-line User Guide)

    2 Select Ambient Light (on Selections where you see your Characters, Clothes etc.), then choose Parameters in order to set things for your Lighting. You should see 3 Headings
    Light Group - for light intensity etc.

    Occlusion Group - for Sampling etc.

    Lighting Control Group - Don't mess with these, until you really understand everything else -otherwise you will get surprising results.
    (At first I thought you could simply tag parts of the image, but that was a bad assumption. You tell AO to not render parts of the image
    setting surface properties to specific values -it's rather complicated)

    3 Occlusion Group - increasing Subsurface Samples to 256 will improve skin etc. and Shading Rate will improve detail as you DECREASE this value toward 1

    4 Don't forget that increasing the Resolution (no of pixels) in the DAZ Studio Rendering Size Field (Horiz and Vert) will produce higher resolution ( I find that going up as high as 3000-3500 give great results and most renders still may take less than 2 to 5 minutes for characters alone (with Subsurface Sampling and AO samples at 256).

    I'm not an advanced user, so I may have left a couple things out or gotten them not quite right, but hopefully someone who knows better will correct my tips.

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