Shadowcaster spell ribbon lighting
Coryllon
Posts: 284
https://www.daz3d.com/shadowcaster-spellribbons
I am trying to light these in my renders but it seems to block my point lighting. Any ideas? I put them right IN the light because that's where the light is centered is the spellball.
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What render engine are you using? If you're using Iray you might try using emissive materials.
Is this for Iray or 3Delight? I'd probably, in Iray, use the Emissive shader preset or, in 3Delight, use the uberArea sahder - both applied to the model itself, so it really cast light.
The Spellribbons load untextured, so pick the textures you want to use on the various parts. To get them to emit light in Iray, you need to change the shader being used. In your Content Library, go to Shader Presets->Iray->Daz Uber and locate the Emissive shader. In the Surfaces tab, select the Spellribbons and apply the Emissive shader preset while holding the CTRL key. This will bring up a small Options dialog. Don't change Surfaces: Selected, but change Images: to Ignore. This will keep the bitmaps in place, and with the Emissive preset, will set the Emission color to the base materials you selected earlier.
Set the Two Sided Light to ON for the ribbons and discs. Adjust the Luminance and Emission Temperature as you like (default temperature is very low, put it to around 5000-6500). It is easier to adjust using the Iray preview mode since you get immediate feedback, instead of having to render every time. Have fun! I hadn't tried this myself before, but it is pretty cool. This little sample is rendered with scene-only lighting.
I will give that a try next chance I get. But the IRAY preview turns the entire scene white and grey so I don't know what to do about that
It goes white and grey for a bit while it prepares the scene. How long depends on how big the scene is. Try the spellribbons separately (you can save them and merge with your final scene).
if this works, my render will be in the next noob contest... so you'll see it then :)
ok So I was able to get the glow working. TY for that. But ti get ENOUGH glow I had to up the intesity to 7500 and make the Ln/W 150. It washes out the spell orb. I tried dropping the glassy reflectivity to 0 but that did nothing.
You can control all the pieces independently. In the surfaces tab, select each one at a time and set the intensity (Luminance) as you like. There are several units to choose from, but using W(atts) is trickiest since you need to also adjust Luminous Efficacy. I used 1000-2000 kcd/m^2 for all surfaces, lower for the discs and spheres, higher for the ribbons.
I also noticed that the transparency mask gets added to the Luminance, Cutout Opacity and Displacement channels. Don't really need it everywhere, but the Emission channel already has a bitmap, and the Cutout Opacity will mask the parts you see, so doing it again on the Luminance might be too much. I notice the ribbons fade away quickly, removing the mask from Luminance keeps them brighter at the tips. It's all a matter of taste. Don't know what Displacement is contributing in this case, so that can be removed for all parts, it's just using resources that aren't needed.
putzing with the luminance and temp fixed one of them, but not the other, it appears to shed no light at all, without using W
Maybe one of the pieces is blocking it. In the scene tab, you can hide the various parts to see if they reveal something. All the surfaces should have similar settings to get the glow. Make sure that all surfaces are set to the Iray Uber shader, with Emissive.
A picture is worth a thousand words. Let's see what you've got...
tried hiding all but the inside one... still no light being shed. I cannot post pictures, just because the rules of the contest say I can't use anything previously posted... so rather than risk disqualification, I'm going to err on the side of caution.
Well, maybe you can get some pointers from the contest hosts and participants. I'm sure they can find a way. Anyway, sounds like you are on the right track. Try each surace individually, and I'm sure you will get it.
that's my problem... I'm down to just one and it's not shedding any light. the rest are hidden
You can post a screen cap of your Iray parameters, you won't get penalized for that. Here's what I started with (discs and spheres use the same maps, ribbons have their own). The other settings were not changed from whatever they default to when converting to Iray Uber. Last is the result.
it won't let me paste it, and I can't add attachments unless there's a URL involved
Click on "Attach a file" under the "Leave a Comment" text entry box and browse to the folder on your computer with the pictures you want to upload. Adding a URL is a little different, the picture has to exist somewhere on the web already. Once you post it, it will exist on the web (here) and you can then post it back in the message. Kind of roundabout, but it works. Not really needed for this kind of work, the attachment is good enough, as long as the original is large enough to read.
had to reload the page... multiple times
(Adding attachments can be a little flaky sometimes)
That should get you something from all layers. The Spellball is just a subset of the Spellribbon figure, so the same settings would apply. You should see something in Iray preview mode and renders if you show one part and hide the other two (best on a dark background). Note: In Texture Shaded mode you won't see much if the Base Color is black with a bitmap, I set it to white so that I can at least see what color it is before going to Iray mode, which is much slower.
So I got it to work, I do not know how... but changing the lighting on sphere two to use W instead and upping the luminance and efficacy did the trick.
Great! It shouldn't matter how the emission is done, once you get the right balance, but it will be less mysterious with time and experience. Good luck in the contest...
I won the April New user Render contest, so thank you! fee free to have a look. The half-dark-elf fighter mage in the front row was my problematic one. You can find here:
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/317126/april-2019-daz-3d-new-user-challenge-open-render-challenge/p3
The skin tone made iher really hard to illuminate.
Awesome! Congratulations. Next time I should ask for a percentage...
Funny thing. that render is the MAX number of characters Daz will do apparently before it crashes my entire PC. GPU first.