Changing light settings in pre-packaged scenes

lbartels

Hello,

I'm just getting started, and I thought I'd work with some pre-packaged scenes as starters. I went out to the shop and found a city-scape I liked. (Contemporary Buildings Hyper Kit).

I found a scene I liked and started rendering it. No background sky.  [cancel] So I poked around and merged in a sky scene. Rendered again.. and perfect. A nice early morning scene. So far so good.

Now, I want to use the same scene, same camera angle etcetera, but have the "sunlight" come from directly overhead.  Or, Remove sunlight all together for a dramatic night scene.

I looked and looked and can not find a way to move or turn off this light source.

 

Any help would be appreciated.  Thanks in advance.

My 3D Spin

If you want a night scene shift to Scene Only in the Render settings but you will need some
light source in the Scene so its not pitch black. Best is to use Linear Point lights and spot lights.
You find those under menu "Create "

Regarding changing dirction of the sun you will need the Distant light and play around with it.
Also found under Create

scorpio

There are a few rendering options in DS HDRI's give good outside lighting and can be turned to alter the direction of the sun, the default render settings includes one, HDR haven has some nice free ones

https://hdrihaven.com/.

You can change the HDRI in the render settings under environment just browse to where you saved your HDRIs.

 

There is also the sun and sky setting where time date location can be altered look for this under Environment Mode change it to sun sky only to get the extra settings.

mwasielewski1990

scorpio said:

There are a few rendering options in DS HDRI's give good outside lighting and can be turned to alter the direction of the sun, the default render settings includes one, HDR haven has some nice free ones

https://hdrihaven.com/.

You can change the HDRI in the render settings under environment just browse to where you saved your HDRIs.

 

There is also the sun and sky setting where time date location can be altered look for this under Environment Mode change it to sun sky only to get the extra settings.

As scorpio said, Download some .hdr files from said website and experiment, and if you want to change the light direction, use the DOME ROTATION property in Render Settings -> Editor -> Enviroment. I'm not sure if you know what these .hdr files do so just a quick explanation - the rendering engine basically calculates the "ambient" light based on the image that's inside the .hdr file. For example, if the .hdr is a footage of a bright sun on a clear sky, you can change the direction of the main light by Dome Rotation - the sun on the image will have a different origin as you rotate the dome. You can also use the Dome Origin (X, Y, Z) property in the same panel if you need to be more precise. 

Other than .hdr files, you can simply use a built-in "sun" instead, there are tons of tutorials on youtube on how to use the sun.

For dramatic night scenes there are a couple of options, most notably:

Set Enviroment mode to scene only, add some point lights or spotlights as you like and just do some trial and error. 

Use mesh lights, but that's a whole different story :)

Just lookup some lighting tutorials on youtube, there are tons of them, but if you have any specific questions I'd be happy to help :)

bran_mak_morrn

Very nice looking render, BTW :)

In regards to looking up youtube tutorials, remember to check the date of the upload. DAZ has changed over the years, and some stuff that applies to older versions of DAZ that used 3DS rendering will not necessarily apply to IRAY rendering. I made this mistake a few months back and bought some advanced lights based off of tips in a youtube tutorial, but, they only worked w/3DS (not IRAY). Try to find the most recent information / tutorials to avoid rookie moves like this.

Keep in mind, also, that different people use different techniques, and different artists on DAZ use different approaches, too. What works or is built-in with one scene/environment made by one artist may differ slightly or completely from another scene/environment made by another artist. It pays to have a wide knowledge base about a wide variety of techniques, but, this usually comes at the cost of many hours of experimentation (which, if you take thorough notes, is well worth the time investment).