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Mystical Cave how to control lighting

CheetahkaCheetahka Posts: 168
in Daz Studio Discussion

I have the Mystical Cave sku:43777 but when I put characters into it, they show up so dark I can barely seen them. I try adding other light sources but Nothing seems to affect the ambiant lighting. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. My skill with lighting is lack luster at best for now. I'm still working on  it. Any advice?

 

Sincerely,

Jacob.

Comments

  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 102,273
    edited October 2020

    What type of light? A Distant Light always shines in from outside the scene, so it won't help with an enclosed scene like this. You need local lights (Points, Spots, or geometry with the emissive shader) that are not being blocked by parts of the model and the Environment Mode in Render Settings must be Dome and Scene or Scene Only.

    Post edited by Richard Haseltine on
  • NorthOf45NorthOf45 Posts: 5,532

    This has been discussed a bit before, so you are not the first to notice. Maybe this will, um, shed some light? Mystical Cave

  • nemesis10nemesis10 Posts: 3,486

    One other suggestion is to get something like DimensionTheory's HDRI sets which comes with settings that blast light into interior scenes which aren't completely closed.

  • CheetahkaCheetahka Posts: 168
    edited October 2020

    Thanks for the links everybody and I'll check out those HDRI though I'm not sure how they will affect the Mystic cave abient appeal the artist tried to create should I buy and apply it. Ah ic now, there is no real lighting with the cave other than the firefly things what a bummer. I'll have to work more on my Lighting practice.

    Post edited by Cheetahka on
  • CheetahkaCheetahka Posts: 168
    Richard Haseltine said:

    What type of light? A Distant Light always shines in from outside the scene, so it won't help with an enclosed scene like this. You need local lights (Points, Spots, or geometry with the emissive shader) that are not being blocked by parts of the model and the Environment Mode in Render Settings must be Dome and Scene or Scene Only.

    Like I stated before I'm not good with lighting, but on a test I did create a spot light and pointed it directly at the characters from a worms eye view. From the preview I can see the light hitting them but when I do a detailed preview it's like they are almost in a pitch black cave lol. I can barely make the outline. I was careful to not let it be obstructed by the cave walls and rocks etc... but I'll go checkout that other forum link.

  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 102,273
    Cheetahka said:
    Richard Haseltine said:

    What type of light? A Distant Light always shines in from outside the scene, so it won't help with an enclosed scene like this. You need local lights (Points, Spots, or geometry with the emissive shader) that are not being blocked by parts of the model and the Environment Mode in Render Settings must be Dome and Scene or Scene Only.

    Like I stated before I'm not good with lighting, but on a test I did create a spot light and pointed it directly at the characters from a worms eye view. From the preview I can see the light hitting them but when I do a detailed preview it's like they are almost in a pitch black cave lol. I can barely make the outline. I was careful to not let it be obstructed by the cave walls and rocks etc... but I'll go checkout that other forum link.

    The preview isn't a physically based process, unlike Iray. As a result it is a very poor guide for lighting - it doesn't show where shadows will fall, it doesn't really show fall-off with distance, and of course it doesn't account for the exposure values you have set (which default to a bright day outside).

  • NorthOf45NorthOf45 Posts: 5,532

    That godray from the ceiling looks like a prop, not included. The same, more realistic effect can be done with SSS on an atmosphere prop and a spotlight or distant light angled just right. It will give you ambience for sure, but will take much longer to set up properly and render. It can take multiple tries to get it right, especially if you are new at this (that's why there are props to fake it). 

  • Catherine3678abCatherine3678ab Posts: 8,383

    Free godray here: https://sharecg.com/v/72345/view/21/DAZ-Studio/SY-Easy-Godrays-DS

     

  • CheetahkaCheetahka Posts: 168
    NorthOf45 said:

    That godray from the ceiling looks like a prop, not included. The same, more realistic effect can be done with SSS on an atmosphere prop and a spotlight or distant light angled just right. It will give you ambience for sure, but will take much longer to set up properly and render. It can take multiple tries to get it right, especially if you are new at this (that's why there are props to fake it). 

    I'm so lost on this explaination. I thought SSS had something to do with skin textures, like how much light went though them or something like that. I could be confusing it with something else. Do you have a link that you could point me towards so I can better understand this?

  • CheetahkaCheetahka Posts: 168
    Catherine3678ab said:

    Free godray here: https://sharecg.com/v/72345/view/21/DAZ-Studio/SY-Easy-Godrays-DS

     

    TYVM I'll get that and give it a try. Now to figue out where to place it without the Daz Install Manager (DIM)

  • Catherine3678abCatherine3678ab Posts: 8,383
    Cheetahka said:
    Catherine3678ab said:

    Free godray here: https://sharecg.com/v/72345/view/21/DAZ-Studio/SY-Easy-Godrays-DS

     

    TYVM I'll get that and give it a try. Now to figue out where to place it without the Daz Install Manager (DIM)

    You're welcome. It's very straight forward, just merge [or copy/paste or whatever is done on a Mac] the contents of My Library in with your existing My Library [where you keep the content, NOT inside the program folders].

     

  • CheetahkaCheetahka Posts: 168
    Catherine3678ab said:

    You're welcome. It's very straight forward, just merge [or copy/paste or whatever is done on a Mac] the contents of My Library in with your existing My Library [where you keep the content, NOT inside the program folders].

     

    Gasp, No I am Windows hehe.

  • NorthOf45NorthOf45 Posts: 5,532
    Cheetahka said:
    NorthOf45 said:

    That godray from the ceiling looks like a prop, not included. The same, more realistic effect can be done with SSS on an atmosphere prop and a spotlight or distant light angled just right. It will give you ambience for sure, but will take much longer to set up properly and render. It can take multiple tries to get it right, especially if you are new at this (that's why there are props to fake it). 

    I'm so lost on this explaination. I thought SSS had something to do with skin textures, like how much light went though them or something like that. I could be confusing it with something else. Do you have a link that you could point me towards so I can better understand this?

    Subsurface scattering can be applied to any volume using the Iray shader. Atmocam and AtmoCam 2 use it to get those foggy/misty scenes with lights shining through windows, and things like that. Some products have promo scenes that use a cube, sphere or cylinder with the Thin-Walled property off to make it a closed volume and give access to the SSS parameters. On skin, the surface is opaque, but it could be anything, and for atmospheric effects, the surface itself is transparent and the visual effect comes purely from the scattering of the light.

    This month's Beginner Challenge just happens to include atmospheres, so there will be a lot of relevant tips and info.

  • TBorNotTBorNot Posts: 370

    What you are seeing happens to me all the time, not only in caves, a bar scene does this too.  I think it's a bug in the GL libraries, under certain conditions, or it could be a feature.  I just insert a spotlight and pose everyone, then turn off the spotlight for generating iRay.  I think it has to do with the number of lights, since when I delete the cameras and lights that loaded with the scene it is fine again.  Of course I then have to make my own lights.

    I'm gonna guess most experts have fancy IRay cards and don't use GL for preview.

     

  • NorthOf45NorthOf45 Posts: 5,532

    The OpenGL preview modes allow 8 lights max. You can have a scene with 100 lights, but only the first 8 will show.

  • WendyLuvsCatzWendyLuvsCatz Posts: 38,493
    edited October 2020
    NorthOf45 said:

    The OpenGL preview modes allow 8 lights max. You can have a scene with 100 lights, but only the first 8 will show.

    on most computers yes

    but

    for some weird reason my old Dell Inspiron allowed 16 preview lights cheeky

    I couldn't render on it though

    well I  did but not in DAZ studio 

    Post edited by WendyLuvsCatz on
  • WendyLuvsCatzWendyLuvsCatz Posts: 38,493

    oh BTW Filament in the beta allows more lights

    I have been adding piles of them

  • TBorNotTBorNot Posts: 370

    The difference in these two is deleting the single area light on the right.  If you preview with IRAY, it (eventually) looks like you would expect.

     

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