Dramatic Iray Global Clouds - Help!

HornetBoy

Hi, Can I ask if anyone has had any success with this Dreamlight product (https://www.daz3d.com/dramatic-iray-global-clouds)? It would be a godsend if I could get it to work as suggested by the promo pictures.

I'm a fairly experienced Daz user, familiar with tweaking settings in the Surfaces pane etc. I've tried all of the props and render presets provided with this product, combined with assorted Environment settings (using Dome/HDRi and Sun-Sky), with very disappointing outcomes. In all cases the Clouds are very far from being dramatic, they are at best very subtle. I've tried setting the backdrop color to black for a supposedly very dramatic effect, as suggested by the artist, with a different but still very subtle effect. Finally I've also tried a wide range of Surface settings.

Possibly not relevant, but I've been attempting to use this product with The Streets of the Wild West (https://www.daz3d.com/the-streets-of-the-wild-west) and The Colosseum (https://www.daz3d.com/the-colosseum), with the same disappointing result. I'm sure I must be doing something wrong, but am at a loss to figure out what that might be. Any help or suggestions would be appreciated.

NorthOf45

First of all, the haze and cloud layers are all emissive, and too bright by half, which washes out a lot of the cloud detail. Lower the emissive power, and with a black backdrop, you can get those menacing dark undersides. Maybe drop the environment intensity a notch or two. Or play with the exposure. There's more than one way...

In case you didn't notice, the INFO prop opens a series of labeled null elements in the scene that give some basic directions. Here's a quick example, just to give you an idea. The first is one of the original preset environment and render settings and a black Environment backdrop (Environment tab, not Iray Environment render setting), and the second is with the environment and emission on all layers of the clouds set to 40% of the original with the same backdrop.

HornetBoy

Thank you NorthOf45. By Emissive Power I'm assuming that's controlled by Luminance. The Luminance of each Cloud Layer is set to 32,000 units by the preset. and I've tried reducing Luminance of each layer significantly (as low as 500 units), and have played with Environment Intensity and exposure as you've suggested. I've also set the Environemnt backdrop to black. 

Doing all of these things, although I can clearly see the dramatic clouds in the viewport, they just don't come through in the Iray render (trying with Environment Mode set to Dome/HDRi and Sun-Sky). I'll keep playing with these settings and hope to have some success eventually. Thanks again.

HornetBoy

Finally fixed this problem, but not really sure why it worked. I took my Streets of the Wild West scene, deleted all Streets of the Wild West content (but left other items, figures etc. untouched), then applied Global Clouds and then re-installed Streets of the Wild West, rendered and all was OK, Global Clouds rendered perfectly - I didn't change any Environment or Tone settings.

I've tried this with other scenes based on other products, and consistently find that installing Global Clouds first, and then other content, is the way to go. I've tried applying and not applying render presets provided by the PAs, as I thought that may be the issue, but has not changed these findings. At least I found a workaround that works consistently, so I'm happy, but I would like to understand what's going on.