Lighting / Render problem
Daveman
Posts: 51
Any help would be appreciated. Maybe its my settings or something? I purchased Reality 4 yesterday - and eventually figured out I had to download files and install manually. So I'm set and ready to go! Keep in mind Reality4 & Lux Render are new to me and I'm not a wiz on DAZ Studio yet. Here's the problem:
#1. I followed best I could on the beginner tutorial on the product page (Reality 4 for Daz Studio 4.7) but the "Top Mesh Light" is not emitting any light like it was in the tutorial. Its an outdoor scene so I tried the "Sunlight" option as a last resort and it lights up the area.
#2. When I tried to render the scene, I got a Log warning that it could not find the genesis female face - then it restarted and changed settings - I thought maybe it fixed itself and so left it to render for about 6 hours and all it shown was what resembled half of a scrambled black and white ultra sound image of fractal noise, nowhere near complete.
The Delight engine renders the same scene with no problem, no errors.., aside from the fact the "Top Mesh" option is not working.
Note: I downloaded the OpenCL version - my GPU does support it. I also ticked the render settings to use GPU acceleration
SYSTEM INFO
OS: Windows 7 - 64 bit
CPU: AMD Athlon II dual core 3.0 Ghz
MEMORY: 4 GB DDR2
GPU: Radeon HD6570 - 1GB dedicated DDR3 ram
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Comments
davehenry01 Did you get it going yet?
Yes and No - actually I'm not sure. :-D
I changed settings from "Pure GPU" to "Hybrid GPU" and it looks like its rendering properly but at a snail's pace. However the Error Log reads something like;
"Error 4: Couldnt find color texture named GenesisFemale_21556-35764-Face.dermis.hairmask.text"
ALSO - the "Top light mesh" is still not emitting any light at all. I'm usingt the "sunlight" option since its outdoors anyway - I'm just hoping it will render with that light until someone can help me figure out why the Top light mesh is not working.
So far the render is 31 minutes along and still resembles growing scattered stardust, but more generalized across the whole screen instead of the lower half like before. At this rate it will be an all day affair just to see if its working about right.., if I'm lucky.
I'm learning this one also and so far we are hitting the same walls. :)
I had to check the falloff level on my lights. They came in with the Max level set way to low.
This is what I did to get a test render going.
Start a new seane
Bring in the V6 figure
Added a light "move above ground level if needed. Sun light for sure"
Added a camera. "Turn off DOF"
Set the view port camera in DAZ Studio to the new camera "camera1"
Open Reality and make sure the new camera1 and your light are selected
Start the render. "I used defaults on everything to start"
It will take some time to render depending on the processor speed
This is basic but if the rendering looks close to the one in the view port your heading in the right direction.
After I got this part going a started playing with the other settings and materials.
Right now my renderings are still a bit basic and don't have the shiny or reflective look. So lighting is next.
Trying to learn this one to break my "jump to Carrara for render habit" :)
Let me know if this helps you out.
You mean you used default DAZ and or Product default lighting instead or Reality's lights for the test?
I'm going to let this beast I'm working on finish out - but will try out your method for sure after this one is done. If it gets done. :)
Hopefully someone will help me at least figure out why Im getting that Error message and how to get that Top Mesh light working.
Thanks man. I appreciate your input.
So far 2 hours on this one render and its probably not even 1/5th of the way finished. ~sigh~
Yes on the default DS lighting to start. Won't look great but it wiil let you know that it's working.
Once I got it to render correctly I add the Reality lights.
"I'll see if I can get that error to come up tonight."
Just a hair under 20 HOURS rendering - and its nowhere near complete so I stopped it. The odd thing is, its as if its rendering a completely different scene than what I was rendering! LOL. 20 hours to render any 1 image and still not have it complete is seriously insane.
Here is the Reality 4 rendered image - and below it the throw-together test scene rendered in 3Delight using Reality4's "sun" light
I'm taking a break - before I do another Reality 4 test. I probably should have downloaded the OpenGL version instead of the OpenCL - using the "Pure GPU" setting I get a warning that says not enough memory - so I used the Hybrid GPU setting for this test. (I resized this graphic)
I uninstalled the LuxRender for OpenCL and installed the Non OpenCL for now - and it helped. Also I got a simple pointer on the official forum on setting lights, just enough to get me started. And the Non OpenCL is working much faster for me. Go figure! LoL.
Oh and on that error about the face skin text - I did get it just once after the reinstall. I probably need to go to the official LuxRender forum for that info if it happens again..
Sounds like a plan!
...the top one looks like a rendering of an HDRI image. What light set are you using for the 3DL version?
As your system only has a dual core CPU and DDR2 memory, yes, it will be slow going. When I first got Reality I was still working on a duo core system (only 32 bit WinXP) and it took forever. I could only use CPU rendering as Lux didn't offer GPU assisted or pure GPU rendering at that time.
On my i7 6 bit system with 12 GB (Tri Channel), even pure CPU rendering is a lot faster. as I am using all 8 threads. Also something to keep in mind, to use pure GPU rendering your scene has to fit entirely in the GPU's memory.
Something else to keep in mind — a standard D|S render with 3Delight can only fake the behaviour of real light rays bouncing around real objects, using a variety of tricks and shortcuts. LuxRender actually simulates light rays, which will always take a lot longer because it follows the real physical laws of how light works. This difference means a light setup for use in 3Delight will look nothing like a light setup intended to produce the same(ish) image in LuxRender.
Also, the shortcuts used by 3Delight mean a render will actually finish; in comparison, LuxRender never really finishes working on a scene, it just gradually improves the image quality until you can say "good enough" and stop it. Render times of several hours are normal, overnight or even longer is not unusal.
After all this time and learning a bit more I think what happened with that 1st image, I had like 3 cameras set up as well as some experimental lights which I closed - despite being turned off, they carried over into - I assumed Reality would defaut to the main camera view on DAZ but was sadly mistaken. The image had to of been a light view down the side or inside of the Outpost building.
I'm stuck with the system I built but I will eventually upgrade the memory and get a better GPU to take advantage of the OpenCL. I know some of the errors in Lux Render (using the OpenCL version) was screaming about memory overload or something to that effect. That problem was resolved after I reinstalled it as Non-OpenCL.
CURRENT PROBLEMS: I noticed when a figure uses a set of boots that requires the feet turned off in DAZ., Lux Render, renders the otherwise invisible feet anyway! That blows chunks. Also in a Test - it rendered the shadow of the frame around the Mesh Light even though I had set it to not show in the render. Here is the Test Render (in link) showing the Mesh Frame shadow on the street;
http://www.daz3d.com/gallery/#images/48667/
Thanks for the helpful info. Every little bit helps. Its kind of tricky learning to work with just 3 light sets - I havent even tried to use the included gobo sets. And I dont know how to apply them :-)
I also noticed it has an Animation option?? Wow! But I havent seen any tutorials on how to do that. Do you know if it renders animation faster than DAZ?
After all this time and learning a bit more I think what happened with that 1st image, I had like 3 cameras set up as well as some experimental lights which I closed - despite being turned off, they carried over into - I assumed Reality would defaut to the main camera view on DAZ but was sadly mistaken. The image had to of been a light view down the side or inside of the Outpost building.
I'm stuck with the system I built but I will eventually upgrade the memory and get a better GPU to take advantage of the OpenCL. I know some of the errors in Lux Render (using the OpenCL version) was screaming about memory overload or something to that effect. That problem was resolved after I reinstalled it as Non-OpenCL.
CURRENT PROBLEMS: I noticed when a figure uses a set of boots that requires the feet turned off in DAZ., Lux Render, renders the otherwise invisible feet anyway! That blows chunks. Also in a Test - it rendered the shadow of the frame around the Mesh Light even though I had set it to not show in the render. Here is the Test Render (in link) showing the Mesh Frame shadow on the street;
http://www.daz3d.com/gallery/#images/48667/
...ugh site issues with the gallery again. I get an image but it's like looking at it through thick fog and there's one of those perpetual "swirlies" in the middle.
Reality seems to ignore certain settings in Daz like 'Cast Shadows: Off" (which is for 3DL).
For hiding the feet, select them in the Reality Materials Tab and set the surface to "null". The Boots should still render fine.
I've never done animation in Luxus, or at all really. I've read, though, that there is a shortcut that lets you render the animation frames in a less than insane time — instead of running until you stop it, the render can be set to run each frame until a set value of samples per pixel is reached. This works because the individual frames don't need to be as perfect as a single render; when the animation runs, any fuzziness or lack of image quality is blurred out.
Hold on... found it, here's the page in the LuxRender wiki about animation.
...ugh site issues with the gallery again. I get an image but it's like looking at it through thick fog and there's one of those perpetual "swirlies" in the middle.
Reality seems to ignore certain settings in Daz like 'Cast Shadows: Off" (which is for 3DL).
For hiding the feet, select them in the Reality Materials Tab and set the surface to "null". The Boots should still render fine.
Wow - I havent had that problem with the Galleries, other than the images once clicked into, popping back up to the top in a thumbnail.
Yeah thanks for the help the fix on hiding feet and the heads up on the Daz settings
I've never done animation in Luxus, or at all really. I've read, though, that there is a shortcut that lets you render the animation frames in a less than insane time — instead of running until you stop it, the render can be set to run each frame until a set value of samples per pixel is reached. This works because the individual frames don't need to be as perfect as a single render; when the animation runs, any fuzziness or lack of image quality is blurred out.
Hold on... found it, here's the page in the LuxRender wiki about animation.
COOL! Thanks - I'll check it our ASAP. I called myself looking around for info on the animation but couldnt dig up anything. I appreciates ya!