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Lighting & Rendering

PatroklosPatroklos Posts: 533
edited December 1969 in Technical Help (nuts n bolts)

I now have a computer capable of rendering.

I have a (human) figure, light by Skysphere. Using the default lighting set up, just moving the sun around a bit. Looks pretty good in Daz Studio, nice areas of light and shade on the body.

Rendered using 3delight, better than draft quality, looks utterly different, dull, flat, lifeless, no areas of light and shade - what is the point?

Clearly I am doing something wrong.

Where do I start?

Comments

  • ToyenToyen Posts: 1,888
    edited December 1969

    Hey there!

    It could be good if you could post the picture so I could see what exactly do u mean by flat and lifeless.

    It takes some skill to get a nice render with 3Delight but it can be done.

    Definitely look into uber enviroment lights, they can make a huge difference to your scene.

    It´s not always easy to create good lighting for your scene and can take a while to master lighting. I must admit I always struggle with lights in all 3D programs I use : )

  • PatroklosPatroklos Posts: 533
    edited December 1969

    Hello,

    thanks for your reply,

    I have not completed and saved a render yet as at around the 70% mark that are clearly so useless that I aborted.

    Oddly, I have just loaded a preset of a sort of night time setup, and after a couple of error messages about the hair, it looks to be producing something interesting and similar to some degree to the lighting in the scene.

    That does not account for previous renders being about 1% as good as the scene.

    Is these anything around that works something like real lights, I have experience of using photographic lights with a friend who is a professional photographer.

  • PatroklosPatroklos Posts: 533
    edited December 1969

    Surprised at how slow, 66% in 13 minutes on a brand new iMac Retina - heading for 50 minutes?

  • ToyenToyen Posts: 1,888
    edited December 1969

    Hey there! I´m gonna do a quick lighting test with just the g2f for you so you could see the difference some things can make. Just a moment.

  • PatroklosPatroklos Posts: 533
    edited December 1969

    Thank you

    :-)

  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 100,948
    edited December 1969

    LuxRender, reachable via the Reality or Luxus plug-ins, is closest to the way reality works - LuxRender is free, but the bridges aren't. Octane isn't free and had a non-free plugin, it makes better use of your video hardware. However, being different engines they are even further from the preview. Sticking to 3Delight, using the Aux Viewport (as a small size) and turning the IPR render on is one way to avoid surprises.

  • PatroklosPatroklos Posts: 533
    edited December 1969

    Thank you.

    I seem to be stuck in a long render, much slower than previous with the same settings, now 35 mins 76%.

    I have not come across IPR render, and of course cannot presently look for it, please give me some idea how I switch it on?

    I have been reading about Luxrender / Reality, but so much stuff nowadays is marketing hype that I never know what to believe.

    I would like to get to grips with 3Delight, but I had seems walk straight into a brick wall.

    I seem to have some sort of light leakage show up on the render, on the inside of the thigh where it joins to body, is that sort of thing normal? The pose looks good and not extreme bending.

  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 100,948
    edited December 1969

    Light leakage could be an issue from a light that isn't set to cast shadows - especially if you are using a shader with SSS.

    To use IPR open the Aux Viewport (Window>Panes(Tabs)>Aux Viewport). Open it's option menu (the lined button in the top corner of the pane, not the one in the top corner of its viewport, or right-click the tab) and enable Show IPR Toolbar. Now you can switch the preview render on and off via the toolbar buttons.

  • PatroklosPatroklos Posts: 533
    edited December 1969

    That is really great!!!

    Is there a way to permanently incorporate this pane into the Render Settings tab?

  • ToyenToyen Posts: 1,888
    edited December 1969

    Sorry it took so long!

    Here are a few lighting presets to give you an idea of what difference do the lights and environment make to the scene.

    Feel free to download full res version from my deviantart - http://toyen-art.deviantart.com/art/Lighting-Presets-504197999

    Couldnt post it here because it was too big.

    So as you can see, you can get a lot of different results depending on which lights you use and whether you decide to add uberenviroment or not.

    I have only used 2 lights coming from approximately the same direction.

    - 1x Uber Area Plane light
    - 1x Distant Light

    For example, you can see the HUGE difference the Uberenviroment has made to the scene in picture 2.

    The upper versions is with only one distant light and no uber enviroment and the lower version is with the same distant light but with uberenviroment now present.

    lighting_presets_by_toyen_art-d8c6pnz.png
    1024 x 527 - 310K
  • PatroklosPatroklos Posts: 533
    edited December 1969

    Thank you Toyen, I shall have to look into UberEnvironment.

  • PatroklosPatroklos Posts: 533
    edited December 1969

    This is very strange, but what is showing in the Aux Viewport Render is NOT what is showing in the final render.

    The final render has NO SHADOWS- that is what was going wrong earlier I suspect.

  • ToyenToyen Posts: 1,888
    edited December 1969

    Hmm I´ve never had that issue. Is your shading rate set to the lowest number (highest quality). It might affect shadows but Im not sure about that.

    If you could provide screenshots that would be great!

  • PatroklosPatroklos Posts: 533
    edited December 1969

    Hello,

    It seems that Sky was in some way upsetting everything.

    I have stopped using it and now everything appears to work ok.

    Thanks for help.

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