Isometric Indoor Renders Hide Ceilings

anaximanes_2000

I need to do some renders on some sets I have purchased, and the majority of them do not have the ceilings as separate.  In other words, on a couple, I can either simply select the ceiling and hide it, or select it in the Surfaces tab and set the opacity to 0.  Now, I know how to use the geometry tool to select and create a new surface and then hide it.  However, I am curious if there is a setting in Daz or a line of code that I can use to render with the camera looking down, but render through the ceiling.  Think isometric, as looking down.  I wondered if there is a way to make a primitive maybe, and then make it so it is see-through and put it through the ceiling so the ceiling is now always invisible? Lol  Basically, I’m open to ideas to make this as fast and easy as possible, thank you.

zombietaggerung

Iray section plane is what you are looking for. I can't remember off the top of my head how to create them in DS, but I know they allow for clipping the camera through solid objects so you can render in small spaces without camera distortion. You should be able to find some tutorials on youtube.

TimberWolf

Zombie is right - the section plane does what you need. Rather than me try to explain it all in excruciating detail, this short video from Jay Versluis explains it all:

Watch this and you'll never be troubled by welded ceilings again!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkpITquM220

 

anaximanes_2000

Yes!  Thank you both.  This is precisely what I had hypothesized there must be!  Perfect, thanks again.

Petercat

Can you point the section node at the camera and parent it there so that it is always at 90deg to the camera view?

TimberWolf

You can. Multiple planes in fact. There are some products in the Daz store that do precisely this but you can make your own very easily. Two things to be aware of:

1 - Lighting from objects such as emissives or scene lighting still occurs. The objects that produce that lighting may be hidden but the light they produce is still rendered. This may... or may not(!)... be useful.

2 - Section planes can dramatically affect the lighting, ambience and mood of an indoor scene, especially darker ones, as they open up your scene to your global lighting but the best way to find out is to play with it. 

Petercat

TimberWolf said:

You can. Multiple planes in fact. There are some products in the Daz store that do precisely this but you can make your own very easily. Two things to be aware of:

1 - Lighting from objects such as emissives or scene lighting still occurs. The objects that produce that lighting may be hidden but the light they produce is still rendered. This may... or may not(!)... be useful.

2 - Section planes can dramatically affect the lighting, ambience and mood of an indoor scene, especially darker ones, as they open up your scene to your global lighting but the best way to find out is to play with it. 

 Thank you. Would this have any effect on the lighting if you use Scene Only in the environment section? That's usually my default with interior scenes where I remove a wall for camera placement.

TimberWolf

I had to think about this for a minute but if you're using Scene Only you should find that nothing actually changes in terms of lighting. There is no GI and the hidden geometries' lighting should still be rendered. I can't check this out at the moment as I'm away from the office but I see no reason why using a section plane in this scenario would alter the lighting at all.

Just try it out!