Reality 4.2 modeling lights

MW_HNL

I tried a number of times to figure out Reality.  Noise everywhere.  Long render times.  Clearly I was not holding my mouth right given all the evidence that this is a fine bit of kit for lots of folks. I tried following instructions exactly.  Super simple.  Still strangeness. #1 was even after I finally figured out how to find and install a mesh light I could not see it.  Once however it worked gangbusters!  WOW and WOW. Fast and very nice! And then back to junk and noise everywhere.  Then I thought Well in digital noise is always inadequate light.  Finally found the meshlight off in the boonies.  Think what to do.  For some reason I cannot seem to see where that blasted thing is pointing without rendering it and even then it is a big humbug.  I am sure this is because I am a massive newbie and missing a zillion points.

But in strobe photography the solution is a modeling light.  Recently having studied some tutorials on meddling with the parameters tab I have had great success in making lighting sets with all sorts of locked parameters to simplify pointing and handling and learning how a group seems to encapsulate such locks inside its own little universe.

So I started with a blank scene.  Added a Reality MeshLight.  Zeroed it in all regards and locked every one of its parameters.  Then I put in a standard DAZ spotlight and zeroed it but made a few moves first to put it right in the center of the Meshlight.  And then locked all of its parameters for rotation, translation, scaling.  Now I grouped the two.  Then I set limits on the rotations of the group.  No zed rotation.  only -90 to +90 in the x-roatation and only -360 to 360 in the y rotation (to keep it from spilling around to silly numbers of turns).

Now I had a modeling light that would show me where the magic meshlight was pointing!  Pointed it at the sample two brick walls and grassy ground target.  Turned off the DAZ light.  Called up Reality render editor and launched a render.  WOW!  Shazam  (etc.)  In a flash there was a decent render then a really nice render.  It was fast it was noise free in short time.  It was so pleased that I had finally pointed a light in the right place where the camera was looking.  At least one breakthrough for me personally.  Reality 4.2 does work.  Now if there is a simpler way to see where a Meshlight is pointing please tell me. At least I can go back to trying to get this kind of render to work for me with the modeling light concept.

Step 1 with this render engine seems to be put the right amount of the right kind of light on the subject.  If there is a way to pre-visualize this I am missing please help.  Until then at least a modeling light built into the meshlight is a start. I suppose one could make a set of such lights which could render in 3Delight and Reality by using the "modeling lights" as the main 3Delight lights and the associated Reality lights for Reality by just turning off the DAZ modeling inserts before going for a fancier render?  Or is this really going about it the hard way?

 

 

SimonJM

Lighting is always going to be critical to any render, maybe more so for an unbiaded, PBR such as LuxRender.

A handy tip when using mesh lights is to parent them to a camera, then move the camera around (whilst using it for your viewport) so you can get it aligned as you want.

MW_HNL

Very good idea about parenting a camera.  I went back and tweeked a bit realizing I could of course look through the parented DAZ spotlight.  Then I added a very classic character to my two walls and grassy ground and tried to make an actual render.  I use a narrow beam width on the spotlight since it is only to point with and that also makes it easy to look though and point.

Test 1.  Carefully pointing the mesh light and positioning it using the reference DAZ spotlight modeling light.  Shut off DAZ  modeling light (goes black) Bring up Reality Render Editor and set it to use a real camera.  Now when the render starts I have an option to click on a box and have it Estimate the best camera exposure which fine tunes it to the light source. Again seems very successful. This short test was done on a MacMini with 8 Gybtes of ram and a graphics card that provides almost zero support fo DAZ studio.  It reached 100 Sp in 2 min 50 seconds and was stopped at 3 minutes.  It is 864 x 1080 pixels. Promising for such a quickie...

Many systems from trying to make internegatives on Ortho Litho film to operating a mass spectrometer have "sweet spots" where they curl up in your lap and purr like a kitten full of cream and outside of which they appear to be inoperable nightmares of chaos.  Reality seems to have a sweet spot for sure and finding it seems to be a lot about finding some way to put in the right lights and point them where you want them.

BTW Reality seems to ignore the setting for items like "do not show in render" So if you are in the habit of having an item of clothing you shut wink shut to make invisible in DAZ3d do not be surprised if it starts rendering in Reality. You probably need to delete everything you do not want to render.

SimonJM

There is a null material in Reality that you can use to have it not render (though it still takes across the geometry).

MW_HNL

I have spent a lot of time with 3Delight.  It is a very nice bit of software and if you speak nicely to it in low tones and learn about it can render quite well even on a computer that costs less than two years of mortgage payments.  Reality was of interest as perhaps a second render engine that my little computer that thinks it can (who cowers in the lofty company around here) might be able to live with.  Initial attempts were thwarted by ignorance and failure to come to grips with a few key concepts.  Recent progress with version 4.2 is very promising.  Here is a test moving on to a bit more real subject matter.  The new Vignette set and a G2F dressed for the 40s.  Also the resolution was cranked up to about 1280 x 1600.  Scene was loaded and all 3Delight shaders applied to it (both kinds are provided thank you!) And then the new mesh light with the parented and grouped DAZ spot light fiddled into place.

A few hundred things need to be fixed but the main question was what will appear between now and dinner time?  To my surprise Reality was a bit unimpressed by this new upgraded challenge.  I took some screen shots as I waited to see if the eye reflections cleared. (they did not completely I suspect I need to take care of excessive love of reflection masks on the eyes etc.) But I let it run to 300S and I am impressed.  Total time 30 minutes.  Now for overall speed of working I am really impressed.  MacMini was a bit proud of itself...

I would add that I would LOVE water cooled monster computer but I am afraid the MacMini might hear...

Short version, initial testing here seems to indicate Reality 4.2 is a real bit of software.  (Zero connection with anyone associated with Reality 4.2  BTW).

MW_HNL

As pointed out there is an exensive manual and unlike the Hexagon 2.5 manual the cited videos in it actually work and are very useful. I followed a suggestion and redid the Vignette using its lRay materials as that apprently gives Reality a better handle on how to substitute its own material types. Using a model based on Victoria 6 this time.  Speed went down from about 350 to about 305 Ks/s much less of a hit than I feared and indeed material rendering improved quite a bit. This time I set it to shut itself off at 600 S/p and on my limited computer it ran for a bit more than an hour. It is nice to be able to touch up the settings during the render and also to zoom in to see actual pixels.  Same lighting technique as above even though there are settings to get Reality to remake several DAZ light types into mesh lights (it is still recommended you use the Reality lights in the first place and the manual does point out that they will not show up in DAZ3d.  There is also a nice large histogram you can watch and if it fills up nicely in fairly sort order that seems to be a major sign you have gotten your lights in the ballpark.  Also even though you cannot move the lights you can reset their "wattage" and "efficiency".  In this case I cranked up my one main meshlight even more and it seemed to help a worthwhile amount. A bit strange is that the shadow casting behavior for the Reality lights is set back in DAZ3d and not in the render menu so you have to look for it a bit.