3D Software Help and Assistance. Ask Away.

[MissFortune]

I am new to daz so can anybody link me the best or necessary plugins I need to start off with making a VN? I am planning a contemporary setting.

Mesh Grabber, Scene Optimizer (for scenes that are too big for your GPU), Basically anything by Riversoft Art will be useful (especially the Bone Minion stuff, converters, and I believe he also made the mirror geometry which is pretty useful in specific cases. Sickleyield for the super niche assets/poses/effects/etc. and more of a need than a 'best' is either SY Invisilights Iray or Ghost Light Kit One by KindredArts.

 

[Yuuki4]

Maybe try a 30x30 circle/rectangle spotlight at about 4000-6000 lumen (you'll have to play with the distance on your own, though.) pointed at her eyes?

The thing is, given the base angle/trajectory of the sunlight/light source, it's actually falling pretty naturally. This would be pretty close to how it'd look if this were happening in real life.

Thanks, that was a great tip!

I mainly use semi-large ghostlights for lighting because I like how they work, nice shadows in the scene etc. I usually don't use spot-lights because I keep getting shadows of the emitters shown in my scene when I swap angle, which is super-annoying. I keep forgetting that spotlights do have some nifty features that ghostlights don't.

I ended up using pretty much what you recommended, slightly different settings but with one key-difference that I can't replicate with ghostlights: I lowered the fuck out of the spread angle so I almost only get the light exactly where I needed it on her face!

 

[Yuuki4]

It's quite the jungle lol. I may be not the best person to ask as I may be out of date. Skins that are made by "Daz orignals" (=outsourced by Daz to be sold in their shop in their name), have overall better quality control (not always the case, but more than not). A good shortlist of artists will be more handy than any promo shot imho.

For good details, it depends on witch foot you gonna dance. IrayUber will need fully baked bump/normal, PBRSkin use more likely 1k seamless tiles. Both works well. I may be wrong but since PBRSkin (8.1/9) are a bit less difficult to make, overall quality should be slightly higher.

For IrayUber:
Daz orignal/Victoria8
Daz orignal/Babina8
BlueJaunte/Ensley

For PBRSkin:
Daz orignal/Victoria8.1
Daz orignal/Victoria9 (?)

I think those are good balanced skins base/maps/shader setup regardless of the scult. Ensley might be close to what you can top with IrayUber overall. For Eyes/Mouth I generally go with Victoria8.1 PBRSkin setup whatever the skin uses. If I was maknig a VN prototype, more likely I will make "frankenstein" skin (swapping diffuse/SSS/Normal maps) and iterate from those bases.

Thank you! I played around with Babina and Ensley yesterday, and frankensteined them with the old character. Just stealing the bump-maps (and tuning them) does wonders to making it look more realistic!

 

[osanaiko]

I usually don't use spot-lights because I keep getting shadows of the emitters shown in my scene when I swap angle, which is super-annoying.

I'm pretty sure there's a switch to make pure light sources (not ghost lights) invisible that I *thought* was on by default.

 

[Yuuki4]

I'm pretty sure there's a switch to make pure light sources (not ghost lights) invisible that I *thought* was on by default.

Maybe, I just haven't found it. I recreated it quickly, so I exaggerated everything but basically I have a scene with lighting the way I want, and then swap angle. With spotlights I get random shadows that shouldn't be there.

This is what the example-scene looks like with no spotlight:



When I add the spotlight, and "tune" thatthe way I want it for "perfect" lighting, it look like this:


Now however, I've gotten a random shadow from the emitter when it blocks out the environment lighting. Which is not what I want. The only option I've found for removing the emitter from the render makes it invisible, but not transparent, so the environment lighting still interacts with it. It looks like this:


Notice how the emitter is hidden, but its shadow is still there.

Like I said, I've exaggerated how to reproduce it but I've had scenes where a tiny shadow from the spotlight emitter randomly shows up when I swap angles. It's super annoying. So if anyone know how to stop that from happening I'd be kinda happy, because then I can graduate from using a combo of Emissive planes and null-points lol.

 

[osanaiko]

Yuuki4

Ah, i see what you mean. (nice clear example btw)

I did a bit of research (fancy googling sir). Yes, the Render Emitter switch is the one I was thinking of. And it turns out that while turning it off prevents rendering the direct view of the emitter, it does not remove the geometry, so it can still interfere with other raycasts (and is visible in reflections !?).

I understand the example you showed us is exaggerated, but that is damn big spotlight. Obviously you could go with a smaller, or further away with a tighter beam angle, with higher intensity and that could emulate the lighting effect you showed, and the shadow from environment or other lights would be less noticeable/out of frame.

Apart from that, the only suggested "solution" I found was the one you are already using: emissive surfaces with low cutout opacity.

I guess that if spot or point lights are what you need to use in some situations then the only thing for it is to treat the set as a "real world movie shoot", and move lights around for different shots. Note that you can setup lots of lights in the scene file and hide them completely for some shots by using the "eye" icon in the scene objects list, then they don't affect anything.

 

[MidnightArrow]

Iray is meant for archviz and product renders, where the intent is to be as photorealistic as possible. So presumably making light reflections invisible for the cinematic style violates the "Iray philosophy" or whatever.

It may be possible to exclude a light from rendering with the shader mixer, but Daz haven't bothered to give us coherent documentation or to make scrolling around its viewport anything less than a fucking headache.

In other words, just like the rest of Daz Studio.

Daz3d make their business selling human figures, yet they licensed an archviz engine that doesn't have real subsurface scattering, which forces PAs to pick one of three different translucency options the Uber shader offers and make their skin textures absurdly bright (but in completely different ways) just so they look somewhat decent (and usually fail because of a lack of skill and/or QA).

What I'm saying is, a lot of really poor business decisions went into this.

If you want to keep using this terrible, terrible program, best to keep its failures in mind.

 

[Yuuki4]

Yuuki4

Ah, i see what you mean. (nice clear example btw)

I did a bit of research (fancy googling sir). Yes, the Render Emitter switch is the one I was thinking of. And it turns out that while turning it off prevents rendering the direct view of the emitter, it does not remove the geometry, so it can still interfere with other raycasts (and is visible in reflections !?).

I understand the example you showed us is exaggerated, but that is damn big spotlight. Obviously you could go with a smaller, or further away with a tighter beam angle, with higher intensity and that could emulate the lighting effect you showed, and the shadow from environment or other lights would be less noticeable/out of frame.

Apart from that, the only suggested "solution" I found was the one you are already using: emissive surfaces with low cutout opacity.

I guess that if spot or point lights are what you need to use in some situations then the only thing for it is to treat the set as a "real world movie shoot", and move lights around for different shots. Note that you can setup lots of lights in the scene file and hide them completely for some shots by using the "eye" icon in the scene objects list, then they don't affect anything.

Sadge, would've liked to not have that issue anymore

Like I said it doesn't happen often but it's happened enough that I just go with ghostlights instead (meaning emissive surfaces with 0.0000001 transparancy lol). I just use a null-point, place that where I want the lighting and then just point my emissive towards that. Usually I get the lighting the way I want it, it's not often that I actually need to use the spotlight features (like spread angle).

 

[Yuuki4]

-- Snip --

What I'm saying is, a lot of really poor business decisions went into this.

If you want to keep using this terrible, terrible program, best to keep its failures in mind.

Yea, ngl I'd not bother with DAZ if it wasn't for how readily available a lot of assets are. Most of DAZ is easy to get started with, and sometimes it's just wonky AF (read: I've no fucking clue what I'm doing ). Getting a picture is semi-easy, getting a good picture is sometimes really annoyingly hard.

It's really just a fun program to play around with.

 

[MidnightArrow]

It's really just a fun program to play around with.

Clearly you haven't spent upwards of five minutes panning the slow-ass viewport around Urban Sprawl 3 trying to place assets*.

* Instanced assets, so dragging them from the Content Library doesn't work.

 

[immortalkid69]

I am using a hdri environment but after placing my own lights, they do not seem to have much effect on my model.

So I tried turning down the environment intensity but then only the characters gets lighted up and not the environment,

So does anybody have a solution where I can light up both the model and environment as well using my own lights?

 

[osanaiko]

I am using a hdri environment but after placing my own lights, they do not seem to have much effect on my model.

So I tried turning down the environment intensity but then only the characters gets lighted up and not the environment,

So does anybody have a solution where I can light up both the model and environment as well using my own lights?

So it looks like you have just a figure and a HDRI background as the "environment lighting map" and a few spotlights.

Despite what it might have been named in the asset browser, there is a clear distinction between a prop environment with geometry and a HDRI background image. I would normally call an "environment" with geometry a "set" like a movie set.

A HDRI like you are using is just a high res image that is projected inward to the centre of the scene if it was emitting from the inside of a sphere around the scene centre. Some of the projected light will come direct to the camera, some will bounce off any geometry in the scene and a part of those bounces will come to the camera too. If you move the camera away from the centre of the scene the HDRI will begin to look weirdly distorted.

Because there are no other props in the scene, the figure is "floating in space". It looks like it is located near the centre of the scene, which is probably how you managed to get it looking fairly natural with respct to the HDRI image sphere. (Note that this HDRI sphere I am mentioning is not an actual 3d geometry sphere like a skybox as was used in early 3d games. The HDRI lighting is implemented as virtual light source in the iray engine) (As an aside, some older Poser-era 3Delight environments used the oldschool skybox geometry, but those work poorly in Iray)

When you turn down the environment intensity, all of that HDRI light, including the light rays from below that *look* like ground, is reduced, hence the darkness in the background and below the figure

You say you want some highlight spotlights on the model AND still have the environment showing. You should be able to do that if you leave the environment intensity at default and just dial up the spotlight intensity. But it will not look realistic, because that spotlight will not interact with what appears to be the "ground" of the HDRI - there is no geometry surface for the spotlight to bounce off and return to the camera.

If you placed some props (a floor, some debris etc) under the figure, and just used the HDRI for the distant background, then you could maybe get the effect it seems you are looking for.

 

[immortalkid69]

So it looks like you have just a figure and a HDRI background as the "environment lighting map" and a few spotlights.

Despite what it might have been named in the asset browser, there is a clear distinction between a prop environment with geometry and a HDRI background image. I would normally call an "environment" with geometry a "set" like a movie set.

A HDRI like you are using is just a high res image that is projected inward to the centre of the scene if it was emitting from the inside of a sphere around the scene centre. Some of the projected light will come direct to the camera, some will bounce off any geometry in the scene and a part of those bounces will come to the camera too. If you move the camera away from the centre of the scene the HDRI will begin to look weirdly distorted.

Because there are no other props in the scene, the figure is "floating in space". It looks like it is located near the centre of the scene, which is probably how you managed to get it looking fairly natural with respct to the HDRI image sphere. (Note that this HDRI sphere I am mentioning is not an actual 3d geometry sphere like a skybox as was used in early 3d games. The HDRI lighting is implemented as virtual light source in the iray engine) (As an aside, some older Poser-era 3Delight environments used the oldschool skybox geometry, but those work poorly in Iray)

When you turn down the environment intensity, all of that HDRI light, including the light rays from below that *look* like ground, is reduced, hence the darkness in the background and below the figure

You say you want some highlight spotlights on the model AND still have the environment showing. You should be able to do that if you leave the environment intensity at default and just dial up the spotlight intensity. But it will not look realistic, because that spotlight will not interact with what appears to be the "ground" of the HDRI - there is no geometry surface for the spotlight to bounce off and return to the camera.

If you placed some props (a floor, some debris etc) under the figure, and just used the HDRI for the distant background, then you could maybe get the effect it seems you are looking for.

" If you placed some props (a floor, some debris etc) under the figure, and just used the HDRI for the distant background, then you could maybe get the effect it seems you are looking for. "

- How do I make it a distant background? Does reducing the intensity work?

 

[MidnightArrow]

" If you placed some props (a floor, some debris etc) under the figure, and just used the HDRI for the distant background, then you could maybe get the effect it seems you are looking for. "

- How do I make it a distant background? Does reducing the intensity work?

No, you do as they said and use meshes for the floor. The HDRI becomes a kind of skybox. It's not an option you toggle, it's just the approach you take in using it.

Based on your pictures the point light is working fine. If you need to make it brighter turn up the lumens. It's not going to affect the HDRI since as osanaiko said it's just a big image drawn behind everything else. There's no geometry for the light to interact with.

 

[osanaiko]

" If you placed some props (a floor, some debris etc) under the figure, and just used the HDRI for the distant background, then you could maybe get the effect it seems you are looking for. "

- How do I make it a distant background? Does reducing the intensity work?

The HDRI "environment map" already *is* a distant background - that's how they work.

 

[10xRecoil]

Alright fellas Bro needs help again.

Lust & Passion, the developer, has begun implementing custom animations, and I must say, I am intrigued. . They don't look like 60fps but are solid work from the dev. I wonder what software L&P uses. Any ideas?

Long story short, I want to learn, and any nudge in the right direction is appreciated.

 

[MidnightArrow]

Alright fellas Bro needs help again.

Lust & Passion, the developer, has begun implementing custom animations, and I must say, I am intrigued. . They don't look like 60fps but are solid work from the dev. I wonder what software L&P uses. Any ideas?

Long story short, I want to learn, and any nudge in the right direction is appreciated.

Probably Blender:

https://f95zone.to/threads/blender-daz-studio-pro.104502/

I just worked with the timeline in Daz Studio for the first time in like two years, and it is fucking unusable. Don't waste your time trying to animate with it. Just learn Blender.

 

[PusaM]

Hello Friends.
Short question:
Anybody knows where to get a Lich Crown for G8Male/Female, not a mask, a Crown of an undead magic thing.

 

[Yuuki4]

Hi!

So I've got a question about translucency. I have two pictures layered in the translucency picture: a tattoo and a slight-change on the nipples. both of these are PNGs, and are just transparent everywhere other than where I actually need them to do stuff. If I don't have those layers added on the translucency the color of the tattoo and the nipples are all wrong.


Now, I thought that was all fine and dandy until I realized it isn't. I thought the layered images did shit ONLY where I needed it, however it doesn't.

It apparently smears the skin so it is a slightly different hue all over the place, and it's actually causing the lines between the torso and everything else to be visible. I can exaggerate the effect by just cranking up the translucency weight. It looks like this:



Now I CAN fix it by just brute-forcing it and adding the exact same two PNG-pictures layered in the translucency picture. I've done that for the arm but not the face here:




Clearly the arm and torso now have the exact same hue, and the un-altered face still has the issue (since I have done fuck all with that). The issue here is that I'm clearly changing the entire hue of the skin, which I don't want to.

Is there any way of making the added translucency layers ONLY work where they are supposed to?


EDIT:
NVM, I figured it out! If I just add the base-color PNG as a bottom layer with the other two PNGs in Translucency Color then it works exactly as I expect it, where it ignores the alteration everywhere EXCEPT where I actually want them!

I'll leave the post up in case it helps someone (or if anyone has any cool insights on other fixes / why this happens in the first place)

 

[osanaiko]

Hi!

So I've got a question about translucency. I have two pictures layered in the translucency picture: a tattoo and a slight-change on the nipples. both of these are PNGs, and are just transparent everywhere other than where I actually need them to do stuff. If I don't have those layers added on the translucency the color of the tattoo and the nipples are all wrong.

Clearly the arm and torso now have the exact same hue, and the un-altered face still has the issue (since I have done fuck all with that). The issue here is that I'm clearly changing the entire hue of the skin, which I don't want to.

Is there any way of making the added translucency layers ONLY work where they are supposed to?

I could be completely wrong here as I am not a shader expert but this is my guess:

I think the problem comes from how the "transluncency" channel works with the Iray skin shader. It is not a layer on top of the other image maps that make up the shader, it is a complex multiplier that changes how much light and what colors of light are reflected from some depth below the top surface of the skin. So it does not surprise me that you are getting weird effects.

If I understand correctly you want to add a tattoo and some nipple coloration? Then the way I would try that would be to make a copy of the base skin "diffuse" texture map and edit that directly to layer your images on top. (Similar can be done using L.I.E. but that's just a complicated way to combine images to do basically the same edits except within Daz).