DAZ lighting tips?

[Yorma86]

I got corrupted by lewd games this year after first discovering Pale Carnations and then I fell through a rabbit hole of discovering new galaxies' worth of adult visual novels. So much so, that I came up with some stories I'd want to explore myself. DAZ Studio seemed like the best way to get enough material out for the stories I was going for since I could set up a bunch of scenes and then render them while I'm working on something else, buuut... as it would turn out, lighting a scene well is hard. I know we've all seen lifeless and flat renders in games. Sometimes it doesn't bother us too much, but a game with good renders is just on another level.

Particularly when working with indoor scenes with windows. How does one achieve a daylight/night look without everything looking too white/dark and flat? For reference, here's some images I had in my first VN project that I ended up scrapping. How can I improve the renders (like what literal steps can I take)?

 

[CocoVC]

This is the wrong subforum, but I'll ask these questions:
1. What's your light settings? Sun/Sky Mode ? Dome and Scene? Scene Only?
2. What are you trying to achieve? A night-time/evening render?

One thing I can recommend off the bat is adding field of view. Turn the Depth of Field setting on in your Camera Settings. Adjust Focal Distance so only the couple is in focus. (try not to adjust F/Stop that much).

 

[Domiek]

There's an incredible amount of 3D lighting information available online, it doesn't need to be DAZ specific. Although each software/render engine has some unique quirks, the knowledge behind 3D lighting is the same. Just search

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or CG Lighting and you'll find a lot of tutorials.

 

[Deleted member 3563771]

DAZ is a program for creating characters. It can't do anything else. Even with top-end hardware, you will get graphics quality for hours of rendering, which was in ordinary 3D games 10-15 years ago. But those games generate dozens of frames per second, and not one per hour at best like DAZ.
The only way out is to export characters into other programs and render there. Iray is a primitive render. Even small attempts to improve the picture lead to a manifold increase in render times. Therefore, in games such a bad picture - shadows and lighting.

 

[anne O'nymous]

DAZ is a program for creating characters. It can't do anything else. Even with top-end hardware, you will get graphics quality for hours of rendering, which was in ordinary 3D games 10-15 years ago.

Sorry, but it's you that live 10-15 years ago.
Daz don't have the best 3D rendering engines, but even the average renders you can find here have a better quality than what you say, and need less time to achieve that.

With a good, yet not top-end, hardware, you can achieve really good renders, including good shadows and reflections, and have a rendering time expressed in minutes only :

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Credits Nottravis

 

[Carpe Stultus]

DAZ is a program for creating characters. It can't do anything else. Even with top-end hardware, you will get graphics quality for hours of rendering, which was in ordinary 3D games 10-15 years ago. But those games generate dozens of frames per second, and not one per hour at best like DAZ.
The only way out is to export characters into other programs and render there. Iray is a primitive render. Even small attempts to improve the picture lead to a manifold increase in render times. Therefore, in games such a bad picture - shadows and lighting.

That shows that you have absolutely no clue what someone, who knows how to use DAZ, can do with it.

 

[Deleted member 3563771]

No one argues that he does not even argue that even in DAZ it is possible with great efforts and painstaking work to make a beautiful picture for many days.
But in games we see something completely different, because hundreds and thousands of pictures are needed.

 

[Carpe Stultus]

It doesn't take many days. Where do you get your infos from?

 

[recreation]

No one argues that he does not even argue that even in DAZ it is possible with great efforts and painstaking work to make a beautiful picture for many days.
But in games we see something completely different, because hundreds and thousands of pictures are needed.

You know, sometimes it's better to not express your opinion about something, especially not when it's absolutely obvious that you have no idea what you're talking about.

 

[Yorma86]

I just feel confused as I read through the replies. I guess I'll hit Youtube and hope a lighting tutorial will finally click for me. I've watched plenty of them, but trying to apply the techniques in DAZ don't seem to always give the effect I'm hoping for. Plus sometimes just adding a clothing/material to a scene will blow out the exposure values for no good reason.

Anyways, it seems like a lot can be done in Photoshop after rendering, but every extra step in production starts to add up when trying to piece together a VN as a solo developer for now. At least the renders are starting to look a bit better with some Photoshop effects added? Or no?

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[khumak]

My experience with lighting indoor scenes in DAZ is that if you want the scene to look realistic you want most of your light to come from directional lighting or point light sources so you get realistic shadows, but DAZ doesn't do a very good job about simulating the sort of ambient light you would expect from dispersion and reflections from those sources. So frequently you will still need to fudge a little by also using a low intensity, massive area light source to simulate the ambient light that you would normally expect from light just bouncing around off of walls and stuff. The easiest way to do this is to just reduce the intensity of the headlight for whatever camera you're using and leave it on along with whatever directional light sources you have, but there are other methods as well if you want something more consistent and not dependent on camera placement.

Otherwise you'll have things like a room with relatively bright light coming in through a window while still having corners of the room that are pitch black. Also keep in mind that the more light sources you use, the longer the render will take so depending on your hardware you may have to make some compromises there for the sake of render time.

 

[recreation]

I just feel confused as I read through the replies. I guess I'll hit Youtube and hope a lighting tutorial will finally click for me. I've watched plenty of them, but trying to apply the techniques in DAZ don't seem to always give the effect I'm hoping for. Plus sometimes just adding a clothing/material to a scene will blow out the exposure values for no good reason.

Anyways, it seems like a lot can be done in Photoshop after rendering, but every extra step in production starts to add up when trying to piece together a VN as a solo developer for now. At least the renders are starting to look a bit better with some Photoshop effects added? Or no?

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Most of the post processing is unnecessary if you use Daz's render settings propperly, this might help you in that regard: Daz: General Render Settings Guide

 

[Yorma86]

Most of the post processing is unnecessary if you use Daz's render settings propperly, this might help you in that regard: Daz: General Render Settings Guide

Ah, that's some pretty good stuff right there. Thanks for the link, and for writing it in the first place!