[Daz3d] Could someone create a lighting sandbox scene for others to play with?

[79flavors]

One problem lots of people seem to have with rendering in Daz3d is lighting.
There are lots of tutorials and such out there, but it struck me it's a bit difficult without a common starting point.
Not everyone has the same level of knowledge or such, but to learn and experiment with lighting seems to me to be easier if all you have to worry about is the lighting.

I wish I had the skill/knowledge to do this myself, but I don't... so I thought I'd throw it out here as an idea...

Is it practical for someone to create a scene, maybe in a room or outdoors with multiple props, actors and such and REMOVE all lights and any HDRI - then bundle/zip it up so that other F95zone users could download and experiment with it?

I figure it would need to render in under 3GB of VRAM to at least allow the majority of hobbyist developers a chance of it working with their graphics card.
I would also suggest that it would need to be made up from 100% assets already available here on F95zone (extra points for links to each of those asset threads).

Then anyone could download the assets, download the scene and have a go at lighting it themselves and perhaps post their successes and failures.
With a common starting point, it might be easier to diagnose what problems people are having either with the lighting itself or the Daz configuration/options?

Despite my complete inexperience with Daz, I did enjoy playing around with the "How to create a realistic portrait" tutorial and it is my inspiration for this suggestion.

Of course... maybe it's not as easy as I hope to bundle up the scene.
Is it possible? Any volunteers to put something together?

 

[Saki_Sliz]

This is a stellar idea!

There are a few set up for blender, but I haven't played with daz that long either so I don't know of any of these that may exist already, nor how to set one up. The best I can do is critique and give suggestions that are relative to blender operations.

 

[Deleted member 1121028]

I think it's tricky because of how path tracing works, it makes all scenes more or less unique in term of ligthning. In general you adapt your lighning to the scene and not the contrary. I mean that perfect three point lightning you used to make that beautiful portrait, won't really help you to light that night scene with a model on sofa in a tricky corner with two close wall and a mirror if you know what I mean.

I think a different approach would be to make a kinda detailed guide of every spources of lights available (Hdri, emissive plane/probe/surface, point/spot/linear/distant lights etc...) as a set of available tools like a swiss knife. But all in all, I think nothing beat practice, trying different things, making errors and learning from that.

 

[79flavors]

Aye. To be honest, not being anything but a massive Daz pre-novice - I'm completely unaware of the practicalities.

Essentially what I was thinking was something who had a lot more knowledge and talent than myself, creating a scene with camera position already set, lighting it, creating a render then then removing any and all light sources. Then sharing the source file(s) without lights and an example of a finished render here on the forums.

Then anyone (like myself), could come along - download the scene, download the included assets and the only thing I would need to do is play around with the lighting and render settings. Knowing what it could look like giving me a clear sign of if I'm at least on the right track.

I know no two renders would every look quite the same. That's fine. I'm just trying to think of a way of removing as many of the other pieces of the puzzle - to keep things as simple as possible for anyone trying to figure out lighting. A clear starting point. A mostly clear end point. With only the devs willingness to experiment with lighting separating the two.

As I say, I was inspired by the portrait tutorial... except all that did (like so many other tutorials) was teach you how to create that specific portrait. It didn't really encourage experimentation and learning... which is what I hoped removing all the lighting before uploading would force upon the would-be Daz artist.

Then a thread, if it ever came to be, would become a progression of people's experiences, problems and solutions along with pictures of their renders of the same scene. A sort of "this is what it would looks like with {x} type of lighting" or "this version used 17 light sources and took 92 hours to render"... that sort of to-and-fro.

Let's be honest though... it's mostly wishful thinking on my part.

 

[Deleted member 1121028]

Oh I considering myself as a massive noob, just messing with Daz as a hobby. (And if you look at what a "real" professional do with Daz, thoses guys are just on another planet).

If I get you right, I think a good tutorial should be making a scene with lot of traps with a 'fixed' camera (badly placed mirror or window, a tricky place, a particular skin, a defined tone map setting, a rainy scene...) in a way it force people to find solutions rather than just 'light' the scene, like some puzzle game. But you can't if people don't really know what tools they can use.

 

[79flavors]

Fair point.

I wasn't specifically thinking of trapping people as such. No "gotcha!" moments.

Just the usual pitfalls like using too small a spotlight which results in too sharp of shadows.
Somethings where there's strictly no wrong answers - just a common starting point learn together. Something that would still offer the same learning curve a week after it was posted... or 2 years.

I dunno. Maybe I'm overthinking it, based on the way I tend to learn things. Daz always felt "too much, too quickly", whereas I prefer "learn one thing at a time and then move on".