Daz3d Shadow Models

[kR1pt0n1t3]

So I added these preset lights on the picture below, added some clothes and left it to render overnight.
When I woke up this is what I ended up with... Is that because of the lights or something else... I'm puzzled as fuck...

 

[tooldev]

Those dark areas look more like a texture error. Her crotch should have the genetalia and since its both arms and also the hair i am pretty sure its a rendering problem. Are those assets special?

 

[kR1pt0n1t3]

I just changed skin color and rendered it again and now it looks fine...
I changed her skin to the one from the Brooklyn HD model but I guess something is fucked up.
Inside the daz3d studio everything looks fine but as soon as I render I get the picture above.

I guess I'll need to find another skin somewhere to make her skin lighter.

Also, why does her skin look even darker with the lights now? It's even darker than the first rendered picture I did.

 

[tooldev]

Skin reflects light. Various skins come with different textures, bump and normal maps. All those influence how light is going to be reflected and absorbed. You can manually tweak those settings within the limits of the provided maps. The darker look can be caused by a different specular light colour.

 

[kR1pt0n1t3]

Thanks

I guess I'll go watch the lights tutorial on youtube for like the 5th time.
I'm doing something wrong I guess :/

I have to master this before I can move on.

 

[tooldev]

As i said in the earlier post:

The tendency to play with many things at a time is very tempting but usually leads to more confusion than results.
Stick to a fixed scene and tweak a single setting, light etc at a time and render those to see what the result actually is.

There is something called 'linear workflow'. Too many things influence the end result so it all starts with the figure and the chosen assets, then the lights , materials, shaders and last but not least the actual render settings. Think of your render being an actual photo camera. With film. Shutter speed , film ISO etc add another layer.

Regarding your original problem - i did a quickshot with the outliner shader. Is this something you could work with?

 

[kR1pt0n1t3]

Since I won't be using any background scenes like the room you used, I'd like it if the male figure would be fully black and just add a bit of white/gray color on the outline. If this outline you have can be added to the fully black figure and you can change the color to whitish then I guess it would work.

 

[tooldev]

Ok - i think we have to clear up your choice of words here . I use a different quickshot to visualize why the 'outline' isnt working as you think it should:


I removed all other elements of the scene to make it as you described. When you say 'outline' you think 2d - but you are dealing with 3d for the male figure. By making the skin pitch black it looks 2d to your eyes but it is in fact 3d for the render. There is volume. Since shadows are dark too you just dont see them. If you want to make it purely in DAZ you have to deal with 3d. if you want just the 2d toon you could layer the image for your game and then combine them in postwork.

 

[kR1pt0n1t3]

What I'm looking for is a way to make the male figure fully visible on different backgrounds. My background for scenes will be a game world that happens to be in the background when the event triggers. Sometimes the background might be a green forest with bright colors and sometimes it might be a dark dungeon.

I'm looking for a way to make male figure visible no matter the colors in the background.

I'm afraid that if I leave the figure just black it might be not that visible on a darker background.

 

[tooldev]

But the male figure doesnt need real skin, correct? So just going for a plain colour like i did with full white should work - just not full white or black but a grey then.

 

[kR1pt0n1t3]

No skin. Just the shape needs to be visible so you can differentiate between an old man, fit young man or a middle-aged fat bastard and it stays visible no matter the background scene.

I personally prefer the black shape since I think it will be work best with what I have in mind.

Haven't gotten around tried to get that working today since I'm busy messing around with lights.
For some reason, I had also a problem with studio crashing when I tried rendering...
I had to restart PC to get it working again. Might be that my PC isn't quite up for this.
PC is about 5 years old with GTX 650 Ti BOOST. I might have to upgrade to something new

EDIT:
Just finished rendering two pictures as a test. The left one is with the headlamp on camera on and the right one is with the headlamp off. The difference is clearly visible but not exactly how I wanted it to be. Is there any way to get as close to lightness as on the picture in post 15 without using interactive rendering mode?

EDIT2:

Trying now with increased headlamp intensity. Hopefully, it will make a difference.

EDIT3:

As far as I understand it the clothing system is made for the clothes to adjust to the body sizes. Is there maybe a way to set it for some clothes pieces to work the opposite way? For example, on some preview pictures for a bra, you can clearly see the breasts are closer to each other and there's a nice cleavage. But, when you apply it to your own model, it adjusts the bra to current breasts and it doesn't look anything like it did in the preview picture. So, I was wondering do I really have to go and manually change the positions of the breasts or is there a much easier way to do it? I don't want to bother you much with the explanation for this so just a yes/no answer will suffice.

 

[tooldev]

Try to not use the headlamp at all - its basically just a helper when you have no active light at all.

You should have some basic lights in your DAZ. A simple light plane or disc that emits light actively is what you want. Because you can freely move that around without changing the camera at all and you can change all kinds of aspects (warmth of the light , power of emission etc)

 

[kR1pt0n1t3]

For the better part of the day I've been messing with the lights and reading up on different settings and light position.
What do you think? Does the lighting look natural? What would you improve? I know her hands and her bra need a bit of adjustment but I'm more interested what would you change for the lighting. I think I should increase the intensity a bit more but I'm not really sure.

Also, how can I save the light settings and position so I can reuse it again inside another file without the need to set everything up from scratch?

On a side note, I decided to go along with your transparent male figure with the black outline. So, how did you do it?

So many questions but so little time.

 

[tooldev]

Alright - the easy stuff first. I am going to post the shader package with that outline shader. You simply apply that one to the male figure then and that's it.

You must be registered to see the links

To save specific settings you go up in your menu and select 'File' and 'save as' and chose the type of preset you want to save. Looks like this:


The lightning doesnt look bad actually. You said it is meant to be for a clothing system, right? Maybe a light right behind her back would sharpen her a bit more.

P.S. I zipped down all 3 packages of the WTP shaders into one archive -

You must be registered to see the links

to it.

You must be registered to see the links

is the WIKI for those btw

 

[kR1pt0n1t3]

Is there any way to make the position of left hand be the mirror of the right hand and vice versa?

 

[tooldev]

Is there any way to make the position of left hand be the mirror of the right hand and vice versa?

Its been a while i tried to use that but there should be a symmetry option in 'Parameters'

Pictures are always helpful

What you do is use your 'posing tool' and select the bone you want to move. Depending on where your 'Parameters' tab is you will see that little extra drop down menu. Select that while in Parameters and you will see an option 'Symmetry'

 

[kR1pt0n1t3]

Never would've found that on my own Thanks

I got one more question. Is it possible to somehow render hairstyles, body, and clothes separately so that later you can combine them like layers inside gimp or photoshop to get the full picture you want? Right now even when I hide the body and render clothes it's useless since it renders the clothes in 3d and keeps the back side which shouldn't be seen from the front. Is it possible to render clothes but that the program keeps in mind what parts should be seen?

I'd like to cut down render times and file sizes and this would make it much faster. I'll probably have like 100 pictures just for the clothing system. It's just a waste to render body 100 times when you don't need to.

EDIT:

My idea would be to insert a complete white figure and then after render delete the whole body. Maybe there's an easier and I'm not sure that rendering white body would save me time.

 

[tooldev]

I am not an expert in rendering in layers so take this with a grain of salt:

You can create sub-sets of a scene and to do afterwork you would need to create masks for each layer you render. From my personal experience you are not going to cut down a lot of render time as we are talking 3d and light. The light is still reflected/refractured by things you dont see thus they get calculated. I see this as a general thing you have to set your mindset on: DAZ is 3d! Just because you make it flat in your brain DAZ still does everything in 3 dimensions.

You can of course just render the body image once if it stays the same all the time and then switch the body off for all the others in the node-list.

Workflow would be roughly:

- full body render without any clothes or hair nor a background
- save as tif because any graphic programme will have the ability to read the background as transparent then
- keep the figure in the scene but switch it off in the node list to be not rendered anymore
- apply clothes and/or hair (one at a time for each render of course)
- save each render as before and combine them as layers in your graphic programme later on
- by having them as single layers you can edit and modify just the part you want to change without influencing the rest

 

[tooldev]

P.S: You mentioned videos and tutorials earlier -

You must be registered to see the links

is a good one for your symmetry question

 

[SpikeGames]

Never would've found that on my own Thanks

I got one more question. Is it possible to somehow render hairstyles, body, and clothes separately so that later you can combine them like layers inside gimp or photoshop to get the full picture you want? Right now even when I hide the body and render clothes it's useless since it renders the clothes in 3d and keeps the back side which shouldn't be seen from the front. Is it possible to render clothes but that the program keeps in mind what parts should be seen?

I'd like to cut down render times and file sizes and this would make it much faster. I'll probably have like 100 pictures just for the clothing system. It's just a waste to render body 100 times when you don't need to.

EDIT:

My idea would be to insert a complete white figure and then after render delete the whole body. Maybe there's an easier and I'm not sure that rendering white body would save me time.

There is no easy way I think, try cutoff on main figure and render, try 'hide' cloth parts and render but then you will have a bunch of problems with lights...
You will spend much more time with this ^
Also you can try Optimizer, resize cloth resolution which will speed up render in 10 times.