Generalized Lighting for Daz Studio

[Deleted member 5707363]

Hi all. So I'm seeing games that use Daz, such as "Awakening", and most have them have a general, ambient light. Nothing fancy or artistic. No three point portrait light or anything like that. Just making renders bright enough. I'm trying to replicate that. I don't want to take away from anything I'm doing per se, but I want just a straight up, make everything brighter kind of light so my renders aren't too dark. I've bought some lighting kits and they don't work. What do you guys use to just make things bright enough? I don't want any reflections, nothing that says, "Hey guys I'm a light". Just everything brighter.

For example, I have a render/scene I'm working on where a dude's wife walks into the bathroom and sees her husband doing another woman. They're in the shower, and you can see his wife's reflection, her face and full body on the glass. Her butt and a pose where her arms are folded and her wedding ring is conspicuous is in the foreground. I want to make everything brighter while preserving the reflection on the glass and not adding any additional reflections from the side, etc. If that makes sense...

What do you guys do to accomplish such a thing?

 

[Deleted member 5954819]

Hi all. So I'm seeing games that use Daz, such as "Awakening", and most have them have a general, ambient light. Nothing fancy or artistic. No three point portrait light or anything like that. Just making renders bright enough. I'm trying to replicate that. I don't want to take away from anything I'm doing per se, but I want just a straight up, make everything brighter kind of light so my renders aren't too dark. I've bought some lighting kits and they don't work. What do you guys use to just make things bright enough? I don't want any reflections, nothing that says, "Hey guys I'm a light". Just everything brighter.

For example, I have a render/scene I'm working on where a dude's wife walks into the bathroom and sees her husband doing another woman. They're in the shower, and you can see his wife's reflection, her face and full body on the glass. Her butt and a pose where her arms are folded and her wedding ring is conspicuous is in the foreground. I want to make everything brighter while preserving the reflection on the glass and not adding any additional reflections from the side, etc. If that makes sense...

What do you guys do to accomplish such a thing?

I personally do not choose such a path; it seems lazy to me.

But if you want to try it, you can use "ghost lights". You can use them to light up the environment and the characters themselves, and in most cases, it works correctly.

Tutorial:

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PS: To get it right, you don't have to use the light only in the style shown in the video. You can direct the "planes" inside through the windows; for example, you can do one in the middle of the ceiling, however you want, and there are many other ways.

 

[woody554]

in render settings, under 'tone mapping' tab, adjust 'exposure value' lower to make image brighter.

for more even lighting add large non-point lights (like big 1m spotlights set on 'sphere' geometry) everywhere, which will illuminate your shadowy areas in a dull, boring, soft light.

daz recently changed how lights work so a lot of old lights don't work anymore. also 'ghostlights' are kinda gone now too. (they do work, sort of, but you need to crank them up so high you'll run out of decimal places in the setting. just use real lights with 'render emitter' set to 'off'. not ideal, but it's at least much faster.)

for hiding relflections your camera can't be inside the light cone of a light, so you can adjust the 'spread angle' narrower or turn the light so that it can't directly hit the camera. you'll still see all its secondary light (ie. the things they're lighting) but towards camera the light itself is black outside the cone. doesn't work for everything, but at least most things.

if nothing else works: spot light without any 'light geometry' (ie. sphere, rectangle etc) on doesn't reflect as it has zero area. it's a point. of course their shadows are shit but it's an option.