Daz Looking for general tips to control indoor lighting.

[8InchFloppyDick]

Hi All,

Not sure if this goes into Artwork... but that forum seems to be 99% fanart, so I'm posting in Dev Help.

I've discovered that often times the frame sequences in my scenes suffer from what might be called 'diminishing light dynamics'. The establishing frame starts strong with good visual dynamics in the lighting... then as I zoom-in to a certain place/aspect of the scene, by the very nature of zooming-in the lighting fynamics are lost and I'm left with very flat frames.

Here's an example:

01. Establishing shot. Nice contrast between lightfall from second floor windows and shadows on the ground floor.



02. continuing shots 2 and 3 which still have some lighting dynamic.





03. Finally we're ready to have a conversation, but due to the tighter framing all the lighting dynamics are lost and we're left with aflatly-lit mush.



I understand I can start tossing-in any number of lights and emissive planes... but maybe there's a rule-of-thumb of how to do that or a lighting workflow I'm ignorant of.

If some kind soul could maybe share some tips about how to mitigate or alleviate this sort of 'diminishing light dynamics' issue, I'd be very grateful.

Many thanks.

PS. I'm using a single 'Sunny day' HDRI for my light source. The 'Modern Atrium' asset adds some downward spots etc. but their effect on the scene is negligible.

 

[mickydoo]

You are making a few fundamental mistakes. Firstly, yes you need lighting in the scene, but it should be a secondary consideration. Your first priority is put some form of lighting on the characters, you then make that light follow them around, daz skin relies on correct lighting.

Also until you can get it to work with one character don't try it with two or three, the more characters you have the harder it is.

The downlights in the asset is to make it look good for the render shot, they are borderline useless for character renders, that's why you never see these things with characters in the promo shots. My advice is to kill them and use your own form of ghost lights where you want them to be.

This is something I was mucking about with last night.

At the moment there is one single light source on them, I am yet to add any ghost lights or in fact any other form of lighting as I am concentrating on getting those two to look right first. As you can see the blonde looks a bit bright as its harder to get the light to fall on two characters correctly.

 

[8InchFloppyDick]

mickydoo - thanks for the 2x4 to the head for being a lazy git and not lighting my characters.

Added a single spotlight, turned on the firefly filter and fixed her bunched up top too. Much better.

 

[MissFortune]

Just to add to mickydoo, lighting/shadows change as you change the angle/view of your camera(s) (just like in the real world), so sometimes you may need to adjust your lighting as your angle demands. Go walk around a/your car during the day and look at it from different angles. You'll get different effects when you look at it in different ways, same goes for looking at throughout the day. The strength of shadows will change, as will the light (or strength thereof) hitting it.

I used this image example for someone else yesterday, but it applies here as well (ignore the noise as I'm just in the viewport.):



Given the angle they're at in you're renders, you could easily get away with some faux reflective lighting off of what seems to be a fairly reflective ground. Thus, pointing a dull spotlight both of them to give them some of that same orange-yellow glow the sun has. Not a ton, just enough to brighten them up a smidge. Play around with spotlights and/or ghost/point lights. Echoing mickydoo again, those types of lights aren't good for people/figures. I prefer using spotlights/point lights myself as there's a bit more control, but ghost lights can certainly be great to have at times, especially if you're trying to be quick.

 

[8InchFloppyDick]

MissFortune - thanks (again)

I added another (very) small spotlight to seperate her left arm from the background a little.



Thank you both for your help - much appreciated!

 

[mickydoo]

MissFortune - thanks (again)

I added another (very) small spotlight to seperate her left arm from the background a little.

View attachment 1345426

Thank you both for your help - much appreciated!

If you look at mine and MissFortune 's pics they have one thing in common that yours is lacking. See how ours sort of pop out of the background and yours blend in. Up the light intensity on the characters and lower any in the background. You want the spotlight to light them up, not the wall (well it will a little anyway). And when I say up, up it a stupid amount, just add 0's until its too bright, then work backwards from there.

 

[8InchFloppyDick]

hmmm... gave the spotlight dials a whirl... halved the HDMI 'environment intensity'...

 

[dynamix911]

I've been working on a project for a little while and have spent a lot of time improving my lighting, thought I'd do a writeup here in-case anyone finds my experience useful.

So I started out doing something similar to you for indoor lighting. I generally like the soft light I'd get from HDRIs more than spotlights or pointlights, but obviously being indoors makes it more difficult to light your scene with them. So I'd remove any walls/ceilings not visible in the shot and spent untold amounts of time rotating the dome and fiddling with the environment intensity settings until I got something that I thought looked 'okay' - then I'd finish up with some spotlights to brighten the areas of focus in my shot.

This process felt clunky. Like I didn't have as much control of my scene's lighting as I'd like. I'd end-up with decent looking shots, but wanted a better way to really dial-in the look I was going for. Here's an example of a shot I threw together:

There are only 2 lights in this shot, the HDRI, which you can see the dome through the window behind her - and a spotlight to brighten up her face. I have three main problems with the way this shot looks;

1. The lighting on her face is too hard. Look at the shadow around her nose for a good example of the problem.
2. Her eyes are obscured by the light reflections. The smaller reflection is from the spotlight and the larger is from the HDRI. I could fiddle with these to improve this, but I'm trying to reduce the amount of directionless fiddling as much as possible. Getting a good amount of light on my character's eyes without huge reflections was a consistent problem with this method of lighting.
3. Overall the lighting is flat. There isn't much contrast either on her or in the scene itself. Good looking shots have light spots and dark spots, and using HDRIs as the primary light source makes it difficult to produce this.

I really started to improve the quality of my lighting when I stopped relying on HDRIs as my primary light source and switched over to using 'Ghost Lights.' These are just a flat plane with an emissive surface and their opacity reduced so they're invisible in the render. You can make them yourself, but I find it much easier to just use these presets then adjust as-needed:
https://f95zone.to/threads/iray-ghost-light-kit-3.47300/

Starting with a completely dark scene, I add one large ghost light for my character and adjust the brightness until I like the way it looks:

This is the same camera angle as the top render, but the only light source is the one ghost light:

Compare that to the render above and you can immediately see the difference. No more hard shadows on her face. We've got some really nice contrast between the bright light on the left and the dark shadows on the right. No more glare obscuring her eyes, you can really see their blue color now. It's a big improvement to my eye already, but we're not done yet.

Next, I wanted the environment lighting to be a little more dynamic, so I added one of the handy-dandy volumetric lights included in the package above to the window, which gives us this:


Also, I wanted a bit more emphasis on the light coming through the window hitting her hair and left side of her body, so I added a spotlight above her, pointing down to create some highlights. Now we have this:


Finally, this may sound counter-intuitive to what I said earlier, but I do like a little glint in the eyes for closeups. The first render was way too much, but just a little reflection adds a nice bit of detail without being distracting or obscuring her eyes. I add another, very small spotlight focused on just her eyes:


Now, the finishing touches, add depth-of-field:


Do a quick render of just the HDRI dome and drop it in a background layer in photoshop:


Compare that to the first render and it's night-and-day. I love the lighting on her and in the room behind her. If I'm gonna nitpick, the window in front of the HDRI does have a bit of a 'green screen' effect, they look a bit separate vs the original image. So no problem, just a little layer mask work on the left side of the image and we have our completed shot:


This might sound like a lot of work, and initially it probably will be. But ultimately, I feel so much more in-control of how my lighting looks vs fiddling with HDRI settings and trying to compensate where that fails with spotlights. I know what I want to do, and I know how to do it, which ends up both saving me time and, well, I think the results speak for themselves.



TLDR; look at the first image in this post, then the last one - then decide if you think it's worth reading my explanation about how I got from one to the other.

 

[8InchFloppyDick]

dynamix911 - awesome post. Thanks for taking time to explain your lighting workflow. I will do a few experiments with your suggestions in some of my other 'lighting challenged' scenes over the weekend.

 

[KlodowWW]

Hi, 8InchFloppyDick . My advice is to cheat and not to fear to move the lights for each render.

Not by a lot but if you need more light somewhere do it ! Also I think that you are using the point spotlight or a very small spotlight.
Don't be afraid to make your spotlight bigger. The shadows will be softer.

I think that trying to copy "real lighting" in daz and expect a good result is much more harder and time consuming than "cheating" and put light where they need to be to enhance the quality of the render.

But it's just my opinion, good luck !

 

[Spin256]

I tend to cheat and put ghost lights in doorways and windows. I also find it can speed up render time as the system doesn't need to calculate lights coming through a semi-transparent window or bouncing in from outside the room. At least I assume that’s the case.

 

[Deleted member 1121028]

I think that trying to copy "real lighting" in daz and expect a good result is much more harder and time consuming than "cheating" and put light where they need to be to enhance the quality of the render.

Maybe wrong but I think it's true, not just in Daz but anywhere (maybe outside pure architectural or procedural showcase). Most people here doing 'mise en scène', more close to cinematic setup/photo-realistic faking than pure realistic condition (ngl it's terribly boring in an artistic way). Hence cheating is the way to go.

Well used, I think Iray planes are the best Iray cheat so far imo, by quite a far margin (huge benefit for small downside). Especially if you plan to make a porn game with Daz.

Few Iray plane slices, a good HDRI, 2 spotlights, a bit of bloom and that's it \o/.
(also I don't get why people use ghostlight but that's me).

 

[8InchFloppyDick]

Dear All,

Many thanks for your amazing feedback on my question. You've given me quite the education and a lot to think about with regard to how I'm going to implement/change my VN production setup.

Cheers!

 

[dynamix911]

Hi, 8InchFloppyDick . I think that trying to copy "real lighting" in daz and expect a good result is much more harder and time consuming than "cheating" and put light where they need to be to enhance the quality of the render.

Absolutely. It's easier than you'd expect to get lighting to "match" between shots. Just pay attention to the direction of the light and the general brightness/color/temperature and you're good. Other than that, just focus on what looks good. If my camera has moved between shots, I'm also moving/adjusting my light sources - 100% of the time.

 

[dynamix911]

Few Iray plane slices, a good HDRI, 2 spotlights, a bit of bloom and that's it \o/.
(also I don't get why people use ghostlight but that's me).

I'm actually really curious about your lighting model for faces. I find it's very difficult to get good lighting on a character's eyes using just an HDRI and spotlights. Here's an example:

The only light in this render is the ghost light I showed in my previous post:

Note how bright her eyes are and how visible the blue color is.


Now here's a render with just an HDRI:

Too dark, obviously, let's boost it with a large rectangular spotlight to maintain soft shadows:

Now she's plenty bright but there's a huge glare obscuring her eyes. So let's move the spotlight higher to try to eliminate the glare:

Now we have less glare but her brow is casting a shadow over her eyes. Compare that to the first render where the color is so clear, her eyes look so dark here in comparison.

Have you had this issue with your renders? What do you do to work around it?

 

[Deleted member 1121028]

I'm actually really curious about your lighting model for faces. I find it's very difficult to get good lighting on a character's eyes using just an HDRI and spotlights. [...] Now we have less glare but her brow is casting a shadow over her eyes.

Have you had this issue with your renders? What do you do to work around it?

Nothing really special tbh. Most of the time you avoid direct reflection angle (generally from side/upper position).

hdri + 1 spotlight:


But I think you stress too much on glare imho, I really don't mind a bit of it (can avoid the 'dead fish's eye' look). If glare is really a problem, you will deal with what's left in postwork anyway (it's few clicks away from most software).

Iray also handle spotlights way better than emissives, especially for 'general' use. I see sometime people going 'all in' on emissive, a bit shooting yourself in the foot imho. I think spotlights offer just too much control (camera look, openGL preview), flexibility (angle spread) to bother with planes (more tedious to play with, flatten render real quick if not under control) and a non negligible gain of time when composing scenes in the long run.

That's just my 2 drachmes tho.

 

[dynamix911]

Nothing really special tbh. Most of the time you avoid direct reflection angle (generally from side/upper position).

hdri + 1 spotlight:
View attachment 1352439

But I think you stress too much on glare imho, I really don't mind a bit of it (can avoid the 'dead fish's eye' look). If glare is really a problem, you will deal with what's left in postwork anyway (it's few clicks away from most software).

Iray also handle spotlights way better than emissives, especially for 'general' use. I see sometime people going 'all in' on emissive, a bit shooting yourself in the foot imho. I think spotlights offer just too much control (camera look, openGL preview), flexibility (angle spread) to bother with planes (more tedious to play with, flatten render real quick if not under control) and a non negligible gain of time when composing scenes in the long run.

That's just my 2 drachmes tho.

Yeah, I see what you're saying about the camera angle. Seems if your spotlight is angled in the same direction as your camera then you can have more direct lighting without as much glare on the eyes. I guess I find ghost lights easier because in my workflow I tend to do basic posing and camera angles before lighting. Fully planning out my scenes, character positions, lighting and camera angles in advance is definitely something I could improve upon.

I actually agree that a little bit of glare on the eyes looks good, I just have trouble controlling the amount with big spotlights (and even just HDRIs sometimes). That's why using ghost light(s) as a sort-of replacement for the base HDRI lighting, then adding spotlights to bring out highlights has worked so well for me, as described in my first post in this thread. I don't think ghost lights are sufficient as a sole light source.

Anyway, thanks for sharing, I always like to hear about the methods other people are using and you gave me some ideas to play around with. If you don't mind humoring my curiosity a little more, I'd love to see the same render you just did with the spotlight turned off, so I can get an idea about how much light is coming from the HDRI and how much is coming from the spotlight.

 

[Deleted member 1121028]

Oh yeah I used ghostlight quite sometime before - I can see the appeal.

My workflow mostly rely on HDRI first (and Iray planes), lot of ones I use are good enaugh to use "as is" without much need of additional lights source, outside minor tweaks. Which save mass amount of time.

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Anyway, thanks for sharing, I always like to hear about the methods other people are using and you gave me some ideas to play around with. If you don't mind humoring my curiosity a little more, I'd love to see the same render you just did with the spotlight turned off, so I can get an idea about how much light is coming from the HDRI and how much is coming from the spotlight.

No prob. I should have posted HDRI alone. Guess I'm in for another one lol. Bring a bit of glare, but any HDRI quite too flat/neutral should do it. Generally where you want use a spotlight.

1- hdri alone


2- hdri + spotlight

 

[8InchFloppyDick]

Dear All,

I've settled for a combination of a single Iray Section plane, the HDRI and the 2 spots on the girlie which gives me the image below after pulling it through the denoiser. The guy's face has no spots (pun intended) and is still a bit meh, but I can live with that.

The image is less high-key than some of the ones you've shown here which is (for lack of a better word) an artistic choice. It's a bit like the Loudness Wars, high-key is great but then it gets 'louder' and 'louder'. So I chose to dial it back a bit.

I feel the current setup to be a marked improvement over what I started out with and at only 100 samples instead of 250, it takes less than half the time to render which is a big deal on my 900 year old K4200. 4 mins instead of 11-12 mins.

Once again many thanks for all your sharing of The Knowledge

 

[mickydoo]

I use an iray plane all the time, I use other ghost lights when needed, I never use a HDRI unless it outside. If there is a window in the scene, firstly I try not to have it, extra work. But when I do I just poke the sunlight through it and put a pic behind it in photoshop.

Also indoor lights are affected by the colour of the room, it happens in the real world, we just don't notice it like we don't notice faces not being symmetry, out brain filters it out. If you made the wall pink they would look pink too. In the pics below see how she looks a bit pale, its the wall affecting it.

When I set up an emissive plane, I have done it prolly 7,000 times now, I usually get it in the right spot first time around, but starting out it is harder than you would think. If you look at the shadow you can see where I have angled it from.

No postwork


Bit of levels and camera raw filter on photoshop



Am I happy with the results, not entirely, when I am not making my game I try other approaches, which brings me to another point.

If you are making a VN you need to be semi industrial and be satisfied with what looks 90% good, you try and get every pic 100% but you never will, if you got every render perfect you would never get a VN made, my art aint bad, some games are fantastic, but compare them to some pics in the art section and we look like amateurs, but they spend hours on one pic and are usually a lot better at photoshop than most of us.