Some DAZ3D questions (mostly regarding room lighting)

[uhohitsuhoh]

I'm still relatively noobish with DAZ3D. I've messed with it a ton but usually with premade rooms, that come with preset lights and such.

My main problems i'm running into now, Is I'm doing my best to create rooms, and fill them and make them unique-ish. I'm personally trying to light and furnish a collective3d neighborhood xpac house. It has 3 small rooms, a big attic type room, a small bathroom, dining room, living room, kitchen and basement.

I thought I had stuff ready to go. I deleted everything except individual rooms that I made, lit them with lamps and made some lamps emissive when they weren't already, so I know some basic stuff. I added ghostlights to fill out the extra light needed, and have a decent HDRI for daytime scenes that provide some light through the window.

So I realized my problem when I tried bringing models into the room. I had these amazing quality scenes that looked super realistic, but the ghostlights completely wash out and ruin the character models/skins/clothing and stuff and makes it super cartoony and out of place. So my first question is there a way to make a ghostlight light a room and not completely wash out and ruin the models? Because that would be great if there is some setting i'm just missing.

I also found out about iray section planes. This seems to work great at taking ceilings out, and or walls etc. So that my HDRI basically lights the scene and I can adjust the enviornment intensity and stuff to make it brighter, But I'm wondering if there is a way to make the walls still visible, but still have the HDRI act like there isn't walls? I was hoping that the section plane did that but it essentially is just hiding the wall and or ceiling i'm putting it over.

I just want continuity and realism to the lighting basically. Is there a simple way to light a scene in general?

I'm thinking about making a set of lights, like 10 point lights and some spotlights pointing straight down that I can just parent to the ceiling or something ? I just want a well lit room without killing the models, But was hoping there was an easier way. Also i don't know if I even set up the point/spotlight Idea if it would even work lol.

Any thoughts from daz vets?

 

[recreation]

I wouldn't say I'm a vet, but I can give you some hints:
Ghost lights are soft light and softlights work best behind or at the side of a character, not directly in front of them.
HDRI lights or light in general won't go trough walls unless their surface is transparent or the opacity is lowered.
Higher spread angle and width of the light and the geometrie itself will soften the lights. A wide spread point light with a high width value can be as soft as a ghost light.
To highlight a figure I use 3 point lights that surround/orbit the character, all with different color and intensity settings.
Too many light sources can ruin the scene and up a lot to the render times.
Your point/spotlight idea can work, but consider my previous two points.

There is a lot more to lights I can think of at the moment, others might add more/better information to this.
Also there are some really good tutorials on lights here in the forum, I'd suggest watching/reading them.
Good luck

 

[uhohitsuhoh]

here is some examples.

the first being the room with the ghost light on, and nothing else but the natural lights, from lamps, (one not in the frame). the second one is with no ghost light and just the natural lights, but with the iray plane cutting the ceiling off. the third one is a quick lighting thing I just threw together, its 15 point lights, and 6 spotlights. (5 point lights spaced out along the wall to the left, 5 on the right, and 5 in the center, then a spotlight in each corner of the ceiling pointed towards the opposite corner of the room, and 2 in the center pointing at the floor on the opposite side as well.

this figure isn't showing how bad the ghostlight made the initial character i was using, but i just wanted to throw this up quick for reference. that said looking at the face for example compared to the other images you can see the lack of detail it gives, and how much shadows and shit is lost.

the second one i don't dislike, I was just hoping there was a way to light scenes like this (with hdri's and planes) but somehow keep the ceiling visible. if i panned up it looks like i deleted the ceiling. I'm trying to save scenes of the rooms so i can just quickly load them and have them ready to use, already lit etc.

the third one i actually do like, I wish the shadows wouldn't appear as harsh on the ground, I think i read there was a way to make surfaces not accept shadows? so it wouldn't give away the spotlights as bad, but i don't want to make everything not accept shadows also. so i think i can live with the shadows. but you can see a ton more noise/fireflies or whatever, so these will take longer to render for sure.

i let each render go 5 minutes. just the active viewport, 1000x1000 ish.

 

[uhohitsuhoh]

I wouldn't say I'm a vet, but I can give you some hints:
Ghost lights are soft light and softlights work best behind or at the side of a character, not directly in front of them.
HDRI lights or light in general won't go trough walls unless their surface is transparent or the opacity is lowered.
Higher spread angle and width of the light and the geometrie itself will soften the lights. A wide spread point light with a high width value can be as soft as a ghost light.
To highlight a figure I use 3 point lights that surround/orbit the character, all with different color and intensity settings.
Too many light sources can ruin the scene and up a lot to the render times.
Your point/spotlight idea can work, but consider my previous two points.

There is a lot more to lights I can think of at the moment, others might add more/better information to this.
Also there are some really good tutorials on lights here in the forum, I'd suggest watching/reading them.
Good luck

thanks for your response, I'm gonna search around and see what I can find.

alot of the lighting tips and tutorials i'm finding, are specific to characters. how to light just characters themselves. in the pics i posted i didn't light the character (i will when i begin actual renders and such tho, these were just examples of the room lighting and how it affected the character without doing anything else but loading it in). also the one tutorial on lighting a room i found is what led me to ghost lights, and learning how to do emissives and stuff. like making the bulb in a lamp emissive, messing with opacity and stuff for lampshades etc.

i was pretty happy with the ghostlighting of the rooms i've set up thus far, but loading figures in threw a wrench into my plans. I spent the majority of a weekend basically furnishing this house with props, making lamps and light fixtures emissive/putting in lights etc for looks and then ghostlights to bring it all together

now im just trying to figure out if i need to actually go through and meticulously set up pointlights and spotlights for each and every room i have saved lol. was hoping there was an easier way. like the iray plane thing, but cutting off the ceiling or a wall kind of defeats the purpose.

i dunno. thanks though i'll search around

 

[uhohitsuhoh]

For a simple room setup, these days I typically use a single spotlight on the roof in the center of the room with the following settings.
- Sphere source
- 20cm diameter (adjust to get different shadow edge sharpness)
- 180 degree lighting angle
- light intensity somewhere in the 100,000 to 1,000,000 range
- Render Emitter = off

You need to be somewhat careful when placing characters, however if you have characters on one side of the room and the camera on the the lighting should be acceptable.

I used to use emissive panes in the ceiling as @mickydoo mentions above, however it almost complete eliminates all shadows and make the image look quite artificial.

this technique seemed to work the best for what I was trying to do.

sorry for not browsing around enough before making this thread, i actually found the thread that post is from in the similar threads suggestion at the bottom of this thread.

but yea setting a single spotlight to these settings seems to fill the room with a much more natural light, so the room can have a default lighting each time i load it, and i can do the more intricate actual character lighting when im actually making scenes in those rooms.

 

[Xavster]

this technique seemed to work the best for what I was trying to do.

sorry for not browsing around enough before making this thread, i actually found the thread that post is from in the similar threads suggestion at the bottom of this thread.

but yea setting a single spotlight to these settings seems to fill the room with a much more natural light, so the room can have a default lighting each time i load it, and i can do the more intricate actual character lighting when im actually making scenes in those rooms.

I am always happy to help anyone that is willing to do effort required to learn Daz, the principles of scene creation and lighting. As you have noticed, I have created some tutorials as linked in my sig, on top of posting assistance where requested. As a little tip to get you off on the right path, start as simple as possible and increase complexity as your knowledge expands. Review every added item you place in a scene and judge whether is has a positive influence on the result. Always edit a scene to remove complexity when it doesn't add value. Mastery of a few elements if far better and fumbling around with many elements.

As an indication of progression, in the spoiler below is a render I did when I first started using Daz 10 months ago. I probably should be embarrassed, however everyone has to start somewhere.

Spoiler: Nooby Xav

You don't have permission to view the spoiler content. Log in or register now.

 

[mickydoo]

I explain how I do it here with emission planes
https://f95zone.to/threads/lighting-setups-for-games.27197/

@Rich below my post explains how he achieves the same sort of thing a different way.

Don't quote me but I think it's in this
https://f95zone.to/threads/ultimate-iray-skin-manager.12387/
A video tut on the tool, but they explain how daz skin reacts with light, how it enters the model and bounces back out and why it's important to have light on the character directly and not just around them.

As far as HDRI lights go for indoors, you can use this, I find it can either work for certain scenes or it wont.

You must be registered to see the links

You can get shitloads of free HDIR's here

You must be registered to see the links

Im up to the third part of my game and have changed some lighting techniques again, it's never ending lol

 

[osanaiko]

My main problems i'm running into now, Is I'm doing my best to create rooms, and fill them and make them unique-ish.

...

I'm thinking about making a set of lights, like 10 point lights and some spotlights pointing straight down that I can just parent to the ceiling or something ? I just want a well lit room without killing the models, But was hoping there was an easier way. Also i don't know if I even set up the point/spotlight Idea if it would even work lol.

Also not a veteran but two comments:

1) If you consider what parts of a scene a player will focus on, and the big rendering speed downsides from a scene with a lot of complexity (objects/triangles/surfaces/materials), then it becomes clear that in many situations a "room full of objects" is really not necessary or a good idea. Try using only a few items, and delete everything not in the view of the camera (potentially including walls! although that can allow environment/HDRI lighting in when you don't want it.) This allows you to focus on the characters art and spend your render budget wisely.

2) speaking of focus, you can cover many sins of "sparse background" with the Depth of Field effects: set the camera to focus on the subject of the scene, allow the background to become blurry.

3) (oops not two comments) Lots of lights in a scene does not necessarily help, and can increase render time for little benefit. A few "naturally positioned" room lights, such as an overhead light and maybe lamps at a high intensity, and then a couple of LOW INTENSITY ghost lights (which are actually just a convenient way to spawn emissive surfaces on primitive planes) which are aimed to simulate the bounced light from walls/floors/furniture, will give you good fill to eliminate a lot of fireflies AND allow some dramatic shadows from the main lights. If the scene is too light you can use the Exposure Value setting in the Render Settings pane (note that this is just another name for the shutter speed setting). However if it is too dark then you will generally be better off increasing the light output of your lights, assuming you have good fill from your ghost lights.

And, as always, other users are much more experienced so listen to them instead of me!

 

[uhohitsuhoh]

I explain how I do it here with emission planes
https://f95zone.to/threads/lighting-setups-for-games.27197/

@Rich below my post explains how he achieves the same sort of thing a different way.

Don't quote me but I think it's in this
https://f95zone.to/threads/ultimate-iray-skin-manager.12387/
A video tut on the tool, but they explain how daz skin reacts with light, how it enters the model and bounces back out and why it's important to have light on the character directly and not just around them.

As far as HDRI lights go for indoors, you can use this, I find it can either work for certain scenes or it wont.

You must be registered to see the links

You can get shitloads of free HDIR's here

You must be registered to see the links

Im up to the third part of my game and have changed some lighting techniques again, it's never ending lol

yea, i'm shooting for a relatively simple first game, but i'd like to keep the renders similar start to finish. i really like the spotlight at 180/and a sphere though, it seems to be perfect because it lights the room and is still "specular" or whatever, so it doesn't completely wash it out like emission planes(pretty sure thats just a self made ghostlight right?) but it seems to give the effect i wanted of just having a dark room lit well, without having to cut out walls/ceilings and give a similar light every time.

now its just about bringing the characters in and lighting them respectively.

 

[uhohitsuhoh]

Also not a veteran but two comments:

1) If you consider what parts of a scene a player will focus on, and the big rendering speed downsides from a scene with a lot of complexity (objects/triangles/surfaces/materials), then it becomes clear that in many situations a "room full of objects" is really not necessary or a good idea. Try using only a few items, and delete everything not in the view of the camera (potentially including walls! although that can allow environment/HDRI lighting in when you don't want it.) This allows you to focus on the characters art and spend your render budget wisely.

2) speaking of focus, you can cover many sins of "sparse background" with the Depth of Field effects: set the camera to focus on the subject of the scene, allow the background to become blurry.

3) (oops not two comments) Lots of lights in a scene does not necessarily help, and can increase render time for little benefit. A few "naturally positioned" room lights, such as an overhead light and maybe lamps at a high intensity, and then a couple of LOW INTENSITY ghost lights (which are actually just a convenient way to spawn emissive surfaces on primitive planes) which are aimed to simulate the bounced light from walls/floors/furniture, will give you good fill to eliminate a lot of fireflies AND allow some dramatic shadows from the main lights. If the scene is too light you can use the Exposure Value setting in the Render Settings pane (note that this is just another name for the shutter speed setting). However if it is too dark then you will generally be better off increasing the light output of your lights, assuming you have good fill from your ghost lights.

And, as always, other users are much more experienced so listen to them instead of me!

yea the simple single spotlight seems to have fixed everything, i just needed to know what settings to adjust and mess with. prior to @Xavster 's breakdown i was just blindly tweaking settings in spotlights and pointlights not seeing any difference and not knowing what each did. just see something like "width" and cranking it thinking the width of the light beam would widen, and then being puzzled by results lol.

its mainly just been blind tinkering and failed google searches up to this point.

also i don't have that many objects and stuff going on, as long as i have decent lighting like the single spotlight idea everything seems great. all the rooms are pretty small, but yea it seems the quantity of lights definitely slows everything down because of how they interact with everything along with eachother

thanks for the tips guys.

 

[mickydoo]

I don't really understand emission planes, but yes they do make very good ghost lights but it's usually easier just to use store ones (normal ones). Apart from that I only use them because they are by far the simplest method I have found, there are probably loads of cons, I only found out recently they increase render times but I never take any notice of render times, it times out after 2 hours anyway. My "expert" opinion is try everything you ever read, see, get suggested to you until you find what works for you, I doubt two of us here use the same light setup.

 

[Xavster]

yea, i'm shooting for a relatively simple first game, but i'd like to keep the renders similar start to finish. i really like the spotlight at 180/and a sphere though, it seems to be perfect because it lights the room and is still "specular" or whatever, so it doesn't completely wash it out like emission planes(pretty sure thats just a self made ghostlight right?) but it seems to give the effect i wanted of just having a dark room lit well, without having to cut out walls/ceilings and give a similar light every time.

The ghostlights asset does nothing more than create emissive spheres. All you need to do to achieve exactly the same effect is to do the following:
- Create a sphere primitive.
- Apply the !Iray Uber Base shader to the sphere surface.
- Set the emission colour to something other than black and set a luminance.
- If you want it to be invisible, set the cutout opacity to 0.0001.

Creating these 'ghost lights' for yourself gives greater control over the result and is also quicker once you get the hang of it. Youtube guide if you need further explanation on how to create a ghost light.

You must be registered to see the links

The simplest lighting for a room is to place a single emissive sphere (about 0.5m diam works well) at roof level in the center of the room. The problem with using a spotlight for this task is that the light intensity drops off as the angle increases from the direction it is pointing.

 

[uhohitsuhoh]

yea those don't seem bad at all? I'll have to try messing with those in the future.

I just have the regular ghost light package which comes with a horizontal and vertical plane, which i would then use the horizontal one, put it just under the ceiling and adjust the size to the ceiling, and mess with the emission color/strength etc. from there. but they seemed pretty all or nothing, and wouldn't give anything shadows, even at low settings it was like it was just very evenly dimly lit. where as in that video with a sphere, you still get shadows and stuff. so i'll have to look into creating my own as needed

the spotlight seems to work though since the rooms i'm using are so small, its darker towards the walls (barely noticeable) as opposed to the center of the room directly under the spotlight sphere, but set at the right luminance it just makes sense, because rooms are brighter directly under lights anyways.

 

[Xavster]

yea those don't seem bad at all? I'll have to try messing with those in the future.

I just have the regular ghost light package which comes with a horizontal and vertical plane, which i would then use the horizontal one, put it just under the ceiling and adjust the size to the ceiling, and mess with the emission color/strength etc. from there. but they seemed pretty all or nothing, and wouldn't give anything shadows, even at low settings it was like it was just very evenly dimly lit. where as in that video with a sphere, you still get shadows and stuff. so i'll have to look into creating my own as needed

the spotlight seems to work though since the rooms i'm using are so small, its darker towards the walls (barely noticeable) as opposed to the center of the room directly under the spotlight sphere, but set at the right luminance it just makes sense, because rooms are brighter directly under lights anyways.

The problem with just applying ghost lights is that default from memory is 16 light sources. Whilst you can switch all but one off, I find it easier just to create sphere myself. You will only get shadows when the majority of your light is coming from one location. Hence the reason I suggest a single sphere. Also if you create the sphere yourself you can decide how sharp you want the edge of the shadows to be. A small sphere will give a hard shadow, which softens as the sphere gets larger. This is not something you can adjust on the fly with ghost lights.

PS: The total light from an emissive surface is dependent upon luminace and the surface area of the emissive surface. Hence if you want the scene brightness to remain the same you have to adjust the luminace in proportion to the inverse square of the diameter. Hence double the size of the sphere, make the luminance 1/4 of what it was before.