This is something i noticed.
When i am loading every asset i need, plus some scene, after a while character disappear out of nowhere. They are actually still there but not visible.
Now i have not a current graphics card. Mine is pretty outdated. Or is it something else. My computer has 16GB of memory. Maybe that is too less?
Does anyone know or has the same problem?
Much appreciated.
I was running Daz on an old 7th-Gen i5 with 16Gb up until a month ago and I only had a PoS 2GB GT1030 vid card. I had no problem doing full complex 1080p renders on CPU only... they would just take forever (2 hours or so)
Are you sure you didn't make the characters not visible? (little eye icon to the left of their listing) The scene pane is very laggy when you are clicking and interacting with it and sometimes you end up moving stuff or re-parenting things without knowing it. So if you dropped one of your characters into a group that was currently hidden, the figure would also be hidden. That sort of thing.
Only other thing I can think of is that you are loading too much into a single scene and running out of memory. But usually in that case, DAZ will become extremely slow and your PC will also throw up warning flags on anything running in the background. I just built a new PC and I am running 32GB on a 10th gen CPU now, but I still only have a 4GB GTX 1050Ti vid card, so I am still doing CPU renders mostly. Even with 32GB, I find that I can only run my browser, maybe have some music streaming, etc... in the background, while DAZ is rendering. Anything more then that and Daz tends to cough up a hairball. DAZ memory usage is terrible, IMO.
I am still very much a noob myself, but one trick I learned early was to composite scenes to save time and memory. So instead of doing some large complex scene with 4 Genesis characters, for example, I will first do a detailed render of the background, without the characters, then another render of the characters only, with the background taken out and with the same camera. If using Dome lighting, turn "Draw Dome" off and turn on Draw Ground so you have shadow effects, and you can then take that image and just layer it on the background in post processing (ie: Photoshop) Oddly, this technique saves me so much time because in the bizarre world of Daz, the whole is not greater then the sum of the parts.
For example, a complex scene with several light sources and more then 1 Genesis character, might take me 2 hours to get to a decent quality or full convergence. Yet, doing them separate might take me 20 mins for the background, and sometimes less then 5 mins for the characters. Then it takes me just a few minutes to process them in PS and I have saved a lot of time. This technique is also great for doing small changes to a scene, as you can use the Spot Render tool to render facial expressions, or small hand movements, for example, then layer them on top of the renders you already did. Spot Renders are usually super fast. Just remember to go to your Tool Settings and click "New Window" before you do any spot renders. That way you get the full frame with the render so a simple SHIFT+CTRL+V will paste that image directly in the same spot on the background in Photoshop afterwards.
Don't be afraid to save dozens of scene DUF's to keep these small changes and speed up your work flow. It saves a lot of time over having to re-do poses and lighting manually every time. DUF's are reasonably small and you can also prune them down once you are finished with your project.
I was running Daz on an old 7th-Gen i5 with 16Gb up until a month ago and I only had a PoS 2GB GT1030 vid card. I had no problem doing full complex 1080p renders on CPU only... they would just take forever (2 hours or so)
Are you sure you didn't make the characters not visible? (little eye icon to the left of their listing) The scene pane is very laggy when you are clicking and interacting with it and sometimes you end up moving stuff or re-parenting things without knowing it. So if you dropped one of your characters into a group that was currently hidden, the figure would also be hidden. That sort of thing.
Only other thing I can think of is that you are loading too much into a single scene and running out of memory. But usually in that case, DAZ will become extremely slow and your PC will also throw up warning flags on anything running in the background. I just built a new PC and I am running 32GB on a 10th gen CPU now, but I still only have a 4GB GTX 1050Ti vid card, so I am still doing CPU renders mostly. Even with 32GB, I find that I can only run my browser, maybe have some music streaming, etc... in the background, while DAZ is rendering. Anything more then that and Daz tends to cough up a hairball. DAZ memory usage is terrible, IMO.
I am still very much a noob myself, but one trick I learned early was to composite scenes to save time and memory. So instead of doing some large complex scene with 4 Genesis characters, for example, I will first do a detailed render of the background, without the characters, then another render of the characters only, with the background taken out and with the same camera. If using Dome lighting, turn "Draw Dome" off and turn on Draw Ground so you have shadow effects, and you can then take that image and just layer it on the background in post processing (ie: Photoshop) Oddly, this technique saves me so much time because in the bizarre world of Daz, the whole is not greater then the sum of the parts.
For example, a complex scene with several light sources and more then 1 Genesis character, might take me 2 hours to get to a decent quality or full convergence. Yet, doing them separate might take me 20 mins for the background, and sometimes less then 5 mins for the characters. Then it takes me just a few minutes to process them in PS and I have saved a lot of time. This technique is also great for doing small changes to a scene, as you can use the Spot Render tool to render facial expressions, or small hand movements, for example, then layer them on top of the renders you already did. Spot Renders are usually super fast. Just remember to go to your Tool Settings and click "New Window" before you do any spot renders. That way you get the full frame with the render so a simple SHIFT+CTRL+V will paste that image directly in the same spot on the background in Photoshop afterwards.
Don't be afraid to save dozens of scene DUF's to keep these small changes and speed up your work flow. It saves a lot of time over having to re-do poses and lighting manually every time. DUF's are reasonably small and you can also prune them down once you are finished with your project.
Thanks for all the info.
Post processing. Genius.
Well, i don't have Photoshop but i assume Paint.Net should do the same.
I did not think off that.
In my picture where it happen, i had a room (needed a room) and 3 characters. Though 2 off them were naked. So they did not had a lot of assets attached to them. The third of course did.
And yes, one or two of them disappeared for some reason. I kind of thing its a ram thing. To much loaded and then it slowed down a little.
I think its probably a good idea to do it in steps then to avoid that.
I find this all very fascinating. So many things you have to think off and to create scenes. I am not an artist or anything but for now i just like to create things for myself. I especially like to recreate some drawings with my own characters.
Sadly for my purposes i haven't found an older character or a tool that can make them older. Got to wait.
Thanks, you were very helpful and i think this will solve my problem.
p.s. i forgot to mention this here but i only have an older AMD RX480 8GB gfx card. This is not supported by DAZ, so i can't take advantage of the gfx card for rendering. I kind of left the render settings by default. I tried 3delight but for some reason that went into the pants.
For me, there is so much to be learned and i am just starting to scratch the surface of what that software has to offer and all its quirks.
I have 16GB memory and a AMD Ryzen 5 3600 6-Core Processor 3.60 GHz. So its not the fastest system for this task but should be fine otherwise. Plus SSD which should help as well.
Another thing, and maybe i do it harder than it should be, is the poses. Even though i got lots of them i found myself in the situation where i needed to manually direct my characters to do certain poses. So its really like a puppet master that tells the actors what to do and it makes it more timely. I spend just for that picture (as a noob) hours to make it right. I am sure with more experience that will go much faster.
p.p.s.
Can confirm that the environment is taking a lot of time to render. I just did a small piece of a room but of course it is bigger. And even though i removed assets from the room, it still took over an hour to render. So i definitely will follow the strategy of separating these two components for future renders.
Do you mean like aging one of the Daz characters to look older? Because there's some good tools for that on the site here actually. I use this one to make my characters older . It's for the G8F and G8M but there's also ones out there for G3 characters if you prefer them. These morphs have slider for all different parts of the body to age any G8 character. Just do test renders to see the final effect as you don't get much detail in the scene preview window or even Iray.
I'm hardly a vet at this yet, but ya... there's a few things I spot easy. Thumb clipping the guys thigh, her knee on his foot... some weird artifact behind the guy on the right's dick (looks like wood? - no pun intended, lol)
But those are minor rookie mistakes and you'll soon have a trained eye to catch them. Do test renders when you finish composing a scene. let it run for a few iterations and look closely for these things, then stop the render and fix them. A lot of little things won't show up in Iray. Probably the most annoying I get is those random artifacts on the face or forehead. Sometimes you can fix it by adjusting the hair cap. sometimes it's because the characters are too far from zero point ( that's 0:0:0 on the X:Y:Z axis). Photshop has a spot healer tool that does wonders for them. Clothing not fitting right is also common. If you don't have the Mesh Grabber tool, get it! It's on here and it's a necessity for Daz, IMO.
Honestly, I think the biggest thing I can see in your render is that the lighting is backwards, with the background lighter and the foreground figures darker. I'd also do a Gaussian blur on the background to make the figures jump out more. That's another benefit of doing the scenes as separate renders then composting them together. It's easy to blur backgrounds and sharpen foreground figures. Or you can turn on Depth of Field and do that effect with the camera.
If that room scene was taking a long time, even after you removed the Genesis characters, then i suspect you have too much lighting or a mix of lighting that is causing a lot of processor power. Lighting is - in my opinion - the skill that is hardest for me to learn, as there's so many options and techniques. But when you have several sources of lighting, it starts to take a lot longer. When I want some cool effect like just a glow from a TV screen or something, I'll spend the time on those long renders. Otherwise i cheat with Ghost lights for the main lighting and one or two spotlights at the most to create definition and highlights.
How i would do that image you posted... First, I'd get it composed like what you want. Lock the cameras down so you can't move them. Then you have two options... one - save the DUF then delete the characters and render the background ... or ... two, select your three characters at once in the scene tab and make a new group (Create ... New Group) use the default settings and name it something like "Actors" The benefit of creating a group like this is that now you can just hit the eye icon and all three characters will be hidden. If you tried to hide them separately, you have to go and click on the clothing, hair, etc..
Once the background is done, then bring back the characters (either reload that DUF you saved or unhide the group), then hide or delete all the background. Turn draw ground on, do a quick iRay preview to make sure the floor lines up with the characters (you can adjust it under Environment --> Ground --> Switch position mode from Auto to Manual (check again) then adjust Ground Origin Y to raise or lower the ground plane) This fake ground will generate a shadow mask that you can apply to your background with the figures.
Also, when you are doing just the characters without the background, you can toss a subtle spot light on them to raise their features without risk of a bad shadow on the background. Personally, I've been putting spots about 10 feet away and using 4000K temp and 50,000 lumen with the width and height set to 20 cm, but that is just my preference.
Another thing, and maybe i do it harder than it should be, is the poses. Even though i got lots of them i found myself in the situation where i needed to manually direct my characters to do certain poses. So its really like a puppet master that tells the actors what to do and it makes it more timely. I spend just for that picture (as a noob) hours to make it right. I am sure with more experience that will go much faster.
Posing is definitely a bitch. You see a lot of developers being very lazy and only using prebuilt poses, but I hate that, as you can tell they are wooden and overused. What i usually do is pick a pose that gets me in the ballpark, then go and refine the arms and hands myself. After a while, you start to pick up the skill and I can do simple hand poses now faster by manual input then taking the time to find one in the content library and frigging with that for 10 minutes.
For expressions, I actually use the POSE Controls under the main Parameters tab more then i do the actual pose tab. Expand the Head and all expressions are there as well and they are sliders and not icons... which i find faster and easier to find. I also use the Mouth and Eye controls to make minor changes to make my characters seem more alive... like lifting an eyebrow on one side a bit, or quirky one sided smile.. that sort of thing. Takes no time at all and really looks better then the canned expressions, IMHO.
Do you mean like aging one of the Daz characters to look older? Because there's some good tools for that on the site here actually. I use this one to make my characters older . It's for the G8F and G8M but there's also ones out there for G3 characters if you prefer them. These morphs have slider for all different parts of the body to age any G8 character. Just do test renders to see the final effect as you don't get much detail in the scene preview window or even Iray.
Got it. I actually had one downloaded for the face only. But this seems better if covers the whole body.
I'm hardly a vet at this yet, but ya... there's a few things I spot easy. Thumb clipping the guys thigh, her knee on his foot... some weird artifact behind the guy on the right's dick (looks like wood? - no pun intended, lol)
I laugh myself off. Yes, it happens. Not happy with the cocks. Is there a favorite one anyway? Also female sex part. I am currently using New Genitals for Victoria.
But those are minor rookie mistakes and you'll soon have a trained eye to catch them. Do test renders when you finish composing a scene. let it run for a few iterations and look closely for these things, then stop the render and fix them. A lot of little things won't show up in Iray. Probably the most annoying I get is those random artifacts on the face or forehead. Sometimes you can fix it by adjusting the hair cap. sometimes it's because the characters are too far from zero point ( that's 0:0:0 on the X:Y:Z axis). Photshop has a spot healer tool that does wonders for them. Clothing not fitting right is also common. If you don't have the Mesh Grabber tool, get it! It's on here and it's a necessity for Daz, IMO.
I wish i had Photoshop. My choices are Paint.Net and Gimp.
Though i really want to clean it as best as i can in Daz. If possible. But my first order is to not overlook the obvious mistakes. (arm sink in, cloth clipping etc..)
Honestly, I think the biggest thing I can see in your render is that the lighting is backwards, with the background lighter and the foreground figures darker. I'd also do a Gaussian blur on the background to make the figures jump out more. That's another benefit of doing the scenes as separate renders then composting them together. It's easy to blur backgrounds and sharpen foreground figures. Or you can turn on Depth of Field and do that effect with the camera.
If that room scene was taking a long time, even after you removed the Genesis characters, then i suspect you have too much lighting or a mix of lighting that is causing a lot of processor power. Lighting is - in my opinion - the skill that is hardest for me to learn, as there's so many options and techniques. But when you have several sources of lighting, it starts to take a lot longer. When I want some cool effect like just a glow from a TV screen or something, I'll spend the time on those long renders. Otherwise i cheat with Ghost lights for the main lighting and one or two spotlights at the most to create definition and highlights.
Good point. This is a factor i have slagged. Important as it is, i have not paid too much attention to it.
So i think you have very good suggestions. I should take them to heart.
How i would do that image you posted... First, I'd get it composed like what you want. Lock the cameras down so you can't move them. Then you have two options... one - save the DUF then delete the characters and render the background ... or ... two, select your three characters at once in the scene tab and make a new group (Create ... New Group) use the default settings and name it something like "Actors" The benefit of creating a group like this is that now you can just hit the eye icon and all three characters will be hidden. If you tried to hide them separately, you have to go and click on the clothing, hair, etc..
Once the background is done, then bring back the characters (either reload that DUF you saved or unhide the group), then hide or delete all the background. Turn draw ground on, do a quick iRay preview to make sure the floor lines up with the characters (you can adjust it under Environment --> Ground --> Switch position mode from Auto to Manual (check again) then adjust Ground Origin Y to raise or lower the ground plane) This fake ground will generate a shadow mask that you can apply to your background with the figures.
Also, when you are doing just the characters without the background, you can toss a subtle spot light on them to raise their features without risk of a bad shadow on the background. Personally, I've been putting spots about 10 feet away and using 4000K temp and 50,000 lumen with the width and height set to 20 cm, but that is just my preference.
I will try that. Haven't thought to much about as of yet.
Posing is definitely a bitch. You see a lot of developers being very lazy and only using prebuilt poses, but I hate that, as you can tell they are wooden and overused. What i usually do is pick a pose that gets me in the ballpark, then go and refine the arms and hands myself. After a while, you start to pick up the skill and I can do simple hand poses now faster by manual input then taking the time to find one in the content library and frigging with that for 10 minutes.
For expressions, I actually use the POSE Controls under the main Parameters tab more then i do the actual pose tab. Expand the Head and all expressions are there as well and they are sliders and not icons... which i find faster and easier to find. I also use the Mouth and Eye controls to make minor changes to make my characters seem more alive... like lifting an eyebrow on one side a bit, or quirky one sided smile.. that sort of thing. Takes no time at all and really looks better then the canned expressions, IMHO.
Yeah. Posing is really something. Not easy and quick. I tried today to give a punch and that did not go well. though i did it directly with bones. Maybe not the best way to do it.
I laugh myself off. Yes, it happens. Not happy with the cocks. Is there a favorite one anyway? Also female sex part. I am currently using New Genitals for Victoria.
I haven't done much lewd renders yet, just a few test scenes, but I have focused on mainly Dicktator for the guys and Golden Palace for the women. I think that the New gens for Victoria actually look nicer then GP, but GP has way more adjustments and you'll need them to get good sex renders. Once I get a decent GPU and can maybe start doing animation loops, I might pick something totally different... who knows? Still a noob on this stuff, lol.
I wish i had Photoshop. My choices are Paint.Net and Gimp.
Though i really want to clean it as best as i can in Daz. If possible. But my first order is to not overlook the obvious mistakes. (arm sink in, cloth clipping etc..)
I don't know how comfortable you are pirating stuff, but since you ARE actually on a pirate forum here (even if it's just pirate-light really) I will mention that there are versions of PS still available out there that are fully cracked. I actually run PS CC 2015, which is supposed to be on the cloud but is cracked to run standalone. GIMP will do almost everything that PS does, but I could never get my head around how different the user interface was. I've been using different versions of PS since the 90's so I try and stick with it. Plus there's just so many youtube videos out there to teach advanced techniques.
One other thing I forgot to mention, and especially useful since you have to use CPU rendering, as do I.... Do you have the Intel Denoiser script and GUI yet? It's a very useful utility to remove the noise from renders after you are done. There's one built in to DAZ but it requires a good Nvidea GPU to work. You can't use it on CPU only.
Here's the utility...
You must be registered to see the links
Go to that site and grab the GUI and the Intel script and follow the instructions. Then you set the GUI to do the Intel denoise script and pick where you want the processed renders to be saved. After you have done a render(s) in DAZ, just go the the render gallery, select the renders and drag them onto the GUI above and they will be denoised in seconds. Takes like 2-3 seconds per render (1080P size). It does a really nice job cleaning your renders up, so you are not forced to have to run a render to 5000 iterations and 4 hours.. You can stop the render at some in between decent spot and then run the denoise script and they look very nice.
I haven't done much lewd renders yet, just a few test scenes, but I have focused on mainly Dicktator for the guys and Golden Palace for the women. I think that the New gens for Victoria actually look nicer then GP, but GP has way more adjustments and you'll need them to get good sex renders. Once I get a decent GPU and can maybe start doing animation loops, I might pick something totally different... who knows? Still a noob on this stuff, lol.
I don't know how comfortable you are pirating stuff, but since you ARE actually on a pirate forum here (even if it's just pirate-light really) I will mention that there are versions of PS still available out there that are fully cracked. I actually run PS CC 2015, which is supposed to be on the cloud but is cracked to run standalone. GIMP will do almost everything that PS does, but I could never get my head around how different the user interface was. I've been using different versions of PS since the 90's so I try and stick with it. Plus there's just so many youtube videos out there to teach advanced techniques.
One other thing I forgot to mention, and especially useful since you have to use CPU rendering, as do I.... Do you have the Intel Denoiser script and GUI yet? It's a very useful utility to remove the noise from renders after you are done. There's one built in to DAZ but it requires a good Nvidea GPU to work. You can't use it on CPU only.
Here's the utility...
You must be registered to see the links
Go to that site and grab the GUI and the Intel script and follow the instructions. Then you set the GUI to do the Intel denoise script and pick where you want the processed renders to be saved. After you have done a render(s) in DAZ, just go the the render gallery, select the renders and drag them onto the GUI above and they will be denoised in seconds. Takes like 2-3 seconds per render (1080P size). It does a really nice job cleaning your renders up, so you are not forced to have to run a render to 5000 iterations and 4 hours.. You can stop the render at some in between decent spot and then run the denoise script and they look very nice.
I think it pretty shitty that only NVIDIA is supported. AMD surely could do the same. Just thinking.
Anyway, thanks for the pointers.
I have to look into that.
As for the graphics software. GIMP is ok. But yes, the interface. PS has more addons and seems easier but i actually have no clue.
Ah, i did yesterday some more renders. And i still have the freaking light problem.
I am not sure what it is. Regardless if i add a spot light, it seems to be ignored. I see on the shadow from where the light is coming but its not from my spotlight.
There must be some standard light source i haven't figured out yet.
Here is my render with aging, manual posing and a spot light.
If the spotlight would matter, the shadow would be cast to the back of that chair. Instead the shadow always is cast from the back. Did i miss something?
I have to figure that out today. Otherwise all my pics will look silly.
I think it pretty shitty that only NVIDIA is supported. AMD surely could do the same. Just thinking.
Anyway, thanks for the pointers.
I have to look into that.
As for the graphics software. GIMP is ok. But yes, the interface. PS has more addons and seems easier but i actually have no clue.
Ah, i did yesterday some more renders. And i still have the freaking light problem.
I am not sure what it is. Regardless if i add a spot light, it seems to be ignored. I see on the shadow from where the light is coming but its not from my spotlight.
There must be some standard light source i haven't figured out yet.
Here is my render with aging, manual posing and a spot light.
If the spotlight would matter, the shadow would be cast to the back of that chair. Instead the shadow always is cast from the back. Did i miss something?
I have to figure that out today. Otherwise all my pics will look silly.
Hard to tell but it looks like your Temp is over 10,000 Kelvin ... which doesn't make sense, and your Lumen value is only 4097. That won't even light a tea cup, lol.
Temp values should range from about 2500 up to 6500. It's the temperature or "color" of the light. At 2500, it's a warm soft light (like an old incandescent bulb) while at 6500 its a cool bright light, like a powerful fluorescent. Here's a simple chart LED makers use to help you pick the temp range for their products.
And the Lumens is how bright the light is. The values for Lumens in DAZ are kinda wonky though, and different for each type of lighting. But for spotlights, anything less then 50,000 will hardly light anything more then a few feet away.
What most tutorials suggest is to go into Iray preview and then see how a value is working. If it's still dark, add a zero (example, if 10,000 is dark, make it 100,000 and if 100,000 is dark, try 1,000,000... etc) Eventually you'll get a big change and then you can do finer adjustments. Heck, if i put the spotlight far away, to keep it out of my camera view for example, I sometimes have Lumens in the millions.
I did a test render to try and simulate the one you did above:
First, I set the scene and spotlight up approximate to how you did it...
Now you have that light, making the shadows (and with HD figures, really bringing out the skin details). I also wanted to show what a couple of the other Light settings do. This shadow is kinda harsh, so you can change both the shape of the light and the width and height dimensions. Think of the light rays as lasers. With the default settings, its a point shape emitter with 10cm width. That makes the shadows pretty sharp and harsh. By increasing the width and height, and making the emitter Disc shape (for example) you are taking those "lasers" beams of light and making them fatter and more diffuse. Sorry, not an expert on light physics, so that's all i got for an explanation, lol. Here's the result for using 30cm on the dimensions and a Disc as the shape of the emitter...
Hard to tell but it looks like your Temp is over 10,000 Kelvin ... which doesn't make sense, and your Lumen value is only 4097. That won't even light a tea cup, lol.
Temp values should range from about 2500 up to 6500. It's the temperature or "color" of the light. At 2500, it's a warm soft light (like an old incandescent bulb) while at 6500 its a cool bright light, like a powerful fluorescent. Here's a simple chart LED makers use to help you pick the temp range for their products.
And the Lumens is how bright the light is. The values for Lumens in DAZ are kinda wonky though, and different for each type of lighting. But for spotlights, anything less then 50,000 will hardly light anything more then a few feet away.
What most tutorials suggest is to go into Iray preview and then see how a value is working. If it's still dark, add a zero (example, if 10,000 is dark, make it 100,000 and if 100,000 is dark, try 1,000,000... etc) Eventually you'll get a big change and then you can do finer adjustments. Heck, if i put the spotlight far away, to keep it out of my camera view for example, I sometimes have Lumens in the millions.
I did a test render to try and simulate the one you did above:
First, I set the scene and spotlight up approximate to how you did it...
Now you have that light, making the shadows (and with HD figures, really bringing out the skin details). I also wanted to show what a couple of the other Light settings do. This shadow is kinda harsh, so you can change both the shape of the light and the width and height dimensions. Think of the light rays as lasers. With the default settings, its a point shape emitter with 10cm width. That makes the shadows pretty sharp and harsh. By increasing the width and height, and making the emitter Disc shape (for example) you are taking those "lasers" beams of light and making them fatter and more diffuse. Sorry, not an expert on light physics, so that's all i got for an explanation, lol. Here's the result for using 30cm on the dimensions and a Disc as the shape of the emitter...
I think i should step back when i am tired. Yes, that makes sense.
Thanks for explaining it (more or less again). But i think you are correct in how challenging it can be to get the light right.
I find myself sometimes really lost with all these options. DAZ is quite powerful for what it offers. So its not simple really.
Plus, i don't even want to know how much i would have spend in real dollars for all the assets i have.
Quite an expensive hobby. Or at least it could be.
So i will go back to the drawing board and make it right. Its quite nice to be able to make life like people and let them do things. Only one own imagination is the limit.
I will try to make my original render from the drawing to come back to life. it may not be high quality but i think i will like it.
I think your explanations and steps really help. I much appreciate it. Thank you so much
Your problem is you have the HDRI backdrop enabled. If your render settings say "Sun & Sky" or "Dome Only", the lights in your scene don't do anything. You need to change it to "scene Only" or "Dome & Scene".
Daz Studio is like a Ferrari engine (Iray) duct taped to a Ford Pinto (the application).
Daz3D pay Nvidia for Iray, and Nivida sends them a closed binary they plug into their software. Daz doesn't control what's inside the binary, they can't change anything. That's why products Daz has been selling for years suddenly broke in 4.20. And Nvidia make sure their rendering engine only works on their GPUs.
Daz Studio seems very powerful when you first use it and convince yourself you just haven't learned how to use it well.
But trust me, it's just a big pile of shit.
There's a reason why amateur devs start games in Daz Studio, flounder for a while, then announce "I'm moving to Blender." I'd recommend switching now rather than after you've released 20% of your game to the public and backed yourself into a corner.
Hard to tell but it looks like your Temp is over 10,000 Kelvin ... which doesn't make sense, and your Lumen value is only 4097. That won't even light a tea cup, lol.
Temp values should range from about 2500 up to 6500. It's the temperature or "color" of the light. At 2500, it's a warm soft light (like an old incandescent bulb) while at 6500 its a cool bright light, like a powerful fluorescent. Here's a simple chart LED makers use to help you pick the temp range for their products.
And the Lumens is how bright the light is. The values for Lumens in DAZ are kinda wonky though, and different for each type of lighting. But for spotlights, anything less then 50,000 will hardly light anything more then a few feet away.
What most tutorials suggest is to go into Iray preview and then see how a value is working. If it's still dark, add a zero (example, if 10,000 is dark, make it 100,000 and if 100,000 is dark, try 1,000,000... etc) Eventually you'll get a big change and then you can do finer adjustments. Heck, if i put the spotlight far away, to keep it out of my camera view for example, I sometimes have Lumens in the millions.
I did a test render to try and simulate the one you did above:
First, I set the scene and spotlight up approximate to how you did it...
Now you have that light, making the shadows (and with HD figures, really bringing out the skin details). I also wanted to show what a couple of the other Light settings do. This shadow is kinda harsh, so you can change both the shape of the light and the width and height dimensions. Think of the light rays as lasers. With the default settings, its a point shape emitter with 10cm width. That makes the shadows pretty sharp and harsh. By increasing the width and height, and making the emitter Disc shape (for example) you are taking those "lasers" beams of light and making them fatter and more diffuse. Sorry, not an expert on light physics, so that's all i got for an explanation, lol. Here's the result for using 30cm on the dimensions and a Disc as the shape of the emitter...
I know now what my mistakes was. Yes, i reversed it but that wasn't really my problem. Of course it is but what i really did wrong, was the setting for Dome and Scene. I had it on Dome. So no light would matter. Regardless of power. Not sure when i did that.
Now, i set it to Dome and Scene and it works fine. So its now only to calibrate the right light amount and such.
Thanks again.
p.s. my results. I used three spotlights this time.
Your problem is you have the HDRI backdrop enabled. If your render settings say "Sun & Sky" or "Dome Only", the lights in your scene don't do anything. You need to change it to "scene Only" or "Dome & Scene".
Daz Studio is like a Ferrari engine (Iray) duct taped to a Ford Pinto (the application).
Daz3D pay Nvidia for Iray, and Nivida sends them a closed binary they plug into their software. Daz doesn't control what's inside the binary, they can't change anything. That's why products Daz has been selling for years suddenly broke in 4.20. And Nvidia make sure their rendering engine only works on their GPUs.
Daz Studio seems very powerful when you first use it and convince yourself you just haven't learned how to use it well.
But trust me, it's just a big pile of shit.
There's a reason why amateur devs start games in Daz Studio, flounder for a while, then announce "I'm moving to Blender." I'd recommend switching now rather than after you've released 20% of your game to the public and backed yourself into a corner.
Well, at least that explains the NVIDIA preference.
Personally, i have Blender but Blender is very complicated. I tried once to animate something and it did not get anywhere.
DAZ seems ok for what it does. Its like an army swiss knife. Works for most.
I did see however on YouTube once a guy making a beautiful character in 5 minutes. Wow...
Not sure if i want to do a game, because that will kind of take over your world. Its a hobby and i like to play with something.
Your problem is you have the HDRI backdrop enabled. If your render settings say "Sun & Sky" or "Dome Only", the lights in your scene don't do anything. You need to change it to "scene Only" or "Dome & Scene".
Daz Studio is like a Ferrari engine (Iray) duct taped to a Ford Pinto (the application).
Daz3D pay Nvidia for Iray, and Nivida sends them a closed binary they plug into their software. Daz doesn't control what's inside the binary, they can't change anything. That's why products Daz has been selling for years suddenly broke in 4.20. And Nvidia make sure their rendering engine only works on their GPUs.
Daz Studio seems very powerful when you first use it and convince yourself you just haven't learned how to use it well.
But trust me, it's just a big pile of shit.
There's a reason why amateur devs start games in Daz Studio, flounder for a while, then announce "I'm moving to Blender." I'd recommend switching now rather than after you've released 20% of your game to the public and backed yourself into a corner.
... the one certainty I do know about DAZ, is that there is almost always more then one way to do the same thing.
All the stuff you just said above, could have been cut & paste from every game engine update for every 3D game for the past 30 years - probably since the OpenGL API was developed. Shit changes and we have to change with it and companies form partnerships and exclusivity agreements. *shrug*
As for Daz and Blender, the reason Daz is so popular is because of the asset library. People creating games don't want to spend XXX hours making an asset before they even get around to composing the final render. Many devs are creators who just want to get their ideas out there. I actually find myself thinking about the scene, the actors, the context of what I am creating when I am posing and rendering in DAZ. I doubt very much that I would feel that same creativity while I was trying to make a surfice texture on some new object in Blender. I have used Blender though to create custom assets from other 3D files I have acquired. And I intend to learn it more thoroughly in the future to take advantage of that ability.
... the one certainty I do know about DAZ, is that there is almost always more then one way to do the same thing.
All the stuff you just said above, could have been cut & paste from every game engine update for every 3D game for the past 30 years - probably since the OpenGL API was developed. Shit changes and we have to change with it and companies form partnerships and exclusivity agreements. *shrug*
As for Daz and Blender, the reason Daz is so popular is because of the asset library. People creating games don't want to spend XXX hours making an asset before they even get around to composing the final render. Many devs are creators who just want to get their ideas out there. I actually find myself thinking about the scene, the actors, the context of what I am creating when I am posing and rendering in DAZ. I doubt very much that I would feel that same creativity while I was trying to make a surfice texture on some new object in Blender. I have used Blender though to create custom assets from other 3D files I have acquired. And I intend to learn it more thoroughly in the future to take advantage of that ability.
The Diffeomorphic exporter exports pretty much every Daz asset to Blender very well, so there's no need to create anything yourself unless you need to.
There is no hyperbole in my original post. Daz is just that bad.
Just for shits and giggles, I opened up Blender 2.04 (from 20 years ago) the other day. I was astonished to find it had Bezier curve objects, even back then. Meanwhile, Daz Studio still doesn't have those, which leads to ridiculous shit like selling pose packs for carriages that don't have any reins--which take ten minutes to create in Blender with hooks, constraints, and Bezier curve objects.
This is, no joke, an official product for sale in the Daz store:
You must be registered to see the links
The promo pics are just a man holding invisible reins because it's too hard to make them in Daz Studio.
Please, tell me the "more than one way" to create ropes/reins/leashes in Daz Studio. Or, even just one way.
... the one certainty I do know about DAZ, is that there is almost always more then one way to do the same thing.
All the stuff you just said above, could have been cut & paste from every game engine update for every 3D game for the past 30 years - probably since the OpenGL API was developed. Shit changes and we have to change with it and companies form partnerships and exclusivity agreements. *shrug*
As for Daz and Blender, the reason Daz is so popular is because of the asset library. People creating games don't want to spend XXX hours making an asset before they even get around to composing the final render. Many devs are creators who just want to get their ideas out there. I actually find myself thinking about the scene, the actors, the context of what I am creating when I am posing and rendering in DAZ. I doubt very much that I would feel that same creativity while I was trying to make a surfice texture on some new object in Blender. I have used Blender though to create custom assets from other 3D files I have acquired. And I intend to learn it more thoroughly in the future to take advantage of that ability.
Well, what i know (and thats not much) is this.
Blender is heavily used in the modding community for creating assets. For example with the Sims series and i think Bethesda. But they only create things like clothing, shoes. Some maybe create even characters but i am not sure.
So in a way its conceivable to create things with Blender, although it requires really knowledge to use Blender. But i am fazinated alone by the knowledge that its a creation of one man. As opensource.
DAZ is (relatively) easy as you more or less smash things together and render. Plus your own creativity by adding unique expressions, poses and such.
I doubt i would make it to Blender.
The Diffeomorphic exporter exports pretty much every Daz asset to Blender very well, so there's no need to create anything yourself unless you need to.
There is no hyperbole in my original post. Daz is just that bad.
Just for shits and giggles, I opened up Blender 2.04 (from 20 years ago) the other day. I was astonished to find it had Bezier curve objects, even back then. Meanwhile, Daz Studio still doesn't have those, which leads to ridiculous shit like selling pose packs for carriages that don't have any reins--which take ten minutes to create in Blender with hooks, constraints, and Bezier curve objects.
Interesting. $16 Dollars for that.
DAZ is a money machine. Its free but the content is what is adding up.
Though i am not sure how to do it with Blender. My background is not in arts. though i wish it would.
The Diffeomorphic exporter exports pretty much every Daz asset to Blender very well, so there's no need to create anything yourself unless you need to.
There is no hyperbole in my original post. Daz is just that bad.
Just for shits and giggles, I opened up Blender 2.04 (from 20 years ago) the other day. I was astonished to find it had Bezier curve objects, even back then. Meanwhile, Daz Studio still doesn't have those, which leads to ridiculous shit like selling pose packs for carriages that don't have any reins--which take ten minutes to create in Blender with hooks, constraints, and Bezier curve objects.
Look. I agree that Blender seems to be a much better 3D creation tool, from a technical stand-point. But your post above started with a rant about how DAZ is centric around nVidea's Iray engine - and that's just a stale argument that I have seen time and time again over the whole course of development in 3DCG. It's the nature of the beast and complaining about it is a useless exercise, IMO. Think I was happy every time I bought an AMD or nVidea card just to play game "X", only to have the tech move in a different way a year latter? The only truly objective software development is open source, but that is hard to maintain when the talent keeps getting recruited for commercial houses.
And my comment about "more then one way" is being taken out of context by you. I meant it in regards to the OP's original problem here with lighting. He had blocked scene lights by selecting Dome only... sure ... but that didn't change the fact that he had mixed up settings for the spotlight anyhow and that a low Lumen setting wouldn't have made any difference, even if his Dome setting was correct. That's what I meant about "more than one way" - you can use HDRI's, area lights, spot lights, point lights, ghost lights, emmissives ... etc, etc.. You can get almost the same effects with a dozen different techniques in DAZ. No single one is the 'perfect' one.
As for those missing reins.... I could add them to a render in Photoshop in about 5 mins, with realistic shadowing and everything. So what? Has nothing to do with the OP's problems with charactersand memory usage or the lighting problems.
Honestly, if you hate DAZ that much, why you bothering to shadow threads with a DAZ prefix?
