Daz Your Default Daz Light Setup?

[Revel!]

I've been reading tons and tons of guides and watching tons of youtube videos about using Daz Studio, specifically lighting and render settings. But one thing I've noticed is that there's waaay too many different ways of doing things. You've got the built-in spotlights, emissive planes, ghost lights, HDRIs, and I've even seen some videos where the guy was making emissive planes in the shape of actual real-world photography lights (like with a reflective actual soft box). There's a lot of contradictory information out there about how these methods affect render times, as well. So I have absolutely no clue about which method should be my go-to method.

I've gotten a solid grasp of the lighting basics - softer shadows, catch lights, highlights, etc. But I'm really struggling with just choosing which method to use for lighting my scenes because there's just too many different ways to do it! Obviously, different scenes require specific tweaking or entirely different methods sometimes, but I'm just talking about the default method to use and then changing things up from there if/when the situation requires.

So what is YOUR default, go-to method for lighting in Daz?

• Do you use the built-in spotlights? If so, how many and where?
• Do you use emissive planes instead?
• How do you use ghost lights?
• Do you use a 3-point or 4-point light system, or something else entirely?
• Do you use any premade lighting packages?

How about postwork?? Do you edit your images in Photoshop after rendering? If so, do you do it will all the images or just specific ones?

 

[mickydoo]

I use an emission plane for every indoor scene, for a few reasons -

It is 3000 times quicker to set up
You only need one (excluding any ghost lights)
The shadow is as nowhere near as harsh
I'm not very good at using spotlights

The way I do it is the 100% correct way to do it, just as everybody else's method is

Really but, there is no right way, just wrong ways, when it doesn't work it's wrong and vice versa

And every image goes to photoshop, levels is godsend to make things look better in 2 seconds, I also use the camera raw filter to adjust the clarity a touch and the vibrance. The clarity can be really good but start of low, like 5 and go up.

 

[KlodowWW]

Personally I use an HDRI with some spotlights, and I use PS a lot. For me post work is vital to any image you render, to give it your "style".

 

[recreation]

I usually start out with only a hdri, then add other lights depending on the scene. Most of my game render have at least one ghostlight and at least one spotlight, but I use a lot of 3-point lights as well.
I'm not a big fan of "everything post" so most of my render wont see any post aside from fixing small stuff.

 

[Deleted member 1121028]

• Do you use the built-in spotlights? If so, how many and where?
• Do you use emissive planes instead?
• How do you use ghost lights?
• Do you use a 3-point or 4-point light system, or something else entirely?
• Do you use any premade lighting packages?

How about postwork?? Do you edit your images in Photoshop after rendering? If so, do you do it will all the images or just specific ones?

For most VN-like scene I use an HDRI + 2 rectangle spotlights with an Iray interior cam for cheap 3-point and speedy lazy render. I don't use emissive nor 'ghost lights' very often as spotlights offer way more control and are quicker to setup (1st person view yay!). Feel like sometime 3-point lights is a bit over-used at the expense of more dramatic, contrasting nuance. Sometime cheaper is better imo.

I hated postwork with a passion until I tried Lightroom. Now I postwork all renders with it (workflow is super fast) .

 

[Ashenthorn]

I do mostly pinups so I have a "startup document" saved with Second Circle lights:

You must be registered to see the links