DAZ3D - Beginner Questions

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Re: DAZ3D - Beginner Questions

Postby MaxCarna » Fri, 17Oct06 09:28

lydia02 wrote:Is there someone else I need to check to verify that the render is all iray? Tlaero posted that she thought my first render was 3delight.


In the Render Painel, Editor tab, if the engine is set to NVIDIA Iray it means Iray will be used to process your scene. Iray is a computational process but also determines your light system, as it apply the real lights concept.

Comparing the two in a macro view, in 3Delight you have a Skydome which is a very large finite object, semi sphere, to represent the horizon. The main light sources are inside the object like other objects.

In Iray the light come from outside as an abstract source. If you put a Skydome object for example, everything will be dark, because it is a object blocking the light. To represent the horizon in Iray you apply HDRI images on the render settings, you can see them at editing only on render. They cause an effect of infinite horizon, what seem more close to reality. This is the main difference that rises other differences in the way objects are processed in the scene.

Now, we also need to check surfaces. Almost every existing surface has two versions: RSL for 3Delight and MDL for Iray (you can see these options specially on hair materials). Iray work better if all surfaces are optimized for it. If the surface don't have those options, you can always convert them to Iray applying Iray Uber:
1) Select a figure or prop on the scene painel.
2) Go to the surface painel and expand the object to see its surfaces.
3) Select all surfaces under the object.
4) Go to the Content Library, expand My Daz 3D Library -> Shader Presets -> Iray -> Daz Uber.
5) Double click on !Iray Uber Base.
6) This will make the surface look strange on the Editor, but after render, usually it looks just the same, identical. The diference now is that the surfaces parameters will be very different and Iray engine will work better.

Back to light:
You already will have a large distant light embedded on Iray. You control it in the Render Settings -> Environment. Change Dome Rotation, Environment intensity and so.
If you add a Distant Light object, it means you now have a second distant light source, which you will control on the Lights painel. Maybe you are only changing the second source. To disable the first one you need to change Environment Mode from "Dome and Scene" to "Scene only".
Spotlights has a very narrow focus, they seem more artificial.

If you will allow me to suggest a laboratory:
1. Disable the dome light.
2. Disable the camera headlamp.
3. Create a Linear Point Light in the front/right of the figure.
4. On Lights painel, increase the intensity to something like 8.000%, go testing until the point you like.
5. This will be your Key Light, representing the main light source.

6. Create another Linear Point Light in the front/left of the figure.
7. Increase the intensity to something like 4.000%
8. This will be your Fill Light, just to complete the gaps.

9. Create the Third Linear Point Light behind the figure, like the figure is hiding it from the camera.
10. Increase the intensity to something like 12.000%.
11. This will be your Rim Light, this light will highlight the character and illuminate the other objects

Now just go changing intensity, temperature, pose... and render, to going to see the results.
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Re: DAZ3D - Beginner Questions

Postby Mortze » Fri, 17Oct06 15:19

First, if you want to render with the Iray engine you have to know that you must have a good Graphic Card (GPU), NVIDIA based. It only works with those cards.
You must mount your scene and apply the IRay Uber shader like MaxCarna explained. It will avoid weird texture's rendering.
Then, make sure you have the IRay rendering set. You'll do that in the Render Settings Tab. If you don't have it in your viewport just call it with Window/Panes/Render Settings and parent it somewhere in your viewport. It should always be there, along with Surfaces, Scene, Parameters, and Content Library.
In the Render Settings tab go first to Advanced (in the upper part) and choose your GPUs. Also choose Optix Prime acceleration.
Then go to the Editor section and right above Editor choose your engine: NVIDIA IRay. Now you're set to render in IRAY.

Now, let's take a look at the most important settings. There are the ones you will most certainly deal with at this early stage; General, Progressive Rendering, Tone Mapping, and Environment.

General:
It sets your picture ration and the destination of the rendered picture. There are presets that you can choose in the Dimension Preset, or you can make it custom by putting the Heigth and Width in pixels, and the Ratio.
To see the immediate result of your choice here's a trick. Place a camera in the scene. Choose Camera 1 view and click on the 4 small horizontal lines with an arrow at the right of the view. Choose Show Aspect Frame. It will show you how the picture ratio will be and you can place your camera and pose your model easily without having to render each time.

Progressive Rendering:
This will define how many samples (calculations for short) IRay will do. More samples mean better quality but also more rendering time. Leave it at default and ask us about it if you see your pics are too noisy, if they have a lot of sand grains.

Tone Mapping:
This emulates a real camera settings. Shutter speed, F/Stop, Vignette effect, etc. Unless you understand photography basic principles, we'll leave this at Default for now.

Environment:
This sets your lighting method. There are 4, opted in the Environment Mode: Dome and Scene, Dome only, Sun-Sky and Scene only. Lets see the 4:
- Sun-Sky makes a dome around your scene that is spread into infinity. You'll never touch the dome. The dome simulates a clear sky during the day and it sets a point in the dome for the sun. The light will come from that sun and bounces around the dome and the scene. Unfortunately it doesn't allow you to put mesh lights (spotlights and pointlights in the scene).They won't render.
- Dome and Scene is similar in the way it creates also a dome around your scene but here you can put an HDRI image in it. A sunny day, a cloudy day, a night environment, a bedroom, any HDRI. The light will come from the HDRI and bounce around your scene. Here you can put mesh lights to calibrate your scene to your tastes.
- Dome only is the same as above but doesn't allow you to put mesh lights in the scene. This mode is useless (or redundant) in my opinion. I only use the other 3.
- Scene Only doesn't have an environment light. There isn't light coming out of a dome. It's pure black by default. You use this when you want a scene illuminated only by the mesh lights you put in it. I usually use this for studio portraits.

I mostly use Dome and Scene and Scene only. I also use Sun-Sky for a quick render.

Try Sun-Sky and Dome and Scene first.

There are further options in both modes like rotate the dome, enhance its intensity, make the sun shine brighter, place the sun according to hour and date. Play around with it. It's fun. Use the NVIDIA IRay preview mode to see simultaneously your changes.


About the bloom effect make sure you haven't opted for the Blooming Filter in the Editor/Filtering window in Render Settings.


And lastly, you say you weren't able to match the white light with the spotlight. That looks like a light temperature issue. In that spotlight, go to Light and set the temperature 6500ºC or higher. Above this temperature the light will be white and even blue (depending on the lumens), below that temperature it tends to drop to yellow, orange and then red.
The yellow/orange colour on the right of her face indicates me that either the temperature is too low or you choose an orange colour for the light.
Since the main light comes from her left, any fill light (check MaxCarna post above) should be subtle, not strong, unless there is an explanation for otherwise (like a fireplace at her right or something).


One last thing, I never ever use a Distant Light in IRay. I think it lacks control. If I want to simulate the sun I use either Sun-Sky mode or Dome and Scene and put a spotlight far far away for the sun.
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Re: DAZ3D - Beginner Questions

Postby GDS » Sat, 17Oct07 16:51

Talking about Iray,
I'm thinking in steeping up from 3DL to Iray, can someone give me good rendering times for the 1080 vs 1080ti?
I can fit only one on my PC.
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Re: DAZ3D - Beginner Questions

Postby MaxCarna » Sat, 17Oct07 18:04

GDS wrote:Talking about Iray,
I'm thinking in steeping up from 3DL to Iray, can someone give me good rendering times for the 1080 vs 1080ti?
I can fit only one on my PC.


I believe that just for the memory size I would go with 1080ti, 8gb to 11gb. 1080 has the same size of 1070.

The ability to process larger scenes for me, it's more important then the rendering time. But there is a Iray official benchmark where 1080ti has the same time of Tesla P100
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Re: DAZ3D - Beginner Questions

Postby GDS » Sun, 17Oct08 11:33

MaxCarna wrote:
GDS wrote:Talking about Iray,
I'm thinking in steeping up from 3DL to Iray, can someone give me good rendering times for the 1080 vs 1080ti?
I can fit only one on my PC.


I believe that just for the memory size I would go with 1080ti, 8gb to 11gb. 1080 has the same size of 1070.

The ability to process larger scenes for me, it's more important then the rendering time. But there is a Iray official benchmark where 1080ti has the same time of Tesla P100

Wait what? same render time?
On Dazforum the people with gtx1080ti refuse to post benchmarks.
But shouldn't the higher amount of cuda give faster renders?
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Re: DAZ3D - Beginner Questions

Postby MaxCarna » Mon, 17Oct09 02:26

I found this one for 3 quarter of 2016

https://www.migenius.com/products/nvidi ... rks-2016-3

I was wrong Telsa is still ahead, but is the same as Titan X Pascal and better than any other GPU.
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Re: DAZ3D - Beginner Questions

Postby GDS » Mon, 17Oct09 22:07

MaxCarna wrote:I found this one for 3 quarter of 2016

https://www.migenius.com/products/nvidi ... rks-2016-3

I was wrong Telsa is still ahead, but is the same as Titan X Pascal and better than any other GPU.

Thanks, I googled my ass out and didn't found any real comparison.
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Re: DAZ3D - Beginner Questions

Postby lydia02 » Sun, 17Oct29 23:11

Thanks again for all of the assistance. Hopefully I've managed to capture what you have shared. Latest render below. Please let me know your impressions on it. Thanks.

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Re: DAZ3D - Beginner Questions

Postby MaxCarna » Mon, 17Oct30 01:40

lydia02 wrote:Thanks again for all of the assistance. Hopefully I've managed to capture what you have shared. Latest render below. Please let me know your impressions on it. Thanks.

Image


Lydia,

I think there has been a great improvement, for amateur eyes like mine, I can not put any faults. Let's wait for the opinion of professionals :)
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Re: DAZ3D - Beginner Questions

Postby Eldormain » Tue, 17Oct31 22:37

Hi lydia02

I am newer in this field then MaxCarna. However, I have been involved with the arts for years. I agree, I am seeing good improvement as well. She looks to be easily walking or coming to a stop, a subtle expression on her face (approaching someone she is pleased to see, perhaps), the lighting is looking better too. If I were to be nitpicky the only thing that stands out is her braid clipping through her over-alls strap.

Comparing to the original promo pic you initially submitted, the next challenge would be to soften the shadows a little. It looks like you are on the right track here. Keep at it.

Eldormain.

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Re: DAZ3D - Beginner Questions

Postby lydia02 » Sat, 17Nov04 16:23

MaxCarna

Some clarifications on your setup suggestions. You suggest linear point lights and increase the first light intensity "something like 8.000%". Starting point for intensity is 100%. So are you saying increase it to 108% for the starting point? Thanks for all the help.


Eldormain

Great to hear that the pose and particularly the expression improved. Having a hard time finding expressions that I like. Her braid did get lost in her overalls strap as you say. Was trying to adjust the hair and it got in the way. In regards to lighting, to me, it looks like the front of her legs are a little too bright. And on her left side would be the shadows you refer to. Is this what you are referring to are am I missing something? Thanks for your comments/suggestions.
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Re: DAZ3D - Beginner Questions

Postby Eldormain » Sat, 17Nov04 23:16

lydia02 wrote:
Eldormain

Great to hear that the pose and particularly the expression improved. Having a hard time finding expressions that I like. Her braid did get lost in her overalls strap as you say. Was trying to adjust the hair and it got in the way. In regards to lighting, to me, it looks like the front of her legs are a little too bright. And on her left side would be the shadows you refer to. Is this what you are referring to are am I missing something? Thanks for your comments/suggestions.


Regarding the clipping hair, sometimes it's a give and take between assets involved. In other words, sometimes you need to adjust the strap, the hair, and even the pose. Small adjustments to each might help. Ultimately, as you know, the goal is to make them look as natural as possible.

With the lighting, I don't mind the brightness on the legs but I am a little biased as I like legs. However, the end goal is what you had in mind or are trying to accomplish. I have spent unknown hours tweaking lighting to try to get the effect I wanted. In one case I had been using Sun-Sky Only and needed to switch to Dome and Scene for one shot but needed it to look the same as the Sun-Sky Only (ie: same shadowing and angles). It was a bit of a pain but a really good learning experience. Let's look at the shadow on her neck of the braid, the shadow is very defined and crisp. Most of the time you only see that on super bright days or under bright lights. In an outdoor setting that shadow would be more diffused and often they try to accomplish the same thing with indoor lighting for photo shoots.

I would love to be more specific for you to be able to suggest steps, however, most of what I do is simply trial and error. I tweak and tweak until I accomplish what I had in mind or give up the setup to try something different. There are others here who do have the level of knowledge that would allow them to offer specific examples. I have picked up tid-bits from videos at Something-Tube. It's a little frustrating digging through them, though, as many are for older/different versions.

Eldormain

P: Another quick note that can effect things, monitor settings. Mortze recently dealt with a brightness issue. Some folk were saying his images tended to be too dark. I believe he had messed with his monitors settings to alter this. I mention this as something to keep in mind for the future (I'm not seeing this as a potential issue for you here). I just know that nearly every time I get a new monitor I lessen the default brightness which could effect how others see my work. Just something to keep in mind if you have ever messed with your monitors settings. (a bit abstract)

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Re: DAZ3D - Beginner Questions

Postby MaxCarna » Sun, 17Nov05 03:39

lydia02 wrote:MaxCarna

Some clarifications on your setup suggestions. You suggest linear point lights and increase the first light intensity "something like 8.000%". Starting point for intensity is 100%. So are you saying increase it to 108% for the starting point? Thanks for all the help.



Lydia,

Sorry, in Brazil we use '.' as thousand separator, is in fact 8000%. You will see, 100% as almost nothing, like a firefly.

But remember that the value is capped at 200% you must click in the gear icon and change the max value.
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Re: DAZ3D - Beginner Questions

Postby lydia02 » Sun, 17Nov05 18:25

Eldormain wrote:Regarding the clipping hair, sometimes it's a give and take between assets involved. In other words, sometimes you need to adjust the strap, the hair, and even the pose. Small adjustments to each might help. Ultimately, as you know, the goal is to make them look as natural as possible.


I like this hair style for her but it is too much in her face for me. The braid issue was the result of playing around with the various adjustment settings for the hair. Zoned in on the lighting so missing various elements of the render. Should be able to pick up on them more with practice.

Eldormain wrote:With the lighting, I don't mind the brightness on the legs but I am a little biased as I like legs. However, the end goal is what you had in mind or are trying to accomplish. I have spent unknown hours tweaking lighting to try to get the effect I wanted. In one case I had been using Sun-Sky Only and needed to switch to Dome and Scene for one shot but needed it to look the same as the Sun-Sky Only (ie: same shadowing and angles). It was a bit of a pain but a really good learning experience. Let's look at the shadow on her neck of the braid, the shadow is very defined and crisp. Most of the time you only see that on super bright days or under bright lights. In an outdoor setting that shadow would be more diffused and often they try to accomplish the same thing with indoor lighting for photo shoots.


The legs in front do look a bit shiny to me. Thinking to adjust the lumuns on it and add a side light to take the shadows off the leg on her left. Good thing I asked about the shadows you mentioned since I was thinking it was the legs. Hadn't noticed the braid shadow. Imagine that would be addressed by adjusting the angle of the light.

Eldormain wrote:I would love to be more specific for you to be able to suggest steps, however, most of what I do is simply trial and error. I tweak and tweak until I accomplish what I had in mind or give up the setup to try something different. There are others here who do have the level of knowledge that would allow them to offer specific examples. I have picked up tid-bits from videos at Something-Tube. It's a little frustrating digging through them, though, as many are for older/different versions.


Sounds like we have had similar experiences. Very trial and error and consulting the tube for guidance. The different versions of daz studio that they use is confusing for someone still trying to learn where everything is. Thanks again for comments and providing another set of eyes to measure strength/weakness of the render.
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Re: DAZ3D - Beginner Questions

Postby lydia02 » Sun, 17Nov05 18:33

MaxCarna wrote:
Lydia,

Sorry, in Brazil we use '.' as thousand separator, is in fact 8000%. You will see, 100% as almost nothing, like a firefly.

But remember that the value is capped at 200% you must click in the gear icon and change the max value.


Thanks. Pretty much came to the same conclusion. Clicked on the gear to override the 200% cap and entered 8,000. But it reset to 200 again for some reason. Interested to work with the linear point light and see how it compares to the spot light that was suggested on the tube.
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