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I have two questions to the experienced DAZ users.
1. How do you light up an indoor scene (no windows/doors) so that both chars and scene is equally lighted (no washed out or brighten scene/char) like in those 3d comics?
2. Is there any way to simulate fluid in daz like this picture? like dforce or fluidos?
https://new.imagehostx.com/upload/2025/12/20/01_1766264813.jpgWhat I am looking for is to have a liquid puddle over a surface and let it drop/drape over that surface.
1. Create a plane or planes and light them using the Iray emissive uber shaders. Or you can use the DS lighting system. Simply create a new spotlght / distant light etc, use the emissive shader and move them around until you are happy.
2. Blender is better. You can use Fluid Painter from here https://zonegfx.com/fluid-painter-1-4-0-update-for-blender-3-14-05-0/
If you want to go the blender route you just install Fluid Painter as an Add-on, lots of info out there how to do this. Then you can export your character as an OBJ from DAZ and drip the goo wherever you like. Export back to DAZ as an OBJ and in DAZ format will give you an object where you intially placed it in blender, like the head. All you have to do then is use the shader you want on that object. Fluid Painter has all the flavors and the materials you need.
For the first question, maybe the easiest way could be use any HDRI that fits your character's illumination, and to avoid the room blocking the light source, using a "iray section plane node" to make any section of the room invisible and 'transparent' so light can reach your characters.
https://daz3dfans.com/blog/tutorial/daz-studio-tutorial-iray-section-nodeFor the second one, I'd use a prop instead of simulating. There are many options, this one is an example:
https://www.daz3d.com/liquid-armor-for-genesis-8-femalesOr what @1138adrianmartinez said to make the process easier 🙂
If making a render in a closed room, don't forget you will only have part of the room rendered. So a good trick is to hide the walls not on display, and eventually the ceiling if your camera angle doesn't cover it. You can aslo hide specific parts of it using the geometry tool. Of course you will have to use lightning, but it will sure help the scene not being too dark and will also help with render time.
Thanks for the suggestions.
1.Don't want to goon blender yet, hoping to use something inside DAZ. Liquid armor is a good suggestion, but it's not versatile. I was looking for something that will drip over any surface (over some props too)
2. I used to use the HDRI and sun-sky and cut plane before, but currently trying to learn to do it without them. Surely there are some way to light up indoor scene equally with model without HDRI/cutting the room.
3. Other thing I tried: render the scene and models separately and joined them later.
Never used IRAY ghost light before. Can that help?
This might be useful to you:
(https://zonegfx.com/gnbd-honey-vol-2-2/)
Other then that you might want to consider using dForce NSFW goops and gobs then apply shaders to them to get the look your after.
These mec4d pbs shaders are some of my favorite:
(https://zonegfx.com/?s=mec4d+pbs)There's tons of really good tutorials on indoor lighting, 3-point/ 5-point etc. Just search some and spend time following one, I'm sure you'll pick up some good info from some of the pro's that do these.
(https://www.daz3d.com/ds-iray-emissive-surfaces-mastery-course)
(https://zonegfx.com/ds-iray-emissive-surfaces-mastery-course/)(https://www.daz3d.com/how-to-light-interiors-like-a-pro--video-tutorial)
(https://zonegfx.com/how-to-light-interiors-like-a-pro-video-tutorial-2/)Here's a quick and easy solution...more or less.
A very high resolution (200?) plane simulated over the surface to be spilled upon. Create a displacement map (white on black) in the shape of a spilled liquid. Apply it to the plane's displacement. Adjust for thickness*. Use the same displacement map as your opacity cutout. Apply an appropriate shader. Simulate.
Adjust the simulation factors in the surface tab to make the 'spill' less fabric-like or it will look like an oddly-shaped table cloth. It's hot-or-miss adjusting those factors, imo.
*Keep in mind that without a gradient the edges of the displacement map will be sharp rather than rounded like water surface tension. I'd suggest a very narrow/tight gradient. The opacity cutout may not need the gradient.
This literally only takes a few moments to set up a test run. Once you try it, adjust your 'spill' map until you get the hang of what shape you're looking for.
About lighting indoor spaces and using section planes as 1138adrianmartinez mentioned, I think this thread started by d0gg0d could interest you. The linked video really blew my mind:
To light interiors, I use a ghost light plane on the ceiling. This simulates light bouncing off the ceiling naturally. Then add light sources such as lamps etc. Finally, I add a ring light to my camera rig which is an emissive torus around the camera lens, to add illumination to people. Finally, HDRI is always ran for lighting from the windows.
I recommend Camera Cutaway from Riversoft Art. It adds section planes to reduce polygon count, but has a script to automatically block outdoor light as if the walls in a room were still there. It is a wonderful tool.Lots of interesting ideas. @doradopulido, the ring light u mentioned, is it from any product?
I am trying to avoid any scripts as I am using DAZ 2025 version, and going back and forth between Daz 4 and 2025 is pretty annoying just for each test render.
@john09
No script for the ring light, just make a torus primitive, parent it to the camera, adjust the shape as needed like a real ring light, add emissive light on the surfaces tab of the torus. Takes some experimenting but it works as an adjustable headlight.
I haven't used DAZ 2025, assuming you've got a 50 Series card then? They changed the way ghost lights worked in version 4.2X. Basically you're creating an emissive surface on a primitive and making the primitive itself invisible while the light still effects the scene.
Not sure if they work on 2025, but Riversoft Art's scripts are absolutely key. Look At Me, Camera Cut Away, Scene Cut Away, Now-Crowd-Billboards etc.Good suggestions Shawn, though I've heard that adding emissive to solid objects slows render times quite a bit. The good thing about ghost lights is that they're only one poly thick to minimize this. But I guess a privative torus is so low poly (I think around 300 polys) it may not make much of a difference anyway.
@doradopulido, Look At Me, Camera Cut Away, Scene Cut Away doesn't work on 2025 version. Do you have any well-lit indoor scene rendered? curious about how they look and how long they take to render.
@Frank22 I hadn't considered the poly count of the torus but that is a good call. I wonder if it would make it faster to create a ring light via an alpha map on a single poly plane?
@john09 I'm not the best at rendering but people seem to enjoy my VN work. You should probably look into whoever is developing your favorite games about how they light a scene... but this is how I do it. Super simple, just add lights as needed. Only use a light plane on the ceiling if the window light isn't enough.As for render times, I don't pay attention to that any more. All rendering is done via render queue at night. Render times will always be an enemy, so I only render while sleeping. Shouldn't be an issue with a properly set up scene.
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