Help for a noob....

[Biff the Adequate]

Well not really a noob, but in this case it best describes me.

I've got the Odysseon station set of models, but as they are Poser assets I'm having a nightmare lighting them as I've never really used Poser scenes like this before.

Do I need IRay items? Specific lights or render settings?

Your expert help would be greatly appreciated 🙂

And if this is in the wrong forum, apologies. Please feel free to move it!

Thanks

[jr96]

yes this should go in the general forum, maybe an admin can move it. Anyway you should install your assets and find them in your runtime library, under poser items in DAZ, there are 2 main categories, items native to DAZ and stuff that is for poser but that can be used in daz. I discovered that almost everything can work in daz even if it says poser only and not for daz, the colours may be somewhat different but the 3d items will load and you can render them, you can also apply your own custom materials to surfaces for better results, but this may be a bit advanced if you have just started. hope it is of some help.

[Biff the Adequate]

@Jr96 Cheers 🙂

I can get it all to load and all the textures and surfaces are there but it's lighting it to render it that is giving me grief. The lights included (Poser lights) don't seem to actually light anything although it's possibly me doing something wrong. Like I said, native DAZ I'm fine with, but Poser into Daz not so LOL

Just FYI, the Odysseon station items are all interiors.

[Cynthia]

You can go one of two ways with those sets, the so called lights in these poser sets suck, even if lit they don't work for squat. so you have to improvise.

1) Create a bunch of primative balls (spheres), shrink them down to around 10%. move them all over the set up around the ceiling area (this is the most time consuming part but well worth it later, and a good skill to have for lighting other older Poser sets.

For the Primatives: Set opacity to .0001 and light them up. the balls wont be seen but will give off light.

Or the other way : create a few primative planes, make them long and narrow but not rail thin. line up up along the ceiling and spread out: then repeat the above idea. Set opacity to .0001 and light them up.

by light them up I mean set them up like this.
emission color to white (1.00 1.00 and 1.00) Emission temperature set to 6550 (pure white). Set Luminance Units to Kcd/m^2 and the Luminance to 100 and work the luminance level up to say 300 and go from there.

Why use white? you can use Gimp or Photoshop later on and tint the scene as needed for that ideal coloring. Yellow/orange for a warm comforting scene. Blueish for scifi. All of Hollywood does that and they do it on purpose do draw the viewer in.

I hope that all works.
And we're all noobs so don't sweat it.

C.

[BamBoozler90]

I thought Poser lights were supposed to convert Iray when used, but I guess not. Or it could be that they are too dim to see much. The default values on lights are super low compared to what they need to be visible. You can try turning up the values. The numbers can get quite comical if using the base unit.

You have two issues. One is that all the materials in the scene are made for 3DL and not Iray, so they may look bad in Iray until you convert them. There are a ton of products that do this task for you to help out.
As for lights you can get a variety of things to help there. You can create your own, or use some from products. Ghost Lights can help add extra light in a dark room and fill things in.

When lighting think of it from a photographer's view. Iray lights are realistic, so you can apply many ideas from real lighting to Iray if you have any experience with that.

It may be possible to cheat a bit. You can hide a wall to let HDRI light in the room. It is also possible make light that can pass through walls with is called a Iray Section Plane. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCJfIlk-4Yo

So you can do any of these things.

[Biff the Adequate]

Cynthia you are a star!!

I was mucking about with emissives and all sorts of rubbish but THAT helps me loads!! Thank you 🙂

And thanks to you too BamBoozler90!!

[Frank21]

The best way of lighting any scene is with an HDRI and a ghostlight. Emissives will slow your renders down quite a bit. As for materials, In DS convert all the surfaces using the Iray Uber Base, then turn down the Glossy Layer Weight and Specularity. I've saved an Uber Iray base shader that has that turned down already so I can hold Ctrl and apply without it changing the texture maps. If you just apply the Uber shader you will lose the tiling sliders which is a pain if you want to tile a surface.

[Cynthia]

@frank21 or anyone else for that matter.

I'm always learning and the process I described is a ghost light but isn't a ghost light still an emissive light but just made nearly invisible? Or am I over thinking this?

I'm curious how you would use an HDRI light to light the inside of the Odysseon station sets. The reason being there isn't a ceiling that can be eliminated to allow HDRI lighting into the closed set. the materials for this set are all over the place, being that the texture for many of the pipe junctions are also the same material for the ceiling. removal of those textures causes gaps in the pipes, doors and wall pieces.

So what this all boils down to use ghostlights/hidden emmissives is a given but how does an HDRI light penetrate a solid wall or ceiling? Am I missing something that's new?

Help a Noob out.

R/
Cynthia

[Frank21]

Technically Ghost Lights are emissive but they have a very simple geometry which speeds up renders. If you apply an emissive surface shader to objects with more complex geometry rendering will slow down considerably. Not being able to remove a ceiling is a pain in the arse if you want to use an HDRI, but you could use something like Paper Tiger's HDRI X-Ray Camera to let the HDRI light inside.

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