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Workflow: Lighting in Dungeon

emarukk's avatar
By emarukk
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I got a lot of questions about indoor lighting.

Update: 2019-02-16 - Iray Light Manager Pro and material selection script

Here is small workflow and demonstration for different methods I like to use.
Sweet Casia will assist us.

Let's do following scene:
DAZ Studio 4.10, Serious Dungeon and Casia with torch from DM's Queen's Chamber. All materials and rendering with Iray.

Dungeron Lighting by emarukkTone Mapping by emarukk


Here are settings for light. I use "Scene only" so HDRI is not mixing my settings.
I also leave Tone Mapping about 120/8 ... here it is 120/6. I had time when I made real camera settings and tried to use real lumenes for different lights... but that made me nearly to dumb DAZ and forgot whole 3D.
Now I just don't give shit about realism. I just set camera to my standard and I know how to set initial values for lights. Then fine tuning.

Candles are 8500 kcd/m^2
Torch is 20 000 kcd/m^2

You will see that in the end all values are very different.


Serious Dungeon Candle Light by emarukkdmc Torch Light by emarukk

Scene renders like this with available lights. It goes more bright with more iterations but I don't want to render rest of the week.
Shall we add some fill light?

Casia with torch by emarukk

Let's start with torch. I add point light on top of the flame.

Point Light Visible Emiter 200 000lm by emarukk

Now shadows are very sharp. I will make point light geometry to sphere:

Point Light Sphere Visible Emiter 200 000lm by emarukk

I will turn "Render Emiter" to "Off". Nice but emiter interacts with surrounding and leaves strange halo. I could move light little bit up and problem is solved.

Point Light Sphere Hide Emiter 200 000lm by emarukk

Some time ago I fell in love with Ghost light after recommendation form DonKevinMartin
Here is Ghost light form Iray Ghost Light Kit 2 on top of the pole. It works nice around the flame but if I add volumetric light it will make trouble with orb of this size.
Then I would make Geoshell to staff and... let's not there. It is dark place.

Iray Ghost Light Kit 2 Sphere set-up by emarukk

Renders very nice.

Iray Ghost Light Kit 2 Sphere by emarukk

Let's play with fill lights.

Here is how we can make "poor man's Ghost light" I use that a lot.

Add plane and make it emissive

Fill light - 02 by emarukk


Nice but.... but... I could move it out from scene and fine. But I'm not going to do that. I will set "Cut-out opacity" to low

Fill light - 03 by emarukk

BOOOOM 0.0002 and plane vanishes leaving nice light to the scene.

Fill light - 04 by emarukk

I could move plane or change size in a way that it suits to scene.


Fill light - 06 by emarukk

Here is update. I spend money to www.daz3d.com/iray-light-manag… that is in discount. Quite handy tool to tune and balance several lights. I have been using my own script to select all lights with defined tag but this helps a lot in final tuning.
What I did:
 - Increase brightness a lot. Just about to burn bright surfaces.
 - Moved my hand made ghost light more to right and lifted up not to get funny reflection to floor.
 - Added ghost fill ligth to camera - but I turned that to 0 becuase I want to have effect from torch and candles in surrounding.

Iray Light Manager Pro by emarukk


Here is the script I use to select surface. To use this you have to tag surfaces you want to select once. If there is several candle with light and torches you can tag emissive material as "Candle" and "Torch".
I modify "Candle" or "Torch" to MODIFY MEEEEE and run the script. Now when you go to material screen all tagget surfaces are selectted. Handy with 100 candles ;-). <- I would do 100 candles as Node instances. Then I need to modify only one object and settings are copied to instances.

Script:

//Start
 
 function selectSurfaceByTag(sSelectedTag) 
{
   var nSelected = Scene.getNumNodes();
   for (var i=0; i < nSelected; i++)
  {
       var oNode = Scene.getNode(i);
       oNode.select(false);
       var oObj = oNode.getObject();
       if ( ! oObj ) continue;
       var nShapes = oObj.getNumShapes();
       for (var j = 0; j < nShapes; j++)
          {
           oShape = oObj.getShape(j);
           if (! oShape ) continue;
           var nMats = oShape.getNumMaterials();
           for (var k = 0; k < nMats; k++)
              {
               var oMaterial = oShape.getMaterial(k);
               if ( ! oMaterial ) continue;
               var aTags = oMaterial.getTags();
               if ( aTags.indexOf( sSelectedTag ) >= 0 )
                   {
                   oMaterial.select( true );
                   oNode.select(true);
                    }
               else
                   {
                   oMaterial.select( false );
               }
           }
       }
   }
}
selectSurfaceByTag("MODIFY MEEEEE");

//End






I hope this answered to most of the questions


























Update: 2019-02-16 - more light set-ups
Published:   |  Mature
© 2019 - 2020 emarukk
Comments20
UltimateFemReferance's avatar
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ODastein's avatar
I had read that at the time, and I'm reading it again with interest. 

But what "Render emitter" does??
emarukk's avatar
emarukkHobbyist Digital Artist

When you use point light with dimensions it will show an as large ball of light. When you turn Render Emitter off that makes light source invisible.

ODastein's avatar
Oh! Never used a sphere, but I remember having this problem with disks. I didn't know you could delete the disk, so I moved the light somewhere else where it wasn't visible. 

Thank you for the tip. 
ODastein's avatar
Very interesting tutorial. It never occurred to me that you could make an emissive surface invisible. Makes sense, but since it's not possible in real life, I guess it never crossed my mind. I also bookmarked "Iray light manager", that seems to be an interesting product. I don't even want to *think* of scripts, though. But then again, I've no intent to put 100 candles in a scene...:-o

Thank you.
emarukk's avatar
emarukkHobbyist Digital Artist
You are welcome!

That pointlight part is also very nice. Easy to get a rid of sharp shadows.
I once made emissive surface invisible by accident and then start to study what happened.
I discovered couple of text that supported my observation.
That has been in use since that.

If you place 100 candles to scene make those as Node instances... then you modify just one and all other follow your settings ;)
ODastein's avatar
Yes, I read recently that making duplicate items instances reduced significantly render time. I just tried it recently with ice cubes in an image I'm yet to finish. 

I was already using point lights. But I've been using them as they are, and never made them into a sphere, for instance. Not sure what it changes...
emarukk's avatar
emarukkHobbyist Digital Artist
It is possible to put much more shit to scene when using instances.

When you make point light to sphere shadows will go softer.

See these pictures.

Point Light Visible Emiter 200 000lm by emarukk   Point Light Sphere Visible Emiter 200 000lm by emarukk  
ODastein's avatar
I see. A big difference, indeed. Thanks for the tip, I'll try to remember.
emarukk's avatar
emarukkHobbyist Digital Artist
You are welcome!
Magnus-Strindboem's avatar
Magnus-StrindboemHobbyist Digital Artist
Thanks for sharing, great to get a look at your workflow!

Clap Clap Clap +fav 
emarukk's avatar
emarukkHobbyist Digital Artist
Thank you!

I will update this little bit tomorrow. Now I added material selection script that I like to use when there is a lot of lights in the scene.
Also implemented new tool to control lights and it feels very good!
DonKevinMartin's avatar
DonKevinMartinHobbyist Digital Artist
Some good tips in here!  I look forward to experimenting with them!  Thanks for sharing.
emarukk's avatar
emarukkHobbyist Digital Artist
I added handy script.
emarukk's avatar
emarukkHobbyist Digital Artist
You are welcome!

I wish this is helpful.

For faster render I could use much more light and then make picture dark in photoshop.
Markkus3D's avatar
Markkus3DHobbyist Digital Artist
Awesome, thanks for this tutorial, I have always problem with lights. I try to transpose this to POSER :D
emarukk's avatar
emarukkHobbyist Digital Artist
I wish this can help. Also I had big problem until come around with this. When I learned to use 'ghost lights' life got easier.

Other funny was that I stop try to mimic real world light and camera settings. I keep camera how it is and then balance lights according on that.
Markkus3D's avatar
Markkus3DHobbyist Digital Artist
I do now the same, to frustrated to don't find the right light that was my mind.
Thanks again Emarukk.

emarukk's avatar
emarukkHobbyist Digital Artist
You are welcome. It is easier to establish own standard then try to follow reality ;)
redsquid's avatar
Informative! Thank you! If I may ask, what 3d program are you using?
emarukk's avatar
emarukkHobbyist Digital Artist
DAZ Studio 4.10
UltimateFemReferance's avatar
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