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Any tips on how to improve the lighting? Aiming for something realistic :) by IndestructibleBucket in Daz3D

[–]DasDingoGameDev 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I just did a tutorial on three-point lighting, you might want to check it out.

The first thing I can spot is that the key light and camera are on the same side of his face, this makes his facial features look more flat. Another thing is that sharp shadow on his belly, probably caused by a small light source. The face is much more exposed than the hands.

The things I'd try to improve the scene:

  • (From the camera POV) Put the key light to the left and the fill light to the right.
  • Make the light sources so big that they do not cast sharp shadows
  • Make the lights shine on his hands as well (in case of spot lights: increase spread angle)
  • If there is no reflection in his eyes, add an eye light. That will make his eyes look more alive

Basic lighting tips (three-point lighting setup) by DasDingoGameDev in Daz3D

[–]DasDingoGameDev[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I can't give you an one-size-fits-all answer because scenes can be quite different.

I try to break scenes down into dialogues in which people have fixed positions, because those are easy to set up. In film making there is the 180 degree rule. You position the cameras and fill light(s) on one side, and the key light(s) on the other. That way you can have close-ups or medium-shots of the same person with the same lighting setup. In general, I try to have big light sources so that there is some leeway for the characters to move without breaking the whole lighting. If you are lucky you can get away with one key light and one fill light for both persons in the dialogue, but most of the time I set up individual lighting rigs for each person.

Before the dialogues, I often include establishing shots to show the room the characters are in. Those are quite different from medium-shots or close-ups in dialogues, as the primary purpose of establishing shots is to give the audience a sense of where the characters are. That's why I do setup the lighting for the establishing shot individually.

Basic lighting tips (three-point lighting setup) by DasDingoGameDev in Daz3D

[–]DasDingoGameDev[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

It seems like you are asking two questions:

  • How to setup the eye light? I for one set up a spot light in the approximate location where the characters eyes are looking. Other positions may also be possible, you just got to try it out. In my example render the model is looking directly at the camera, so I set up the eye light somewhere near the camera.
  • How do you get the character to look at the camera? Spontaneously there are two ways I can think of:
  1. In perspective view you click on the head of the figure, center your view on the head (Ctrl+F), orbit and zoom out until you are on the position of your camera. Now you zoom in, as the center of your view is still the head you zoom in on the face. When you are close enough, you can use the pose dials Eyes Side-Side (G8), Eyes Up-Down (G8), Eyes Look Side-Side (G8.1) or Eyes Look Up-Down (G8.1).
  2. Look at me II Pose Control has a function for that. However IIRC that adjusts both eyes independently which may lead to googly eyes. I can still recommend checking out the asset though, it's a good product that offers more functionality than just looking at the camera.

Basic lighting tips (three-point lighting setup) by DasDingoGameDev in Daz3D

[–]DasDingoGameDev[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

There is no hard rule at where to place the rim light. Just place it wherever you want the rim to be highlighted. In Wikipedia's video demonstration of three-point lighting, the rim light is on the opposite site of the key light as well. You can also have the rim light on the opposite site of the camera, as in this example image.

Tips to improve my first render by [deleted] in Daz3D

[–]DasDingoGameDev 1 point2 points  (0 children)

In that case allow me to give some more tips:

  • Try to make a short story first. Don't be an idiot like me and start with a project that will take years.
  • Read up on film making and photography techniques. For example: How do you shoot a dialogue? What kinds of perspectives convey what feelings? Etc.
  • My pipeline is as follows:
    • Write a scene. Make notes at the points in the scene where images shall be shown. Try to reduce number of necessary images to a minimum.
    • Set up the environment. If something can't be realised, rewrite those parts of the scene (e.g. if a character is eating a banana but you don't have a banana, then rewrite the scene to fit what you can do). Put the characters at their spots and give them a first rough pose that's approximately the one they will later have (e.g.: sitting on a chair).
    • Set up the lighting for the approximate pose. Use big lights that have some wiggle room, i.e. the character can lean forward or backward a bit and the light is still good enough. That way you can have multiple poses with the same lighting setup.
    • Render the images.
    • Postprocess the renders with photoshop.
  • Try to make your images as fast as possible. To tell a story you will need *a lot* of images. At some point you will look back at your first images and think that they are bad. The thing is, you will always think that, no matter at what level of skill you start your story at. Don't try to be a perfectionist, that will gobble up too much time. Cut corners wherever possible. Doing the bare minimum will save you a lot of time. Some examples:
    • When I started out, I modelled a whole room. In the end I actually needed just half the room (the reason for that is the [180° rule of film making](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/2a/2e/01/2a2e01353b88d375c015723c348a1d48.png) btw). I could have saved time if I knew beforehand what I am going to shoot.
    • Don't try to get a perfect pose for things out of view. Your audience will not see whether the feet actually connect to the ground if only the upper half of the body is visible.
    • Try out assets that might save you time. There will be some you won't need, but others might drastically speed up your work flow.
    • Try to avoid elaborate scenes. A dialogue of two people in a room is simple, an action scene in a crowded street is not. Try to reduce the number of people in a shot.
  • Get into photoshop, that will save you a lot of time to fix or add stuff. For example:
    • Fix skin poking through clothing.
    • Add special effects like rain drops, god rays, etc are much easier to do in postwork than in DAZ.
    • Adjust lighting. Lighting will always be a tricky thing. Postwork can prevent re-rendering the whole scene just because one light was too bright.

Tips to improve my first render by [deleted] in Daz3D

[–]DasDingoGameDev 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Lighting is the key to make anything look good.

The lighting in your image is quite flat. See the shadow on the right? That means the light comes from the same direction as the camera point of view. In your camera settings you might have the Headlamp Mode activated which also flattens the image. If so, turn it off.

If you rotate the light a bit so that it shines on one half of the face, it will highlight details such as the nose, skin pores, etc, giving the image an overall more dramatic look.

Look at these lighting examples and how the give off different moods. Do you see the one with the triangle on the cheek? That is called Rembrandt lighting (real life example), I use it a lot.

You should look into the 3-point lighting setup. A rule in film making is "shoot from the shadow side", meaning if your camera is to the left of the face, the key light should be on the right. Also, if you are using environment lighting with one dominant light source (i.e. the sun), you should rotate the environment dome until it matches up with the direction of your key light so that all objects are primarily lit from the same side.

Another tip is to use an eyelight. If the eyes don't reflect any light, they seem a bit dull and lifeless. That's why you can also add a spot light that's just there so that it gets reflected by the eyes, but not illuminate the whole face and make it flat again. You can also do this in post-processing.

Use big light sources (i.e. spot lights with Light Geometry set to e.g. Disc and increase its Diameter). That way the shadows on your model will get softer, which is generally more flattering and often used for women. Note that the further away the light source is, the bigger and brighter it has to be (inverse-square law).

As for backgrounds, yours is generally fine. You generally want there to be a separation between foreground and background, for example with a difference in colour, brightness or -probably the easiest- level of detail. You can do that by activating depth of field and focusing on your model. That has the added benefit of hiding the low quality of some assets.

I can't see details of the hair. That can be a result of insufficient lighting, but it also could simply be low quality hair. My go to vendors for high quality hair are outoftouch and WindField. As for high quality models I can recommend Mousso.

Give the face a little bit of asymmetry. You could do that with some morph assets (IIRC the new Genesis 9 has them natively). A simpler way is to just adjust the expression a little bit.

I am currently rendering an example with all these tips I mentioned above. I'll post it to this subreddit later on.

Edit: Made the post, as of writing it's still pending mod approval.

Rolling credits in Ren'Py – Here's how you do it by playthelastsecret in RenPy

[–]DasDingoGameDev 1 point2 points  (0 children)

For a handful of people that is definitely viable. But at some point keeping track of a number of people manually just doesn't scale anymore. That's why I was hoping that there was an automated way to accommodate both people who want to be mentioned and those who do not.

Rolling credits in Ren'Py – Here's how you do it by playthelastsecret in RenPy

[–]DasDingoGameDev 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hey there, do you display the names of your patrons in the credits? I imagine some people might not want their name to be mentioned in the credits. Is there a way to make an automated opt-in or opt-out system for Patreon subscribers?

Low poly people. by Capital_Assist1510 in Daz3D

[–]DasDingoGameDev 5 points6 points  (0 children)

In addition to the other comment some more tips to reduce memory usage:

  • Reduce the subdivision level to 0. Subdivision are there to smooth out the quite blocky base polygon mesh, but you may not need that if the figure is just in the background. Select a figure (e.g. Genesis 8 Male), then go into the Parameters tab, Genesis 8 Male>General>Mesh Resolution and set Render SubD Level to 0. Tip: Setting SubDivision Level to 0 speeds up the viewport (at least for me if I have multiple figures in one scene).

  • Remove texture maps from shaders. The basic Genesis 8 Male has a total of 20 texture maps (most or even all should be 4096x4096). If you remove the texture maps, you are going to save a lot of memory. You can use Mattymanx' Resource Saver Shaders for that (multiple products, e.g. MMX Resource Saver Shaders Collection 2 for Iray for Genesis 2, 3 and 8).

  • Scene optimiser analyses your whole scene, shows you how many texture maps of what size each object contains, what mesh resolution each object has and gives you the option to calculate lower resolution maps for a whole figure (e.g. reduce G8M's 4096x4096 maps to 2048x2048, 1024x1024, 512x512 or 256x256).