Textures and Lighting
whispers65
Posts: 952
woohoo...I get to stay home from work today...it's not often I get a day off lol.
Ok so I'm working on my Medieval City / Tavern scene. I'm going to have two basic versions of course with many, many renders. One will be daytime and the main one will be a stormy night that will end up inside the Tavern. I'm working to create atmosphere.
I want to bring the city "alive", rather than all flat and ghost town looking so of course I'll need to add props, people, etc.
The first pic I did so far is just a basic view with Uber lighting, nothing big. Took about 2 hours lol. But I'm getting used to longer render times and can cut it down for placement purposes only.
I was thinking though. When I load the basic set in, all the lighting models is set to plastic. I can of course select everything at once and change to Mat or something. Not sure if doing a do-all-at-once will affect anything else. Or should I just leave as is?
I guess I'm confused because now when I do people I know to add shaders for the skin to make them look more realistic. I've been using Jeremy/Lana for that.
So do I need a shader for everything? like for wood, metal, etc. Sorry, I'm still confused on this process.
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Comments
Products you purchase from here or elsewhere come with materials settings already in place. Sometimes, the settings will be Poser mats that need some adjusting for best results in DAZ Studio; sometimes it will come with DS mats or often both.
Characters may have mat settings for the default shader, Human Surface Shader, Ubersurface, or perhaps two of the three (default and HSS is common). If the character only has default mats, often better results can be obtained (as you have found) by switching to HSS or Ubersurface.
For props, clothing, etc., I believe most items only have default shader mats, though there are certainly exceptions. The default mats are probably sufficient for most people most of the time, I think. If you'd like, you can try altering the settings on the Surfaces tab, or converting them to Ubersurface (or HSS), or applying a shader preset (like this or this, for instance). You may also be interested in this product...I bet it would work nicely on the set you are using: http://www.daz3d.com/pimp-my-prop
Hope this helps!
Scott,
Thanks! Lots of good information there. I guess it will depend on how much effort I want to put into the project. It looks like from what I want to do it will take a while which I don't mind. It's a great stress reliever and fun in the process and I'm learning more with each situation.
I did take a look at each of the products you mentioned and they look pretty good and definitely something to keep in mind as I go along.
the Jeremy and Lana shaders that come with the Genesis Starter Essentials are actually pretty good. If you don't like those you can try mine: http://www.sharecg.com/wancow
Regarding wood, stone, etc, you can find wood textures all over the place. Just use Google and type wood texture or stone and texture.
Don't depend too much on other people's shaders, and they might not give the results you want that are consistent with your vision. The best thing is for you to try and understand the shaders and materials so that you can at least tweak other people's stuff to get what you want, if not build your own from scratch.
Are you using the Poser or DAZ Studio version of the Medieval Docks? I can't find where my copy is installed, but as I recall and the product page confirms there should be a DS preload - having everything set to plastic sounds as if you are using the Poser version without DS material settings.
Pretty much using Daz for everything. I'll double check to make sure I didn't load the wrong one. Anything is possible these days lol.
That's very good advice because I can hardly ever translate what is in my head into something that resembles my vision. So I have to go with as close of a solution as I can get/afford most often. I truly would like to understand all of this. I'm not an art/photo type person in the least but I am technically minded. I do however depend on books/tutorials/etc to get me going. Rarely can I just look at something and figure it all out without knowing anything about it but that has happened too. These days I spend an incredible amount of time searching without finding what I'm looking for and that can be frustrating. I just gotta get the overall picture in my mind and then I can work on the individual steps. That's how it usually works for me to learn.
The DS version should be in My Library - Props - Architecture.
Everything does have the Lighting model set to Plastic even for the DS set.
It still renders very nicely but you could change the setting I usually use Metallic for scenery like this
Thanks. Probably get to work on it tomorrow night again. Last night I finished up by installing the Daz Install Manager so not quite ready to switch over to the new way yet.
ok was working on the setup again tonight. It's still a work very much in progress but I think I'm getting closer to the mood I want to portray anyway.
I grunged up the city to make it dirtier. I can't say that I'm crazy about the water yet but it's ok for now. And I haven't added props yet. I really went to far because I want to do daytime also in sunny weather or whatever so I need to watch so I can do both scenes.
The next thing I want to do is add lights to some of the windows. I think I used to do that with point lights or something like that from a tutorial a while back.
Is there an easier better way of lighting a window? I also need to add some "lamps" around town also. I have the lamp itself. It's just a matter of lighting it up.
Thanks,
Tom
wow on my screen the image doesn't look that dark. Hmmm.