Problems with domes and lighting outdoor scenes

culannmac

So I'm getting pretty good lighting indoor scenes (particularly with ghost lights) but I'm still having problems lighting outdoor scenes. I've tried a number of products including Iray skies and HDRI.  When I try to light an aerial city scene, the sky is either overly dark or a washed out in a whitish blue haze. My figures look like plastic mannequins and there is a great deal of noise even when I crank the exposure up .  I've tried work arounds like Teradome and HDRI scenes but the result is the ground appearing as a backdrop. I've played with the tone-maping controls, enviroment controls with sun/sky only, finite dome, etc.  I've spent hours doing trial and error renders with no sucess.

I've had sucess using this for single characters, but it's not really feasible for city scenes (is there a way to turn the ground off?) 

https://www.daz3d.com/ultrahd-iray-hdri-with-dof-pines-beach

Any advice would be most appreciated

BeeMKay

Are you trying "full arials" with clouds below?

A whitish blue usually means that the sky settings are too high, the other darkish ones, that they rae too low. The Iray Skies usually consists of render settings and the hdri, did you use those together?

Recommended sets are, for example

• https://www.daz3d.com/fantasy-ibl-above-the-clouds-hdri
• https://www.daz3d.com/above-the-clouds-for-iray-nimbostratus
• https://www.daz3d.com/easy-environments-clouds

Make sure that you don't have a "sky-dome" in the scene, which would block out lights and is meant for 3Delight. You also can set up the lighting resolution in Dome&scene/Dome mode, in the Render settings. For switching off the ground, go to Render settings, select the Environment tab inside the render settings, and scroll pretty much to the nd of the list, where you can switch on and off the bottom.

If your figures look like plastic, that can have various reasons, including the skin settings. Which character/skin settings are you using?

 

culannmac

BeeMKay said:

Are you trying "full arials" with clouds below?

A whitish blue usually means that the sky settings are too high, the other darkish ones, that they rae too low. The Iray Skies usually consists of render settings and the hdri, did you use those together?

Recommended sets are, for example

• https://www.daz3d.com/fantasy-ibl-above-the-clouds-hdri
• https://www.daz3d.com/above-the-clouds-for-iray-nimbostratus
• https://www.daz3d.com/easy-environments-clouds

Make sure that you don't have a "sky-dome" in the scene, which would block out lights and is meant for 3Delight. You also can set up the lighting resolution in Dome&scene/Dome mode, in the Render settings. For switching off the ground, go to Render settings, select the Environment tab inside the render settings, and scroll pretty much to the nd of the list, where you can switch on and off the bottom.

If your figures look like plastic, that can have various reasons, including the skin settings. Which character/skin settings are you using?

 

Thanks, I will try those sets. I haven't mixed Iray skies with HDRI scenes. Ive never been able to get Iray skys to work.  I'm looking to do a city scene in this style.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c7/Downtown_Miami_Skyline_(Southern_View).jpg/1280px-Downtown_Miami_Skyline_(Southern_View).jpg

My favorite character is

https://www.daz3d.com/georgia-hd-for-victoria-7

Combined with a little of this.

https://www.daz3d.com/skin-builder-3-for-genesis-3-female-s

She looks great indoors not so much outdoors. I've tried Gen8f chracters but I can never get the skin details to look as good as a GF3 model. They tend to look plastic regardless of lighting as well.

Thanks for the help!

culannmac

Would this work?

 

https://www.daz3d.com/iray-skies-10-skies-for-use-with-iray

BeeMKay

Yes, that set would work.

Just to make sure: Have you checked if your render engine in the render settings is Iray?

Also just to make sure: The character has two skin settings, one for Iray, one for 3Delight. Can you check if the skin you selected is for Iray or 3Delight? In the surface tab, a 3Delight texture would start with "Plastic" or "Skin" at the top of the listing, and the main clour would be called "Diffuse".

In general, outdoor skin has different requirements from indoor skin, becaue you throw a lot more bright light at them. I usually set up my character skins outdoor using Skies of Iradiance or one of the Cake One skies, but those are very similar to the Iray Skies you mentioned in your post.

For G3, I had pretty good results using Altern8 https://www.daz3d.com/altern8--skin-shader-system-for-genesis-8

But again, I do extensive test renders when I set up a character.

billyben_0077a25354

culannmac said:

Would this work?

 

https://www.daz3d.com/iray-skies-10-skies-for-use-with-iray

Yes, I use Seldor's Iray Skys all the time with city sets.  Works well.

 

billyben_0077a25354

Here is one I did with one of Seldor's skies.  Had to re-render it with a top and diferent shorts to make it legal for a family friendly site.