All geek to me....
Wonderland
Posts: 7,132
God, I remember when creating this kind of 3D art was almost like playing with Barbies in the computer. You posed, shaped, added, skin, makeup, hair, clothes, rendered. A very girly hobby/art really. Now, you have to deal with things that pros in animation studios are being paid a lot of money to learn... And they just specialize in ONE thing--either texturing, modeling, etc... It seems that now we, as artists/hobbyists have to learn high level geek stuff that Pixar employees are doing practically.... Like what does this even mean? "To begin using a Light Portal, you must first enable the Caustic Sampler property in the Optimization group found in either the Render Settings or Draw Settings panes. Then add a Spotlight or a Point Light to your scene. A Light Portal property appears under the Light > Area group when the Photometric Mode is enabled and the Light Geometry property is set to Rectangle in the Parameters pane. Enabling this Light Portal property causes the light to be seen by the Iray renderer as a light portal instead of as a light."
i just want to create art and make pretty girls. Help!
Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
7533 S Center View Ct #4664
West Jordan, UT 84084
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2025 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
Whatever you're lighting does sound awfully technical.
I learn a lot from good base packages. I watch settings change as I click the different options. That's how I learned how lighting works in IRay.
Or you can watch tuts that you find with Google. SickleYield has some good tuts.
That was part of the description of the update to DS 4.92..
A light portal is essentially a hint to the renderer saying "There's a window here, make sure you shine the outside light through it rather than wasting lots of time lighting the outside walls that I can't see." If you are rendering an interior with a major part of the light coming from the HDRI dome (so not an interior mostly or entirely lit by local lights in the room, and not a scene lit by a strong sun shining in through the window) you set that option in the Render Settings Editor tab, in the Optimisation group on the left, then you create a point or spot light, turn on Photometric mode in Parameetrs, set Rectangle as the shape (Iray lights have had this all along - it means you can create a soft light instead of being limitied to ahrsh point sources as in 3Delight) and then turn on the Portal property (which stops the "light" from producing light of its own but instead makes it a focus for attention), then adjust the size of the rectangle and the position of the light so it covers the window you want the light to come in through. Using Portals will make it easier to light a semi-enclosed space than before.
I wish they would have used better descriptive lamen terms for a lot of their settings rather than technical photography terms (or better yet a switch description option in the settings) as I don't understand what 99% of them do, which means 99% of the time I'm guessing and randomly changing sliders hoping to get what I want. LOL
While I agree that even the mom & pop DAZ Studio that I remember has now gone beyond being a hobby tool, I can't fault them for trying to play with the big boys. And I understand the logic behind implementing engineering and scientific controls that match the actual technology and science of various concepts of the behavior of light and perception which is, upon examination, extremely complex. Unfortunately this has left many budding hobbyists choking in the dust as DAZ Studio speeds away into the future. Perhaps it's time to spin off a product called something like "DAZ Playtime" with a quarter of the numbers of controls, and simplified nomenclature and a separate catalog of 10 year old models.
I myself am a photographer & engineer and an intelligent, educated, technically and scientificly minded person but although I was delighted when DAZ camera controls were improved to refect actual photographic terminology and camera behavior I got lost when all those various third-party lighting systems came out and then the baffling surface technology improvements also entered the fray. Then when yet another rendering engine was thrown at us it became more than I wanted to know. It's more than I want to play with. So for the most part I've stopped playing. Oh, I dabble still using Michael4, 3Delight rendering, basic DAZ lights & cameras, and without special surface textures. Vendors use the need to keep up with technology improvements to justify higher prices. OK by me. I don't buy new products. I play with early Studio4 and pre Genesis characters.
I just wish I could have some numbers I understand for light strengths. I'm not a photographer, but I would love to not have to enter millions of zeros to get lights that I can see. I'd rather they have some sort of easy to use interface to make lights more relatable to the average person.
My bad. I'm sorry, I thought you were delving into a part of IRay I didn't know existed. :-) Actually, I guess you are.
Thanks, Richard, for the breakdown. I think I get it -- a light portal is like a light magnet? To draw light where you want it to go?
Yes, I was tempted to say that - it isn't quite accurate, as I understand it, but it does give the right general idea.
I agree, except that ordinary language, and experience, doesn't really have a way of talking about light strengths. "Dim", "Normal", "Bright", and "Blinding" aren't really gonna do it for most scenes, and other than incandescent light bulb wattages (non-incandescent bulb packages say things like 'same light as 150W incandescent bulb'), we don't really have 'average person' ways of talking about these things. We simply don't have well-trained intuition to tell us that a half-meter-diameter circle that's ten feet from the subject needs to be of X lumens (or ANY OTHER UNIT!) to light the subject properly.
Where possible, change the Units for light intensity to Cd/cm^2, instead of lumens. Lumens are TOTAL light emitted (in ALL directions) from a light source. The bigger the object, the greater the number of lumens to get the same illumination intensity. When you switch to a unit that is per-surface-area, the size of the item doesn't change how much light intensity it emits.
There was a discussion about this in an older thread....let's see if I can find it....Yep. http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/71755/when-trying-to-light-an-interior-in-iray/p1
I actually would like terms like "dim," "bright," "very bright," "sunlight," "office light," "warm light," with thumb images giving examples. Since many of us are artists rather than scientists, I think it would make it much easier to understand. Maybe have a choice of UIs, one for the brainiacs and one for the average person..? I didn't even understand Richard's explanation and I graduated cum laude from UCLA, (but I'm not totally awake yet LOL.)
I like all the new cool things DS can do, I just wish they could dumb down the explanation of what everything does and how to do it. Maybe more pop up explanations in plain English with photo references as you hover your mouse over something? The same for Iray settings. If it showed an image of what each end of the slider will do. More visual and plain English explanations would be great for the next update!
Well, see, I graduated from GSU, and that makes a difference.
I am joking!!!
I had to read the explanation several times before I kinda got a glimmer.
That's good enough for a starting point.
Thanks again.
Now I wish I had gone to MIT. Not that I would have gotten in LOL.
Are you changing the Tone Mapping settings from the default "expose as if for a bright sunny day outdoors" to whatever actual intended light level you have in your scene? That seems to be the main cause of non-outdoor scenes requiring light values measured in sagans. It also means you only change one setting for the whole scene, you don't need to run around every one of your lights, tweaking the values.
Any technical subject, such as computer generated art, will have its technical jargon. Even physical art is fairly technical, with terms confusing to newcomers.
And if you think art has its complexities, try studying music!
Light portals aren't providing real light. They act as internal "hints" to the renderer that direct and indirect light from an off-camera source is coming through this part of the scene, and should be gien extra consideration.
Iray has had light portals for a while, but until now D|S hasn't supported the feature. What this means is that Daz may not have much documentation on it, but there are nVidia and other sources you can refer to. Here's just one:
http://blog.irayrender.com/post/12598717491/daylight-portals-in-iray-20-performance-issues
What Daz has provided appears to be from the Iray programmer's docs. It says this, most of which should be self-explanatory, or at least open to self-discovery by trying it. Note the last part: the caustic sampler is controlled in the Optimization pane of the render panel. (That said, I'm not entirely sure why the caustic sampler comes into play, and wonder if this is not a typo, and they mean the architectural sampler.)
Technically, these lights are no longer light sources (they are invisible and do not need to have a light shader or emitting material), but merely a hint to Iray Photoreal where to expect environment light from.
Using light portals should not change the rendering result, only convergence speed. However, it should be stated that they do not always help, in fact they can cause lower performance if placed incorrectly. For an architectural scene a rule of thumb for using portals is:
A significant amount of illumination comes through the windows.
The illumination coming through the windows is not dominated by direct sun light or other very bright regions in the environment.
The windows are relatively small.
The caustic sampler is enabled.
I think the photographers amongst us would have some issue with your assessments here. They're artists, but they understand the intricasies of lighting a scene. So do a lot of people in Theater. Taking a little time to study these subjects so you can understand them will HELP your art, not turn you into a 'scientist'. It really isn't that complicated. It's just hard to teach it via text in an online forum.
Learning about the lighting will also help you understand how and why the camera in DS does some of the things it does. And how to better adjust your Tone Mapping settings for a given scene and lighting.
You don't have to obsess over numbers tbh. I'm not a math major. I went to school for art:). You will find often enough trial and error will give you what you need to learn. And I don't mean hours of trial and error.
Set light to 0. See what it does. Set like to 100, see what it does. Set light to 1000, not too bad realy. Portals are a bit more than that, but still not as bad as it may seem. Portals are very useful, but you don't need them all the time.
Also keep in mind not all features are required for all users. Some features you can safely ignore and continue about your hobby. However, I think it is only logical that DS use industry standard options/naming conventions for features that are common in the 3D scene. Limiting lighitng settings to dim/light/dark or something like that would turn DS into joke. However PAs are here to fill the void and make super user friendly add-ons for users that wish not to learn the more intermediate or advanced things in DS.
Personally i never buy any "lighting" packages, but I see why people buy them so much. I really enjoy lighting and never went to MIT. Photography is pretty technical but I know a lot of people that enjoy it as a hobby. And I don't mean ppl with iphones taking selfies ;) 3D and art in general is a bit geeky. it is up to the indivudual how much they choose to learn. Even if the goal is just making "pretty ladies", the more you know, the more power you have.
It's funny, when I was like six years old my mother took me to Central Park with pastels and paper and we drew a bridge and scenery and I was shocked to discover it recently in storage and see how I got all the light gradations and shadows at that young age, purely visual, no tech... Hell, maybe I should go back to drawing...
Just want to add, from a sales perspective, it would benefit Daz to simplify things a bit for newbies because there could be many new potential customers who just want to do pretty pinups or cute fairies and all the high tech stuff, although great, could dissuade them from starting with DS. If I didn't already have years of Poser behind me and if this wasn't now my actual career, I might have been scared away. I think Daz should do what Apple does, have all the bells and whistles but have a very easy user version so even a child could pick it up. Children, especially little girls, could be great customers of Daz if they could easily create cute dolls and fairies and boys too, could render spaceships and superheroes easily. This could be a whole new source of income for Daz. Hey, Daz, want to hire me for marketing????
I encourage it actually. it's a great skill, and you can do it just about anywhere. If you have the patience that is. Sadly I don't, and never had the hand-eye coordination :(
That is what Daz Studio is actually. It's a newbie friendly tool for a complicated technical craft. It doesn't mean that Daz should not incorporate the more complex elements that exist in this world. For example, just because Daz Studio has Weight mapping I don't expect a newbie to use it. You can literally make a half decent render clicking a handful of presets. Not sure how much easier it can get. It just happens that some features will always be intermediate or advanced level features.
Really? I see pages and pages in the forums of experienced 3D artists and even PAs trying to figure out Iray... I think the advanced features are great, don't get me wrong, but an easier user interface with pop ups and images (more "tips") for all the Iray sliders and render settings would be immensely helpful. Even better, a live preview, at a smaller size, so you can see what each movement of the sliders are doing. I'm brand new to DS, just started in March and for me there is a huge learning curve even after many years with Poser. There seems to be a lot of really cool things that seem semi hidden and with no explanation. I'm really liking DS way more than I thought I would, but it's just a struggle. I know they have a lot on their plate continually improving the program but I wish they would keep new users and less techie types in mind when working on the UI and the instructions.
Actually this wouldn't be half as difficult if you had the plethora of manuals, books and dvds that programs like Lightwave3d, After Effects, or even Blender have dedicated to users at all levels. The info for Daz might be out there, but you really have to search for it.
Yes but all those programs are for professionals who end up making a lot of money from their projects, not hobbyists or independent artists... When my friend was hired at Sony Imageworks based on his manual creature sculpting, they PAID him to learn the appropriate software. DS is not that, although it seems to be heading in that direction... I bet a true expert in DS could easily be hired by a major studio, it's getting that close...
Remember that a lot of the experienced artists and PAs are asking because they want to create new settings. If you want the equivalent of dim/bright/blazing you can just use some of the HDRI or local light sets, or use some of the materials for Iray in various bundles and so on. You pretty well always have a choice of digging into a subject or using other people's presets, and most of us will do a mixture of both to suit our interests.
Iray is much more difficult to use elsewhere. Daz content makes it soo much easier to get started than anywhere else. I think people don't appreciate that enough. Daz is not as techie as it is elsewhere. I do agree the Daz implementation of Iray could be better, I was not satisfied with the interactive render myself. If you have only been using the tools since March, that is no time at all.
Yes people will always try to learn and improve their tools so the fact that people on the forum are trying to master Iray, a professional rendering solution, should be expected. That doesn't negate how much harder your life would be elsewhere.
Not everything can be a few clicks.
The documentation/training thing is another story. Ignoring Iray, an Nvidia solution that Daz did not create, there are tons of Daz Studio specific functions that never got properly documented since 4.0. Daz has heard us talk about his for years, they gave up long ago. (one could say they changed gears, but w/e)
So I wouldn't expect tons of free documentation or training. There will be venders that fill the void if it is something they see as profitable.
If there is enough desire to learn, you can do it in time. None of this stuff is meant to be mastered overnight. People should take the excitement from what they can accomplish so quickly with the presets that are available. Once you want to push beyond that its going to take time to really move forward.
That's actually how I'm trying to learn, by looking at other people's presets. But people's Iray settings vary wildly for skin. The premade skin shader I bought is too dark and shiny for my taste so trying to figure out how to get it to my liking and save it. Still, nothing is intuitive. I figured out Photoshop without a manual. And the Nvidea instructions that are copied and pasted are meant for professionals, I wish they could be translated into easier to understand English with screenshots... Actually I would pay for an in depth manual of EVERY aspect of DS with screenshots at every step, I prefer that to video tutorials.
Yeah we have said this too, for years!
So I don't see Daz being the ones to do anything that extensive.
However on your other point, it is important to remember that different PA using different lighitng, so their skin presets are often influenced by that. Not all PA have the same approach to things, so it may be easier to start with one vendor's set to look at as a reference and tweak from that.
Then after you feel comfortable try another vendors and maybe something will click.
I've been using PS longer than any 3D tool, its a much simplier tool for the most part. Yes there are some complex things you can do in PS, but overall, PS isn't remotely as complex as rendering 3D. I use PS daily, I genuinely love it. I couldn't imagine learning 3D to be as easy as a photo editing/painting application. I think there is a perception issue, 3D is tough, Daz makes it so easy people forget how tough it really is.
Has anyone created a good portal yet? I've been experimenting, and implementation (in my case) is harder than just thinking I understand the idea.
I got all the pieces in the right places, but my portal doesn't seem to be attracting light. I guess there are influential factors -- like light direction on the hdri maybe?
Anyway, if somebody does one, could you post a quick shot of the render?
I'm sure it's me, and not IRay, that isn't getting something right.
I'd also like to know what the new blending Draw menu modes are for. The update tells us that they're new, but nothing about what they do.
And since they're the only ones having documentation of all the features, no one else can do it. It's a catch 22, sort of.