Remember, however, that good lighting is dependent on the type of images that are created. I mainly create character based 3d-art, where there is a central figure(s) (e.g. person, animal, alien, robot) that is the main focus of the image. There are surrounding elements and an appropriate backdrop, but they are all in support of the central figure.

As a result, my lighting setup is also geared towards those types of images and may not be as appropriate for other types of renders, such as those that focus on landscapes, architecture, or large-scale scenes.

Bad Girl image rendered in Daz Studio Iray.

1. Headlamp

When I first started creating 3d-art, I spent most of my time on figures and posing. At the time, I didn’t know much about lighting, so I went with what was the default in Daz Studio, which is the camera headlamp.

The camera headlamp is a light mounted at the top of our active camera. In this way, it lights everything in our scene equally (i.e. everything pointed to by our active camera). This makes it very easy to set up scene lighting because –

• I do not have to manage or add any lights of my own.
• Everything is lighted well, so my main figures and their faces are not covered by unwanted shadows.

Unfortunately, this type of equal lighting also makes my image appear flat, overly bright, and non-realistic. This was less of a problem when I only used my images in support of my online articles or for creating website headers. However, my goals soon changed.

Fire Goddess and Phoenix, rendered with a simple headlamp in Daz Studio. Background and postwork in Photoshop.

At the time, there were a couple of contests going on at Daz3D, with some fantastic looking entries. Some entries were artistic and fantasy based, while others were more realistic. However, they all had interesting lighting which set them apart from everything else. These images and their wonderful artists inspired me to start learning more about lighting my 3d-art scenes. This artist is one of my top favorites when it comes to lighting.

2. Uber Environment Light and Spolights

The first thing that I did, to learn more about lights in Daz Studio, is to use one of the light sets that I already owned. The light set that I applied had an Uber Environment light and a couple of spotlights, so that became my new lighting setup.

A problem that I encountered right-off is that the faces of my primary figures were not bright enough, and were often set in shadow. I quickly discovered that I could solve this problem by cranking up the Uber Environment light.

Rendered using the Uber Environment 2 light in Daz Studio 4.6 Pro, with post-work in Photoshop.

The Daz Studio UE light is used to simulate environment as well as ambient or bounce light. Environment light is provided by an image that is attached to the UE light. There are also other controls in the UE light parameters to adjust shadows, bounce, render quality, and more. This very simple tutorial has the basics on how to use UE lights in Daz Studio.

The truth is, I never really played around much with Daz Studio’s UE light. All I did was apply a preset light group (I think I used an early one by Dimension Theory), crank up the UE light until my primary figures were bright enough, and that was it.

Note that UE lights only work in 3Delight and NOT in Iray.

Rendered using UE2 light and spotlights in Daz Studio. This image won the Daz PC monthly contest in December 2013.

The images above are a lot more realistic than the headlamp example. There are also some shadows which give the figures more depth and shape. However, because I am simply cranking up the environment light, the image is still fairly flat, due to the consistent lighting. The figures do not pop out from the rest of the environment, and the light is not very interesting because it is bright throughout. In particular, there is not enough contrast between the figures and the background, and also within the figures themselves.

3. Dreamlight and LDPR

At this point in my Daz Studio lighting journey, I saw a picture in the Daz3D Gallery that had wonderful lighting, and used something called Light Dome Pro – R (There is now also a version for Iray). I was intrigued.

I did some research, and the next time Dreamlight’s store was on sale, I got LDP-R and the DAZ Studio Illuminated tutorial.

Based on the beginner skill level I had at the time, I learned a lot from the tutorial. I now started learning how to add glow, tint, depth, and better contrast to my pictures. Compare the image below and my previous images, and you can see a marked improvement.

Scene created and rendered in Daz Studio 4.6 Pro, with Light Dome Pro Revolution by Dreamlight.

Some things that I learned from LDP-R and Dreamlight’s tutorial-

• I learned how to add glow and tint in postwork (Photoshop).
• I learned how to render my light sources into different layers and do fast lighting adjustments within Photoshop.
• I learned how to create interesting shadows and contrast with a distant light (mimicking sunlight).
• I learned how to properly light my main figures.

In my scenes, I would have the sunlight from LDP-R, and I would add in some spotlights to accent my figure according to the 3-point-light system. Occasionally, I would add in some environment lights if I want to accent anything in the background.

Next, I would render everything into layers using the LDP-R system. Then, I bring everything into Photoshop where I can further manipulate the strength of each light through Photoshop’s powerful layering system. Once that is done, I run the Miami Filter action which comes with the LDP-R package. This action adds glow, tint, and a vignette effect to my Daz Studio render.

Between a sad goodbye and a happy hello, is a period of quiet longing. Rendered with Daz Studio 4.6 Pro and LDP-R, with postwork in Photoshop.

4. Colored Lights and Light Rays

One of the things that was still missing though, is color. I enjoy doing fantasy type 3d-art, and much of the fantasy artwork that I admire, not only has great high contrast lighting, but also very saturated colors. Therefore, I wanted to explore using colored lights and also those cool looking light rays.

This was where I discovered Age of Armour’s wonderful lights and his Atmospheric Effects Cameras package. The Atmospheric Effects package contains a volumetric camera that allows me to easily render great looking light rays. I would render this in a separate image, and then integrate it within Photoshop.

Note that at the writing of this article, these AoA’s lights and cameras only work in the 3Delight renderer and NOT in Iray.

Rendered using Age of Armour’s awesome light products and their volumetric camera for the red light ray.

At this stage, I stopped using the Daz Studio portion of LDP-R, but I continued to apply the lighting principles I had learned previously.

• I use AoA’s ambient light to illuminate the entire scene.
• I add one distant light, similar to the sunlight added by the LDP-R system to provide sharp shadows.
• I add spotlights (according to the 3-point light system) to make my figure stand out.
• Finally, I add a spotlight to produce my light-ray. I render this light separately using AoA’s volumetric camera.

Soon after, I also discovered Advanced Light Presets for AoA’s Lights by Dimension Theory. These presets provided another way to add more interesting light and color into my 3d-art scenes. Instead of using just one ambient light and one distant light, I would instead use one of the presets in Dimension Theory’s package.

I usually use the distant light presets which contain one ambient light, and three distant lights. Then, I re-adjust the colors of the lights and the shadows, according to the look that I want. Usually I set one distant light up as sunlight, with sharp shadows. All the other lights I leave it at their original soft shadow settings.

In this scenario, I no longer need to separately light my figure with spotlights, as the multiple distant lights provide an interesting enough effect. I may sometimes add a spotlight to brighten my figure’s face, if it is in shadow.

Rendered in Daz Studio 4.6 Pro with AoA’s lights and Dimension Theory’s Advanced Light Presets.

5. Reality Plugin and LuxRender

After exploring colored lights for a few months, I became enchanted with some of the realistic looking renders in the Daz Gallery that were made with the Reality plugin and LuxRender. I won’t go into it in great detail here, because I already have a detailed article comparing the renders that I could make before, and what I can make with Reality and Lux.

Created in Daz Studio 4.7 Pro, and rendered using Reality/Lux.

From a lighting perspective, there are several key differences-

• There is no ambient light in Reality/Lux. Bounce light, which is what ambient light tries to simulate, is physically modeled in Lux, thus ambient surfaces and light are no longer needed.
• The use of distant lights are greatly discouraged since it causes unrealistic illumination. Because I relied very heavily on distant lights previously, this was a big change for me. Instead of using distant lights, I now added mesh lights to illuminate my figure(s) (still according to the 3-point light system).

  Mesh lights provide soft shadows and realistic illumination that takes advantage of the physical realism provided by the Lux renderer.

• The Reality plugin also comes with a Sunlight object that I use to light my entire scene and provide shadows.
• Finally, LuxRender has a great light-group mechanism that allows us to save each light group into a different image. This is similar to what LDP-R did for us previously, except that there is great flexibility here in creating as many light groups as we want.

  In addition, unlike LDP-R, we only need to make one render pass, which is a really good thing, since it takes a pretty long time to get a good quality image. I usually leave my renders on over-night.

Note that even though I am using a different lighting system, many of the lessons that I learned before are general, and can be applied to all my 3d-art renders.

Created in Daz Studio 4.7 Pro. Rendered using Reality/Lux.

6. Daz Studio Iray

Like Lux, Daz Studio Iray is also a physically based renderer. Based on my renders so far, I think that the results of both renderers are very comparable, in terms of quality. However, I have decided to focus most of my energies on the Iray renderer.

• The main reason for this is because Iray is integrated with the Daz Studio system. As such it will get great vendor support, which we are already seeing in the materials and light sets being offered. For me, this is an enormous advantage over Reality/Lux.
• The Daz Studio Iray renderer is much faster than Reality/Lux if one has a good nVidia graphics card. For me, the good graphics card is absolutely necessary.

  At the moment, Daz Studio Iray does not have the great light-group feature that exists in Lux. Therefore, I need to manually render each of my lights into a separate image. Because Iray is fast, this is not a big inconvenience and I no longer need to leave my renders on over-night. However, without fast rendering, this manual process would be excruciatingly painful. Ultimately, getting an image done would take much more time than in Reality/Lux.

  In addition, Daz Studio Iray does not have the awesome recovery feature in Lux. Even when Lux crashes, I can recover most of the rendering work already done because Lux intermittently saves out a recovery file.

In short, I mostly use Iray now, because of vendor support and rendering speed. However, without a good nVidia card, I would probably stick with Reality/Lux because of the light-group and recovery features which are both extremely useful.

Rendered in Daz Studio 4.8 Pro Iray. Postwork in Photoshop.

7. Conclusion

I have gone through many different lighting setups from beginner to now. However, in each step, I learned something new, and many of those lessons are general and can be applied later on.

What I have learned so far from this wonderful journey, is that knowledge is not wasted. I started with something very simple, and then slowly build up my knowledge one step at a time. I learned by looking at images in various galleries, and participating in 3d-art contests. Indeed, my very early images were weak in many areas, but the key is to identify those areas of weakness and learn how to improve on each one.

There are still deficiencies in my 3d-art today, but fewer than before. I have improved, gained some useful knowledge, and created some images that I enjoy looking at.

Created in Daz Studio 4.7 Pro, rendered in Reality/Lux, and postwork in Photoshop.

In this tutorial, I will describe how I started out with Daz Studio Iray, and how I created a simple realistic render from start to finish. This tutorial is intended for Iray beginners who are already familiar with the standard Daz Studio Interface.

If you are only starting to use Daz Studio, then check out this Daz Studio for Beginners tutorial.

First Iray image I created with an image based light (IBL).

1. Creating the Scene and Materials

I create the scene in the same way as I would in regular Daz Studio. However, one very important aspect of getting a scene to look right in Iray is in using the right materials.

In this tutorial, I make a very simple scene with a female figure and a dragon tattoo on her back. She has interesting, long, wind-blown hair and is wearing a bikini. I make sure to use a highly detailed and realistic looking skin on my human figure. In this example, I am using the Bambolina skin by Tempesta3d. I also get pretty good results from the Daz3d Elite skins that I got from Michael 6 HD Add-On and Victoria 6 HD Add-On.

This simple scene allows me to focus on learning the basic material and lighting aspects of Iray.

This simple scene allows me to focus on learning the basic material and lighting aspects of Iray.

After I finish creating my scene, I need to apply Iray shaders to all of my scene objects (figures, clothing, props, environment). One simple way to do this, is to –

Expand all objects within our scene.
1. Click on the Scene Tab. Then, right-click on the Scene pane, and select Expand > Expand All.
2. I do Ctrl-A to select all items in my scene pane. Then I Ctrl-click to un-select lights and cameras.
3. Next, (a) I click on the Surfaces Tab, (b) click on Editor, and (c) select all the objects within it

Select all object surfaces in the scene.
4. Now, (a) I click on Presets. Within the Presets pane, (b) I select Shaders > Iray. If you are not using the Smart Content functionality within Daz Studio, you can get at the Iray shaders through your Content Library by going to Shader Presets > Iray > DAZ Uber in your Daz Studio directory. Finally, (c) I double click on the !Iray Uber Base shader to convert all the objects in my scene to using Iray shaders.

Apply Iray Uber Base shader to all object surfaces in my scene.
5. Note that Iray also has specialized shaders for glass, metal, water, fabric, leather, and more. At this point, I identify any special surfaces in my scene that fall into these categories, and assign them accordingly.

I select Ignore, and then click on Accept to to keep the original textures of my selected objects.
6. I do Ctrl-double click if I want to keep the original textures of my selected objects. This will open up a pop-up window. I select Ignore, and then click on Accept.

How to apply Iray shaders to my Genesis 2 Female figure.
7. There are also specialized shaders for Genesis 2 males and females. These shaders will use the existing skin textures that we have on our figure. Therefore, I select my female figure in the Scene pane, (a) go to the Surfaces Tab, (b) click on the Presets button, and (c) select Materials > Iray > Feminine. (d) I double click on the Iray Optimized Genesis 2 Female MAT to apply this shader on my figure.
8. Finally, I tweak my surfaces as needed. I find that the Iray skin shaders are a bit too glossy/shiny for my taste. Therefore, I select my G2F figure, go to Surfaces > Editor. Open up Genesis 2 Female and select Skin. Then I change the Glossy Layered Weight to 0.5.

How I lower the glossiness of the skin on my female figure.

This finishes the material setup of my simple scene. As I learn more of Iray and create more complex scenes, I will probably want to do more here to get the best render results. However, that is for a later time and tutorial. 🙂

2. Iray Image Based Light

A very simple way to light my Iray scene in a realistic way, is to use an image based light (IBL). To do this –

1. I go to (a) Render Settings > (b) Editor.
2. I select (c) Environment > Dome.
3. I assign an appropriate image to light my scene in the (d) Environment Map control. In this example I am using Barcelona Rooftops that I got from sIBL Archives. That is a great site to get free IBL images. Dimension Theory also has some great HDRI packs in his DAZ store.

   As far as I can tell, the Environment Map slider also controls IBL intensity. For example, rendering at Environment Intensity 1 and Environment Map 1 gets me the same result as rendering at Environment Intensity 0.5 and Environment Map 2.


How to set an image based light (IBL) in Daz Studio Iray.
4. Next, I set Dome Mode to Finite Sphere so that I have more control over how the image map is used in my scene. When I do this, additional controls appear including Dome Scale Multiplier, Dome Radius, and Dome Origin XYZ.

   Dome Scale Multipler and Dome Radius allows us to scale our environment map, and Dome Origin allows us to reposition our environment map. I set Dome Scale Multiplier to 3 so that I can see more of the image in my scene.


Setting Dome Mode to Finite Sphere so that I have more control over how the image map is used in my scene.

Iray render of scene with the render settings specified above.
5. Next, I want to position the sun in the image map at the right place so that it casts a nice rim or silhouette on my figure. To do this I need to better understand how my image maps onto the 3d-dome in my scene.

How the sections of our image based light map to the dome in our 3d-scene.

A simple way to think about it is to divide our image into four segments.

• Section A maps to the front of the dome (what we see in the scene).
• Section B maps to the right of the dome.
• Section C maps to the back of the dome.
• Section D maps to the left of the dome.

The four segments of our image map.

Essentially, the left of the image maps onto what we see, and then it goes clock-wise from there.

The sun in our image is in section C (back of the dome). Therefore, to move it to the front of my image, I rotate the dome by 180 degrees. This gives me a nice rim or silhouette effect on the left of my figure. Rotating 270 degrees shifts the light-rim to the right of my figure.

Iray render of scene with IBL dome rotated by 180 degrees.

However, it looks like there is also too much light in my scene, and there does not seem to be enough contrast between the rim set by the setting sun and the rest of the image. This is because of the camera headlamp.

In particular, if there are no lights in the scene (other than the IBL), Daz Studio automatically adds a headlamp to the top of the camera to light our scene. This headlamp is adding too much light and reducing the contrast of the IBL that I want. To turn off this headlamp, I simply add a Daz Studio light to the scene, and then turn that light off. In this way, the only light source is my image based light (IBL).

Iray render of scene with the Daz Studio camera headlamp turned off.

3. Postwork and Done!

Finally, I add some glow to my image, tone it to a more orange sunset color, lighten the figure a little bit, and I am done!

With an nVidia GeForce GTX TITAN X card, I was able to render a 1000×1300 version of the image in under 5 minutes.

Finished image after adding glow and tint.

Below is a more complex second scene that I made. I set the armor to the Iray iron shader (keeping my original textures), and I exported the lion hair as OBJ from the Look at My Hair plugin.

Lionheart – Daz Studio Iray render.