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I wanted to try out Nathanomir 's techniques from Light Tests with a Pretty GirlWondering where I've been the past few days? Deep within my Mad Lab, running experiments on Desiree! She's Alive! Actually, she was the willing guinea pig for a series of tests of different light setups. I'm still pursuing my idea of photorealism. I thought I'd share the results, in case some of you might pick up some tips.My personal definition of photorealism for my art is I want my images to look like stills from a movie. I'm not a portrait artist, so things like jellybean effect on the ears and nose tip (they're thin enough for light to actually pass through, giving a red, translucent look) aren't important to me. That level of detail gets lost in an action scene. My work, to my own eyes at least (and my eyes are not reliable -- I have a wonky light-color issue that requires a high level of saturation or everything looks brown) is too highly saturated. It looks like a Technicolor movie, like The Ten Commandments. Here is where my own definition splits in two almost opposite directions. What genre are we talking about? I work in two: fantasy and superhero. Those two genres look different on the big screen, and I think it has to do with their sources of origin. Superhero is colorful. Saturated colors fit. I think because superhero began in, and still belongs to, the comic book. Ink is just more vivid than film, and that's reflected in movies. Fantasy is much more muted. I think because it's rooted in words. In movies, with the exception of banners, tapestries, and clothes of nobles, most of the colors are earth tones. Conan the Barbarian and Lord of the Rings aren't vivid, saturated movies. They're, well, muted. Throw Raiders of the Lost Ark in there and you have the subdued look I want for what I call photorealism. I'm happy with the way my superheroine renders look. I'm not with my fantasy renders.I agree with the common wisdom that says a good render is 25% textures, 25% composition, and 50% lighting. At the risk of sounding vainglorious, I've nailed textures. As for composition, I'm a student of the master himself, Frank Frazetta. Lighting ... eh ... that's where I'm not quite getting it. Sometimes I do, and it's been by accident. Yeah, well, I'm tired of accidents! Some may be happy, but I'd like for my lighting success to be deliberate.So, I asked Desiree to step in as my test subject for a series of different lighting combinations. I picked her instead of Aura because she's still wearing the Wind Warrior armor which is earth tone to begin with. If I can get the overall look I want with her in that outfit, then I won't mind Aura's much more bold red. The common element to all of these tests was lowering Saturation to .80. Saturation is found in Tone Mapping, and few of us mess with it. It lives up to its name. The default is 1.00. It works like this:Saturation 1.00 = Vivid ColorSaturation 0.00 = No Color, or Black & White.40 would give the effect of a washed out unremastered movie from around 1968, the kind we used to watch at 2 AM on local independent television. .80, which I used, takes the top off the hues. That's a technical trick, and a darn good one. But what lighting combos work best with it.===,Mesh Light + Point LightSet: Castle Gravestone. If I pulled back, you'd see she's at the bottom of a stairwell, entering a hallway. For this, I used one mesh light, to your left, in the hall aimed by her, instead of at her. DAZ Studio 4.20 messes with light emitters, so the torch didn't do bo diddly squat. I added a point light about a scale foot in front of where the flames meet the wood.===,Two SpotsSet: Red Crow Inn. When I did this render, I hadn't found Rougey's script for correcting his lights for Studio 4.20. And the man uses some funky lights! So, I used my own here. One spot (at an ungodly 2 million) outside to mimic moonlight, and one to her right. Pretty darn good for indoors at night. That may be the trickiest location-time to light properly.===,HDRI + Mesh LightSet: Pieces of the Mega Terrain Highlands, plus a few barbarian billboards. This is my usual outdoor light rig. I could live with this. But I'm going to kill that dForce cape!===,HDRI onlySet: Spring Canyon (for Winter Canyon)Thought I'd see how just an HDRI looks. Lots of folks use HDRI only and get spectacular results. I probably shouldn't have used a set that blocks so much light, huh. Under ordinary circumstances, I would have aimed a mesh light at her from above.===,Set Lights OnlySet: Medieval BedroomI can't tell you exactly what lights Rougey used here. He does some things I'd never do, but damn I love the way it looks. He uses mesh lights outside each window, a whole slew of light emitters, and a distant light. Now, I always heard never use a distant light in PBR because it's 1) too harsh and 2) nearly impossible to control. But darn if Rougey doesn't, and it works. Not something I'd mess with on my own, though.===,Set Lights (Sun-Sky Only)Set: Mega Terrain Swamplands.Desiree didn't like being thrown into the swamp. KindredArts goes in the opposite direction from Rougey. I love the way this looks! This is so close to what I want! Right out of the box, too. I will quote you exactly what I said when I found out what KindredArts uses for his lights here: "SonofaBLEEP! You glorious basBLEEP! You only use godBLEEP Sun-Sky? MotherBLEEP!" No spot, no mesh, no HDRI. That helped counterbalance the algorithm sink of the water, and just the size of that set. I used Sun-Sky when I first tried out Iray back in early 2017, and didn't like what it did. But that was five years ago. Obviously, it has matured nicely. My personal thought is to put one mesh on her to highlight her a little bit, without overlighting her.===,Sun-Sky + MeshSet: Mega Terrain HighlandsSo, that's what I did. Nice! NICE!!!===,Sun-Sky + MeshSet: Gatwyck ChurchOne more. Oh, yeah. This may become my goto for outdoors now.===,Mesh + SpotSet: Temple BelowSun-Sky doesn't work indoors. The set blocks it, like it blocks HDRIs. The only way to light an indoor scene is with a spotlight or mesh (unless you're Rougey and like messing with weird stuff). To call this Mesh + Spot is misleading. The meshlight is aimed at the background, just so something other than black shows up. The spot is to your right, aimed at Desiree. If I were making this as a piece to post, I'd let it run much longer. But the graininess does give it a dusty interior look, fitting an old temple.===,HDRI + Spots + Light EmittersSet: Kitbashed from Stonemason and DM partsWhat's any study around here without a little naked bondage peril? Besides, Desiree was getting hot in that armor.Personally, the least impressive of the tests, despite Desiree's fine form. This is one of my typical setups. But Sun-Sky is dismal at night (so far as I've discovered), and a mesh tends to flood the area. I wanted more controlled direct light and shadows. So, spots it was, with the nighttime HDRI handling ambient. ===Still not fully satisfied, and I feel I still have a ways to go with the experiments. But I have a place to start now. That's major progress.. So here's Lady Bassi , lit up by Sun-Sky settings and a mesh light, with Saturation turned down to 0.80. I think it worked out pretty well.

More Bassi and her pure-of-heart squire here: www.deviantart.com/janus3003/g…

Description
I wanted to try out Nathanomir 's techniques from Light Tests with a Pretty GirlWondering where I've been the past few days? Deep within my Mad Lab, running experiments on Desiree! She's Alive! Actually, she was the willing guinea pig for a series of tests of different light setups. I'm still pursuing my idea of photorealism. I thought I'd share the results, in case some of you might pick up some tips.My personal definition of photorealism for my art is I want my images to look like stills from a movie. I'm not a portrait artist, so things like jellybean effect on the ears and nose tip (they're thin enough for light to actually pass through, giving a red, translucent look) aren't important to me. That level of detail gets lost in an action scene. My work, to my own eyes at least (and my eyes are not reliable -- I have a wonky light-color issue that requires a high level of saturation or everything looks brown) is too highly saturated. It looks like a Technicolor movie, like The Ten Commandments. Here is where my own definition splits in two almost opposite directions. What genre are we talking about? I work in two: fantasy and superhero. Those two genres look different on the big screen, and I think it has to do with their sources of origin. Superhero is colorful. Saturated colors fit. I think because superhero began in, and still belongs to, the comic book. Ink is just more vivid than film, and that's reflected in movies. Fantasy is much more muted. I think because it's rooted in words. In movies, with the exception of banners, tapestries, and clothes of nobles, most of the colors are earth tones. Conan the Barbarian and Lord of the Rings aren't vivid, saturated movies. They're, well, muted. Throw Raiders of the Lost Ark in there and you have the subdued look I want for what I call photorealism. I'm happy with the way my superheroine renders look. I'm not with my fantasy renders.I agree with the common wisdom that says a good render is 25% textures, 25% composition, and 50% lighting. At the risk of sounding vainglorious, I've nailed textures. As for composition, I'm a student of the master himself, Frank Frazetta. Lighting ... eh ... that's where I'm not quite getting it. Sometimes I do, and it's been by accident. Yeah, well, I'm tired of accidents! Some may be happy, but I'd like for my lighting success to be deliberate.So, I asked Desiree to step in as my test subject for a series of different lighting combinations. I picked her instead of Aura because she's still wearing the Wind Warrior armor which is earth tone to begin with. If I can get the overall look I want with her in that outfit, then I won't mind Aura's much more bold red. The common element to all of these tests was lowering Saturation to .80. Saturation is found in Tone Mapping, and few of us mess with it. It lives up to its name. The default is 1.00. It works like this:Saturation 1.00 = Vivid ColorSaturation 0.00 = No Color, or Black & White.40 would give the effect of a washed out unremastered movie from around 1968, the kind we used to watch at 2 AM on local independent television. .80, which I used, takes the top off the hues. That's a technical trick, and a darn good one. But what lighting combos work best with it.===,Mesh Light + Point LightSet: Castle Gravestone. If I pulled back, you'd see she's at the bottom of a stairwell, entering a hallway. For this, I used one mesh light, to your left, in the hall aimed by her, instead of at her. DAZ Studio 4.20 messes with light emitters, so the torch didn't do bo diddly squat. I added a point light about a scale foot in front of where the flames meet the wood.===,Two SpotsSet: Red Crow Inn. When I did this render, I hadn't found Rougey's script for correcting his lights for Studio 4.20. And the man uses some funky lights! So, I used my own here. One spot (at an ungodly 2 million) outside to mimic moonlight, and one to her right. Pretty darn good for indoors at night. That may be the trickiest location-time to light properly.===,HDRI + Mesh LightSet: Pieces of the Mega Terrain Highlands, plus a few barbarian billboards. This is my usual outdoor light rig. I could live with this. But I'm going to kill that dForce cape!===,HDRI onlySet: Spring Canyon (for Winter Canyon)Thought I'd see how just an HDRI looks. Lots of folks use HDRI only and get spectacular results. I probably shouldn't have used a set that blocks so much light, huh. Under ordinary circumstances, I would have aimed a mesh light at her from above.===,Set Lights OnlySet: Medieval BedroomI can't tell you exactly what lights Rougey used here. He does some things I'd never do, but damn I love the way it looks. He uses mesh lights outside each window, a whole slew of light emitters, and a distant light. Now, I always heard never use a distant light in PBR because it's 1) too harsh and 2) nearly impossible to control. But darn if Rougey doesn't, and it works. Not something I'd mess with on my own, though.===,Set Lights (Sun-Sky Only)Set: Mega Terrain Swamplands.Desiree didn't like being thrown into the swamp. KindredArts goes in the opposite direction from Rougey. I love the way this looks! This is so close to what I want! Right out of the box, too. I will quote you exactly what I said when I found out what KindredArts uses for his lights here: "SonofaBLEEP! You glorious basBLEEP! You only use godBLEEP Sun-Sky? MotherBLEEP!" No spot, no mesh, no HDRI. That helped counterbalance the algorithm sink of the water, and just the size of that set. I used Sun-Sky when I first tried out Iray back in early 2017, and didn't like what it did. But that was five years ago. Obviously, it has matured nicely. My personal thought is to put one mesh on her to highlight her a little bit, without overlighting her.===,Sun-Sky + MeshSet: Mega Terrain HighlandsSo, that's what I did. Nice! NICE!!!===,Sun-Sky + MeshSet: Gatwyck ChurchOne more. Oh, yeah. This may become my goto for outdoors now.===,Mesh + SpotSet: Temple BelowSun-Sky doesn't work indoors. The set blocks it, like it blocks HDRIs. The only way to light an indoor scene is with a spotlight or mesh (unless you're Rougey and like messing with weird stuff). To call this Mesh + Spot is misleading. The meshlight is aimed at the background, just so something other than black shows up. The spot is to your right, aimed at Desiree. If I were making this as a piece to post, I'd let it run much longer. But the graininess does give it a dusty interior look, fitting an old temple.===,HDRI + Spots + Light EmittersSet: Kitbashed from Stonemason and DM partsWhat's any study around here without a little naked bondage peril? Besides, Desiree was getting hot in that armor.Personally, the least impressive of the tests, despite Desiree's fine form. This is one of my typical setups. But Sun-Sky is dismal at night (so far as I've discovered), and a mesh tends to flood the area. I wanted more controlled direct light and shadows. So, spots it was, with the nighttime HDRI handling ambient. ===Still not fully satisfied, and I feel I still have a ways to go with the experiments. But I have a place to start now. That's major progress.. So here's Lady Bassi , lit up by Sun-Sky settings and a mesh light, with Saturation turned down to 0.80. I think it worked out pretty well.

More Bassi and her pure-of-heart squire here: www.deviantart.com/janus3003/g…