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Lighting and shading
About Truespace Archives
These pages are a copy of the official truespace forums prior to their removal somewhere around 2011.
They are retained here for archive purposes only.
Lighting and shading // New Users
Post by bumforaliving // Apr 3, 2009, 3:10am
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bumforaliving
Total Posts: 16
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Hello.
I am very green to working in Truespace. I've been developing a model character looking to do something along the lines of these:
http://www.istockphoto.com/file_search.php?action=file&userID=1339133
I've done ok with the modeling and bones but am completely lost on how to setup lighting and shading to get the same effect.
I would appreciate and direction or assistance.
Thank you in advance! |
Post by jamesmc // Apr 3, 2009, 3:42am
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jamesmc
Total Posts: 2566
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Hello.
I am very green to working in Truespace. I've been developing a model character looking to do something along the lines of these:
http://www.istockphoto.com/file_search.php?action=file&userID=1339133
I've done ok with the modeling and bones but am completely lost on how to setup lighting and shading to get the same effect.
I would appreciate and direction or assistance.
Thank you in advance!
Welcome to the world of 3D in trueSpace.
Lighting, IMO, is the hardest concept to implement.
- Lighting is dependent on render engine, shaders, materials, geometry
- Lighting has four distinct elements (intensity, direction, size, color)
Some lighting tutorials:
http://www.warpedspace.org/lightingT/part1.htm
http://www.itchy-animation.co.uk/light.htm
(last URL is in 4 parts) |
Post by Jack Edwards // Apr 3, 2009, 3:45am
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Jack Edwards
Total Posts: 4062
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There was another thread about this sort of soft lighting last week. There are a couple of different approaches depending on what render engine you choose to use.
For Lightworks: look into HDRI and IBL.
For VRay: HDRI and GI
For YafaRay: HDRI, Sun light type, and Photon Mapping. |
Post by splinters // Apr 3, 2009, 5:20am
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splinters
Total Posts: 4148
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I like your user name but in the UK, that is a career opportunity for under educated good looking boys....:rolleyes: |
Post by bumforaliving // Apr 3, 2009, 4:25pm
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bumforaliving
Total Posts: 16
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Thank you for the replies. I've JUST dipped into 3d for the first time and the lighting/shading is daunting. The whole shader editor, elements, linking blocks is crazy! Being completely new to 3d/design and really just looking to learn enough to generate those types of scenes, which is the easiest route to pursue?
Looking over the yafaray notes it appears that route I can not go that route as I have a skeleton model. Will it be long before it will support that?
Lightworks seems like my current option (Don't have another render engine nor budget to purchase) and I found the course on HDRI and will go through it. It appears I need to pick an image that is similar to the sceen. What HDRI image would be a good one to use? What material do I set the objects to? Is there a course or info on implementing IBL in TL? Is it THAT apparent I am lost? :p
Splinters: The way the economy is going, I might just have to live up to that. :rolleyes: ;) |
Post by Jack Edwards // Apr 3, 2009, 10:28pm
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Jack Edwards
Total Posts: 4062
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There's a work around for the YafaRay4tS skeleton issue. If you add and remove an SDS modifier level to the actor then it will read it ok. (I think... ;)) There's a major update coming soon as I get the website done, btw. The v0.6.1 update includes a bunch of material related fixes and makes it a lot easier to use. |
Post by bumforaliving // Apr 4, 2009, 11:23am
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bumforaliving
Total Posts: 16
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Thanks Jack.
Would YafaRay be my best route?
As for your website, how complex is it and can you use a hand? I do web work. |
Post by Jack Edwards // Apr 4, 2009, 11:55am
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Jack Edwards
Total Posts: 4062
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YafaRay's a great render engine. It's not as fast as VRay on GI, but it does camera DOF much faster. Overall, I'm pretty happy with it. I'm sure it can do what you're looking for, but if you're doing animation speed may become an issue. Best thing would be to try it out and see if it meets your needs.
I'm keeping the website pretty simple. Having to learn CSS though, since I used to be an image tables kinda guy and was still living in the days of plain old HTML from 1996 or so, lol! ;)
The way I'm setting up the content and classes it should be fairly easy to snaz up with AJAX later when I get a chance, but I want to see what the bandwidth turns out to be before I make the site too image heavy. I'm planning to put ads on the site to help cover it's running costs, I hope no one minds. Eventually I'd also like roll in some integrated blog and forum elements, but that can come later as well. |
Post by bumforaliving // Apr 4, 2009, 12:52pm
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bumforaliving
Total Posts: 16
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I'm very appreciative of your guidance in helping me pick a good overall solution. The thing is I'm just looking to make stills that look like the examples the simplest non confusing way. Perhaps down the line I'll get more in to it but right now it's just for a project I have and becoming a 3d artist is not my goal. The lighting/shading is way over my head and though I'm sure I could grasp munch eventually, I don't have that time or need other than for this.
With that in mind, would the easiest route be learning HDRI or installing Yafaray & YafaRay4tS? Are settings easier to understand and does it work right in TS or is it an external app? Hate to go down a path only to find I'll pull the last remaining hairs out that I have. :D
Sounds like you are writing the site from the ground up. Have you looked into using a CMS? There are some slick ones out there that have much of the core work built for you. Personally I LOVE www.typolight.com. More of a website manager and not "fixed" as to the look and capabilities of the site. (A developers dream foundation.) |
Post by bumforaliving // Apr 5, 2009, 1:08pm
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bumforaliving
Total Posts: 16
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I owe you another word of thanks as I just realized you did the Organic Modeling tutorial. I learned how to do my character of of that. So thank you! |
Post by Jack Edwards // Apr 5, 2009, 6:43pm
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Jack Edwards
Total Posts: 4062
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Welcome!
BTW, I'm looking into your recommendation of Typolight for another more ambitious website project. It's nice and um... light, lol, but I do like the simplicity. Do you know if it has any relation to Typo3? I'm also looking at Joomla. So far I like Typolight, but it seems that it has to be installed at the www root directory, whereas Joomla I can put in a subdirectory which allows me to host multiple sites using add-on domains. For the YafaRay4tS site I don't need all that though and a straight up template based CSS site should work fine.
To use the YafaRay4tS stuff, while not necessary, it will help to have a working knowledge of the Link Editor and using the DirectX material bricks. That way you can fix things is the YafaRay DX materials don't apply correctly because of model-side Lightworks materials being there. The new version will have much more complete documentation so that will help as well.
For getting started with it you probably want to just drop in a few primitives and a ground plane or cube and try out different lights, background settings, etc. The gradient background gives great results with very quick renders.
The sun light is awesome for getting that soft daylight look, but does take a while to render. So it can be useful to use a directional light to get things set up, then swap it out for a Sun light when you're closer to doing your final render. Area lights, Material Lights, and Sphere lights also produce soft shadows. Spot and point lights are fast to render but only produce single tone hard edged shadows.
The ShinyDiffuse material is your all around generic material. It can do matte materials if you set the diffuse up and the specular to zero, metal if you set specular up and diffuse down. Translucent materials if caustics is turned on. Lots of cool stuff. That and the Glass material should be the first two you turn too. For metals or ceramics with blurry reflections the Glossy materials do a great job. Just drag the material you want from the YafaRay library and drop it on your object. Then you can use the built in tS Material inspect tool to bring up the material's panel in the Panel tab of the Stack view.
Best of luck and have fun with it!
Edit:
Whupps almost forgot to talk about the most important part of lighting! Lighting isn't about making things bright it's about using shadow to define the shape. If you make an object all white, it's flat. There's no definition or interest. It's the interplay of light and shadow that makes an object appear 3D. So when lighting your scene it's very important to think about the shadowing and how it draws out the shapes.
One thing you should start doing everyday, is start training your eye to see. This is the most important part of becoming an artist! It's also the hardest part! Start taking notice of how objects are lit. What colors and shade values really make up the way you see that object? How does what's reflected in the object create color highlights? What kind of shadows are cast by that particular light source? You'll find that after a while when you can see what's really there instead of what your brain is telling you is there, that you will improve significantly.
For example, that "black" speaker next to your computer, is it really black? No. If it's lit by an incandescent light, likely it's various shades of yellows. What about the reflected highlights? What colors are those? How about the shadows? Even if the "black" speaker was evenly lit by a white light and in a white (gray) room with nothing else to reflect, it still wouldn't be "black" it'd be various shades of gray. What about the texture? What light and dark shapes, colors make up the texture of its' surface? |
Post by bumforaliving // Apr 6, 2009, 7:32am
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bumforaliving
Total Posts: 16
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I'm not exactly sure. First the developer (Lee) says it's a lighter version, then he says it's not:
http://www.typolight.org/forum/message/2762.html
I think he was inspired but it was built from the ground up.
As for the root issue, it is suppose to work but it does not. In this thread I had addressed that (Towards the end of this page):
http://www.typolight.org/forum/topic/432.html?page=2
Leo chimed in on that thread so perhaps it will be fixed soon. Until then, subdomains does the trick if that works for you. By the way, Typolight can do multiple sites with one install. Checkout the "site structure" page types. Setup website roots and the page structures, park your domains on the root directory, tell TypoLight which "root" to display per domain. done.
TL is very CSS based with almost everything over classed. It's quite easy to cut in CSS templates you find out there. It's quite powerful and some parts take a bit to comprehend (Nothing like lighting & shading!!! :p) but it's quite easy to do simple sites "simply" or complex ones. Use what you want, ignore what you don't need.
From what I understand Joomla can be difficult to make it look and function like something other than Joomla. Never dove in so I could be quite wrong.
Let me know if I can be of assistance. I've been working with it for a bit. Custom extensions, backend modifications and so on. I find it extremely customizable for both the backend & fronted WITHOUT touching core code. The foundation is superb and can easily do multi language as well.
Thanks for the guidance and I'll start playing with the materials and lights in TS. I was hoping for a magical equation (This material, this light setup, this HDRI and you are golden!) but I guess it's just not that easy.
Can't find ShinyDiffuse material in TS. Is that an addon, other name, or will I find that if I install YafaRay? |
Post by v3rd3 // Apr 6, 2009, 11:05am
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v3rd3
Total Posts: 388
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When you run the yafaray4ts install the materials are part of the library... |
Post by Jack Edwards // Apr 6, 2009, 11:33am
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Jack Edwards
Total Posts: 4062
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Yeah like V3rd3 says, the materials and lights I mentioned are all part of the YafaRay4tS install and don't come with tS.
Gradient + "use background" + Sun light for soft directional shadows is a great default light setup for YafaRay.
I use an orange-ish yellow sun color to counter the blue that is added by the gradient when sky colors are used. ;) Gives a nice effect and render times are decent. |
Post by bumforaliving // Apr 7, 2009, 10:35am
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bumforaliving
Total Posts: 16
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Ok, I'm feeling stupid. :confused:
I'm SURE not knowing how to utilize the link editor is an issue but I got it installed and have a few question (First of many I am sure :p ):
- When I render my plane shows up but none of my objects. (or they are rendering the same color as the plain, ignoring color and blending in). I rotate the scene, setup a camera a select it through the camera settings and the rendered scene does not change view.
- What options should I reduce/disable to generate "decent" test renders?
- Is there documentation/tutorials on using it in TS? |
Post by bumforaliving // Apr 7, 2009, 11:52am
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bumforaliving
Total Posts: 16
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Ok, there might have been something wrong with the scene but starting over I got results.
The other two questions stand and:
"The ShinyDiffuse material is your all around generic material. It can do matte materials if you set the diffuse up and the specular to zero, metal if you set specular up and diffuse down."
Is there any reference to value ranges when working in the editor? For example, what is "up" compared to the default 1?
Thanks again for the help! |
Post by Jack Edwards // Apr 7, 2009, 1:52pm
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Jack Edwards
Total Posts: 4062
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You'll want to read through the documentation for using YafaRay with Blender:
http://www.yafaray.org/documentation/userguide
and the parameter values are covered here:
http://www.yafaray.org/development/documentation/XMLparameters
For reflectance values 1.0 is max, 0.0 is min.
To render from a camera, on the Camera tab you need to set the radio button to "camera" and with the camera object selected click the select camera button. If you change the name of your scene, you'll have to reselect the camera. This unfortunately happens anytime you save to the library without using "replace".
Be aware of the direction the normals are facing on your objects. Make sure that "show backfacing" is turned off in the tS Settings tab so that you can see if an object's normals are pointing the wrong direction.
Documentation and tutorials is the main thing holding up the v0.6.1 release. So no there isn't any documentation, but there soon will be. ;) |
Post by bumforaliving // Apr 7, 2009, 2:05pm
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bumforaliving
Total Posts: 16
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Thanks, that's a great start!
Another curious question; Is there a way to get a simulated look to the output in TS or is it normal that it looks quite different? I.E. Making a small change to the sun power and I have to wait wait minutes to see the effect. :(
Does the render output window help? (Did not install) |
Post by Jack Edwards // Apr 7, 2009, 2:19pm
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Jack Edwards
Total Posts: 4062
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Unfortunately I'll never be able to get it so that the YafaRay lights and tS lights match. Though there are ways to get it closer than it is and it's one of the things that I plan to work on for the update.
One thing that makes a big difference is with the attenuation settings. To get a closer lighting approximation in tS, for many of the light types you need to change the light attenuation to 0.0 for Constant, 0.0 to Linear, and 1.0 for Quadratic. Since YafaRay uses a "real world" lighting model.
The directional and Sun types it's just a matter of getting the power multiplier to match tS. (Something I need to script inside the light objects.)
Sphere light is tricky, and the solution I've come up with is to use a combination of linear and quadratic falloff and increasing the light brightness (past RGB 1.0) to simulate the extra light produced by the size of the sphere. It's not a perfect solution since the real solution is distance dependant, but it should be close enough for general usage.
Also there's an issue when using Gamma Correction that since trueSpace doesn't have any way to set the DX gamma space, gamma settings other than 1.0 will never correctly match the tS display.
BTW, I was wrong on saying that bump maps, etc., should be 1.0 gamma while diffuse maps should be 2.2. They are all 2.2 if you are working on a 2.2 gamma machine. Also make sure you match the output gamma value to your machine as well. So for general use, use 1.0 gamma for everything or 2.2 gamma for everything. In general until you understand about linear workflow, you're probably best off just setting all the gamma values to 1.0 and not worrying about it.
BTW, feel free to post test renders w/ your questions since that'll help me see what kind of results you're getting and offer better suggestions, plus it'll help others as well. |
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