Does anybody know what causes this effect?

You need to use higher quality settings on uberEnvironment - try the presets that are supplied. Also check your shading rate isn't too high in the general DS Render Settings.

Thanks Richard. I had tried the high resolution presets which did improve things but dropping the shading rate to from 2.0 to 0.5 cured it completely.

Can you tell me what the shading rate is and how does it effect the render, other than cure the above problem?

Mitch

The shading rate is a 'quality control' for your renders, I don't know the nuts & bolts of it, but I believe internally it adjusts most of the advanced render settings depending on how high/low you have it set.

It's also seen as a speed control, I use a setting of 20.00 when I'm doing test renders as they can be finished in minutes, rather than the several hours the final render can usually take, but as you've found shader based lighting like UE2 doesn't like high numbers, so even a test render with it can take a while if you don't want it to look all blotchy.

This seems to give a good explanation http://www.k-3d.org/wiki/RenderMan_Controls

Many thanks guys

Mitch

(A) Occlusion Samples (larger number = higher quality = longer render time)

(B) Shading Rate (lower number = higher quality = longer render time).

Try (A) first then fine tune with (B). Also adjusting Occlusion Colour can help but it lightens the shadows.

If you have an item with transperancy / opacity map (such as hair / eyelashes) applied to its Surface then Uberenvironment render times will be even longer unless you apply UberHair Shader first to the item's Surface. Or in the item's Paramater tab turn Cast Shadows to Off.

BTW I used Lantios Lights 2 (from Daz store) in my above render.

Thanks for the extra info. At the moment four quaiity presets that come with DS4 meet my requirements, but as I experiment, tweeking these settings may help improve renders.

Do you know how the shading rate for the UberEnvironment relates to the overall shading rate set in the general DS Render Settings? The rate for the light (default 32) appears to be high in comparison with that in the general Render Settings (default 2.0 better at 0.2-0.5). Does one rate take precedence over the other or are they combined in some manner?

They are similar in that lower is better, but they don't use the same scale. I'm not sure what the UE scale represents, but the main one is in pixels.

Speaking of Uber Environment in DAZ, and I'm just a clueless newb here who doesn't understand all the intricacies of lighting in DAZ & Poser, but I tried Omnifreak's Uber lights a couple nights ago with both the Light Plane & Light Disc, and used the 4x(?) highest quality setting. After it finally finished rendering, I got a great, well lit, very clean, non-grainy image, but the problems was/is that the very large and superbright square or circle shows up underneath Vicky in the render. How do I get the beautifully lit subject without the big white light showing up underneath her?

That shouldn't happen - what was she standing on, if anything? And how were you using uberEnvironement - in addition to the quality settings it has several modes, from providing a simple light sphere through various shadow options with ambient occlusion to indirect lighting.

Well, I remember that I clicked the Base setting first. This is in Uber Environment 2 btw.

And then I think I chose the square Light Panel next. That's the first time and using a low quality setting so it rendered much faster. After undoing that under Edit, I tried the Light Disc instead, and not being very smart chose the level 4 highest quality setting after that. A very long render, beautiful light on her body, but this time the huge light underneath her was round(hence light "Disc")and very very distracting. Making the image unusable. After all, what is a giant glowing white disc doing on the surface of the bed where she is laying? 

You can treat the Area lights just like normal lights. They can be used with or without UE2.

...and just like normal lights, after they have been put in the scene you have to position and rotate them.

It sounds like you left the area light where it defaults to, 0,0,0 and horizontal. 

OK, the area light presets are just that - shapes that emit light. They are not related to uberEnvironment.

To prixat & Richard,

But if I move the Light Panel or Disc off of that default position, won't that also move the direction or position of the light? 

Yes, it will. What are you trying to do - as I said, the disc or square is a primitive shape that emits light - it isn't anything to do with the Environment light, so it's not clear why you are adding it or what you want it to do.

Attached Link: My first attempt at using the UberEnvironment2 settings plus postwork in PSE 7

I'm striving to get my artwork to look something between photorealistic and painterly/classical, as I do enjoy postwork.If there is any further reading/video tutorials that you could recommend I would greatly appreciate it.

Also, if I happen to figure some things out or learn some more about using the UberEnvironment 2 lighting options I will return to post here.

Thanks again~

Quote - Also, if I happen to figure some things out or learn some more about using the UberEnvironment 2 lighting options I will return to post here.

Thanks again~

Please do.

Since I started this thread I’ve discovered a couple of things that may be obvious to more experienced users but may be of help to some.

 The UberEnvironment 2 is a kind of area light, in that it is a sphere which encloses the scene and emits light from whole internal surface. If UE2 is introduced into a large scene, it appears as a sphere which has to be increased in size (scaled up) until it encloses the whole scene and the cameras. Some options bias the lighting to a particular direction, which can be changed with the light’s rotational controls

A colour map can be applied to this inner surface, which controls the colour emitted by the surface, as in the case of the HDR presets that come with DS4. For example, using a simple map of three vertical stripes of red, blue, and green produces a psychedelic stage/ nightclub lighting.

 I haven’t had much success with the Uber area lights and now use UE2, and the normal DS4 lights to produce the modelling.

The sphere won't render, unless you change its setting - it's a guide, to show where the light is going to come from, rather than the working part so there's no absolute need to scale it up to enclose the scene.

Ok, here's something I tried yesterday~ Thanks to the info which alessimarco provided me, I set up the portrait scene and added the UE2 environment base only, then messed around with the shading rate, deciding on 4.00 (I think). Below is the render with no postwork.

I then converted this image to black & white and did some postworking~ You can see the finished image here: http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=2312636&section_id=&genre_id=&np

I hope this will be helpful~ I'll do my best to return each time I stumble upon something =)

Attached Link: Basic Lighting in DAZ Studio

Thanks for the tip & the link, LBAMagic I will give that a try on my next portrait/scene. And thank you for your comment on "Warding" as well~ I appreciate it =)