Quote - Ha that splains it. I am a pretty simple user I dont tinker with maps. I just mostly adjust materials there is stuff that renders in LUX that I cannot get in 3Delighting, having said that I also have no quams going back to DS lighting for the odd renders. If you go back a bit I posted some renders of my main character in a futuristic appt. The main pic was done in LUX but the exterior was done with DS3 & LDP2 10 minutes is hard to beat LOL!

I posted many pics when Rogerbee was running it until DAZ borked their site and for what I am reading the new version of Studio. Again (Psssssst puff of weed)....

Maps?  Never said anything about maps. 

Think I'm being a little "off topic", but, just wanted to say a few things...

Because I rolled up my sleves and learned the lights and surfaces, as well as other aspect in DS, I still feel that the renders I produce are good renders, and like I said before I went to Reality/Lux, I won't forsake 3Delight and all that experience I gained, so it's still fun to go back.  I don't use cheat maps or what nots to get results, I use common knowledge, common sense, and then experience with DS lights/surfaces.

LDP2, never did like it.  It produces "ok" renders (if your surfaces were set up right), but you just can't get a more true & natural looking render unless you use occlusion shading and true "environment" brightness, which is done with UberEnvironment... with raytraced shadows applied to any and all DS lights you load (no shadowless lights).   Using many lights with shadow maps, and then shadowless lights, just doesn't do it, as you almost always see unnatural lights seeping under things where it's not supposed to be, and deep shadow maps create more "dirty" looking spots then actual shadows in my opinion.  I'm not talking about bad render settings where you see tiny spots, I'm talking about it just lays a bunch of grey areas around the render and just look like smudged dirt instead of shadows.   And then, you have no choice but to use a minimum of 16 lights, with takes forever waiting for deep shadow maps to create.  For about the same time, using UberEnvironment (if you know your setups) with an added default light or two with raytraced shadows applied (again with a good setup) gives you a lot better results.

Reality/Lux is a whole different bag, but you still gotta learn what to do to get the best results.  If you learn the trick of the trade here, you can really produce "photo quality", realistic renders (and I'm not there just yet lol).  I've seen a lot of people just slap together things and expect Reality to fix all the surfaces to be perfect, and then produce something I can easily produce in 3Delight with bad lights and surfaces.  And again I've seen a lot of images that actually look like it came from the camera.  Reality is great for assuming most surfaces (still not all though), but the surfaces need to be set up in DS first, Poser mat/settings stilll look aweful even in Lux, depending on a lot of things, still no "make art" button there.

So, all in all, the main thing is you gotta know what you're doing before actually making good quality art lol.

 

I'm kinda curious if Rogerbee is gonna start another "Realistic Renders... NOT!!!" thread.  If I go back there, I might do it myself.