RHaseltine posted at 10:30AM Thu, 10 September 2015 - #4227562

"Lighting Model" is a property of the Default DAZ Shader. It changes how specular highlights interact with the diffuse colour, and turns SSS on if set to Skin. It has nothing to do with the ambient light effect. [/RHaseltine]

Thank you very much for your reply. Ambient lights are indeed a part of the lighting model, otherwise there would not be an "ambient strength" setting associated with the lighting model. The lighting model is basically all the math that has to do with lighting, and ambient light is obviously a part of that. The same ambient issue happens in the final render as well. Also, please note that the two characters in the screen shot are identical, except for the light model has been changed on one. So that would eliminate the possibility of it being anything other than the surface parameters, otherwise the light would have the same effect on both characters.

Here is a PDF explaining basic lighting models, and the first thing mentioned is ambient light...

http://graphics.cs.cmu.edu/nsp/course/15-462/Spring04/slides/07-lighting.pdf

So anyhoo.... on your point about the DAZ shaders. Again, I'll say that I am new to DAZ Studio, so please be patient with me. Under the surfaces tab, either for the full object or for the separate materials ( e.g. face ), all of the ambient settings are set to 0, but obviously, a strong ambient effect is coming from somewhere.

Other than using the Poser MAT file, which I assume is removing advanced shaders in favor of simpler ones (?), how can I remove this ambient effect off of the default G4F so when there is little or no light, the skin becomes really dark to black?

I've attached another image illustrating the effect again, this time using a simple cube. What I need is for the unlit areas of G3F to be as dark as the dark areas of the cube. I would like to do this as "cleanly" as possible and not have to resort to tricks. I'm sure there is a shader setting somewhere to achieve this, but again, I am new to daz studio and having trouble finding it.

However, I do see your point re: the render. When I render now, they both have high ambient lighting...

So, it would seem that somewhere there is a strong ambient light by default, and in the preview mode, it shows up on some surfaces, and not all, but shows up on all for the final render.

One more thing... When I render it from a separate camera, the strongest light is coming from the side, when the only light I added to the scene is straight in front. So I am obviously missing something pretty fundamental here :S

Lighting4.jpg

I would like to start off with a completely dark scene and build up the lights. What is the best way of simply turning off all default lighting, so until I add a light of my own, everything renders as black?

p.s. I've also turned off the headlamp for the camera so that's not it.