I'd hate to beg. I really would. But after 9 renders of the same scene, I assume that I actually need help now. So I am begging for help at this point.

To start off, I have used Poser since Poser 4. I am very happy with Poser and I plan on using it to animate animations for free visual novels one day. I think it would be great exposure and Poser is a wonderful program to create artwork in. I am used to it.

Recently I started using Daz3d. The beauty of the daz pictures I see on the web is amazing. I definitely wanted to use many of the products I have bought for the program. But this render, and recent renders like it, are confounding me and making me think twice about the program. But unfortunately, many artists are creating for the program now. Here is the image that I have rendered 9 times in. I had a completely different scene but I moved the characters out of the way and just added a basic Genesis 8 female. As you can see it is completely dark. The enclosed dungeon space causes a very dark space and I am unable to illuminate the characters faces in this image. I have tried to remove walls and that worked of course, but I want the walls to be there. As you can see on your left. I have attempted to add spotlights and distant lights to try and illuminate the character. It doesn't happen at all.

I have a middle range computer. An i7-6700k, a GTX 1060, and 16 gigs of ram. One day I'll get a rendering rig, but no time soon.

I don't think its my computer, it might be but I don't think so. What am I doing wrong? I am tired of rendering this image only to fail. Please assist in any way possible. I have looked at tutorials, danced around settings, and did my best to investigate the forums. Any direct help will be appreciated, but I am willing to follow links as well.

One last thing, here is a character I rendered already before. I know its the enviromental lighting that is the problem. I rendered her without any enclosed walls and she came out nicely, besides the obvious clipping. So I can do some things in this program. But maybe I am missing something?

Thanks for reading all, and I hope someone can help!

It's the same problem in poser when you have walls or enclosures of some sort. Make sure the camera isn't blocked by the wall or enclosure and the lights are placed within the setup.

ThunderStone posted at 8:23AM Mon, 11 February 2019 - #4345818

It's the same problem in poser when you have walls or enclosures of some sort. Make sure the camera isn't blocked by the wall or enclosure and the lights are placed within the setup.

Hello Thundestone, thanks for the reply. Literally working in Poser instead for now but lets go back to this one. I will try what you suggest, but I think the lights and camera are IN the scene. I'll post some screenshots (edit this post) in a bit.

Apparently I couldn't edit my post. D:

So I tried moving the spotlight closer. The camera was already in the room. Here are the results:

I originally had the spotlight higher above to have a wider spread of lighting. It was still in the room. But even when close up on the character it doesn't seem to be illuminating the model at all. I am completely confused. What am I doing wrong?

I definitely want environmental lighting along with the spotlight to illuminate the character's face. This is strange to me. Thanks for any help anyone can give.

In Render Setting click on Environment and set it to Scene Only. Your Distant light still wont work as it is meant to emulate a far off light source like the sun or moon, its placement has no bearing only its direction.

Try experimenting with different settings and angles of lighting.for the spotlight. Also, remember the walls can not only block the camera view but also environmental lighting.

ThunderStone posted at 10:55AM Mon, 11 February 2019 - #4345834

Try experimenting with different settings and angles of lighting.for the spotlight. Also, remember the walls can not only block the camera view but also environmental lighting.

Jestmart, I think I tried that. It didn't provide a good render it seemed or at least it didn't work like I wanted. Thank you though, I am trying that again.

ThunderStone, I am going to try that as well. It makes sense about the environmental rendering. I did a render with the ceiling missing and it didn't look too bad, I might just have to choose a different HDR. I was trying to go for a dusk setting, but I will have to change it probably. I am thinking about removing the dungeon completely, rendering, then rendering the dungeon and photoshopping the characters in. That might work too.

Oh, you're using Iray. Haha! Welcome to Daz, my friend. Iray uses a second lighting and preview system. Daz has documentation, video tuts on Youtube, and interactive tuts in the software to teach you how to use all that. Highly recommend looking into all that! You can start here or search "daz iray lighting tutorial"

For now, in your preview window, pick nvidia iray preview. This will show you the effect of current lighting in your scene. To get you started, pick the spotlight. Make sure it's pointing at your figure. Go to Lights tab. Check to ensure Photometric setting is ON. Check Luminous Flux, crank that to about 80000. Now you have some light in your scene and you should be able to see the figure in the preview and in a render.

There are many other options and factors that affect the look of the render. The lighting model is great. Remember to use flux lumens to control the light output and Nvidia Iray setting to see a properly lit preview before you render.

jestmart posted at 11:03AM Mon, 11 February 2019 - #4345833

In Render Setting click on Environment and set it to Scene Only. Your Distant light still wont work as it is meant to emulate a far off light source like the sun or moon, its placement has no bearing only its direction.

So here is a Nvidia Iray version with scene only. Its like the spotlight isn't even there. Maybe its one of my settings?

Torquinox posted at 11:16AM Mon, 11 February 2019 - #4345840

Oh, you're using Iray. Haha! Welcome to Daz, my friend. Iray uses a second lighting and preview system. Daz has documentation, video tuts on Youtube, and interactive tuts in the software to teach you how to use all that. Highly recommend looking into all that! You can start here or search "daz iray lighting tutorial"

For now, in your preview window, pick nvidia iray preview. This will show you the effect of current lighting in your scene. To get you started, pick the spotlight. Make sure it's pointing at your figure. Go to Lights tab. Check to ensure Photometric setting is ON. Check Luminous Flux, crank that to about 80000. Now you have some light in your scene and you should be able to see the figure in the preview and in a render.

There are many other options and factors that affect the look of the render. The lighting model is great. Remember to use flux lumens to control the light output and Nvidia Iray setting to see a properly lit preview before you render.

I got pretty excited because I didn't use flux lumens to control the light output. But its still the same after that. As you can see, I set it to 80k and its not showing anything. Or was I supposed to use enviromental lighting too? At any rate, I'll play with the settings. Its a little frustrating but I am not going to give up. I'll work this out.

Ok. You should have some light in your scene! Check light settings to see that Decay is at 0. It should be! Then go to Render Settings. Try the following:

Tone Mapping Enable: ON, Exposure: 13, Shutter Speed: 128, F/stop: 8, Film iso: 100, CM^2 Factor: 1, Gamma: 2.2,

You should see light in your scene. If all else fails, you can hit defaults and start over, but it's weird that you're still in the dark there..

Decay does nothing in Iray - for that, all but distant lights have a dcay of 0 (and you should not be seeing the setting as it is hidden when Iray is the render engine).

@RHaseltine: I forgot: I routinely leave hidden settings visible. Thanks for correcting that. :) So, what do you think about the perpetual darkness in Shinmauru's scene?

The Spot light is set to 'Point', change it to disk to get the 'diameter' into play.

Try a lower value for Exposure, and perhaps first check that the spotlight isn't being blocked by scene elements (try switching the display to wireframe using the sphere icon at top-right of the Viewport, nrxt to the Camera picker, and look in the top/right/front views to see exactly where it is); turning the light preview off (Window menu, or cmd(Mac)/ctrl(Win) L) may also help to figure things out if placement is a factor.

so reading this I decided to actually try the built in lights, I usually use iray emissives to light internal scenes. from experimentation it seems to be a placement issue most likely, check that there is nothing as part of the dungeon that might not be visible but designed to block light.

this was inside a cube with a single spot, so no environmental influence and even in a smooth shaded preview you should be able to see the light effect, maybe reduce the spot spread angle to see exactly where its shining or what might be blocking it

admittedly I am using 4.11 but it shouldn't make too much difference