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My pleasure! This is actually a Cube full of "Volume" or "Particles" that you make bigger than your whole Scene, so that when looking through your Camera, you're "inside" the Cube along with everything in else in your Scene.
Any (or at least most) normal Light Sources (HDRI Light, Spot Light, Point Light, Emissive Primitive Lights of any Shape, etc) all become "Volumetric" Lighting because their Rays are refracting off of all those Particles inside the Cube (the Surface Settings laid out in that post are what create all those particles).
For example, if you create a Volume Cube like this that's bigger than your whole Scene, have a Camera set up inside it looking at your scene and then add a Spotlight near the Camera but shining in from behind it or off to one side, the Spotlight will automatically create a "cone" of light, similar to the beam coming from a Flashlight in a Dusty Attic...
You can go into your Render Setting Tab and in Environment, change the Environment Intensity to 0.00, removing the HDRI provided light to really blatantly see what I'm talking about. You can even then go on to turn up that Environmental Intensity to say, just 0.05, or 0.1 and you'll get just a bit of that global light back. There have been plenty of times I've done this, heading back toward a value of 1.0 to determine how bright I really want the HDRI to be for a Scene that isn't meant to be generally dark, overall.
A large off-screen Spherical Emissive Light will fill the Scene with the color of the Light in a realistic way, degrading and softening as it gets further away, depending on some settings. The larger the Sphere, the softer the Shadows it will cast. I use this quite often, completely instead of an HDRI. You have sooooooo much more control with X,Y,Z Positioning, Scale of the Sphere, it's Emissive Shader's Luminance, etc.
Emissive Spheres can be quickly created by anyone:
1. Create a Sphere Primitive, select it in the Scene Tab, then also the Surfaces Tab
2. Browse to: Smart Content Tab > Shaders > Iray > Emissives
3. Double click the default Shader called Emissive (looks like a glowing version of the standard Light Probe Sphere)
4. Go over to the Surfaces Tab and set:
Emission Color: (if desired) generally stay away from fully Saturated Color settings (pretty pale can get the job done)
Emission Temperature: Leave as is if you want a warm yellowish feel like an old school light bulb, or set back to the default of 6500 for white light (whether you want white light, or to fully control the color with Emission Color).
Luminance: Start at around 500
Luminance Units: Change to kcd/m^2
5. Size the Sphere to be about the size of a Genesis Figure if the plan is to move it a ways off in whatever direction to emulate a Sun/Moon, etc. Smaller and smaller the closer or more faint of a light source you want it to be. Between Distance away, Size of the Sphere and Luminance there's endless possibilities.
Remember Distance away and Sphere Size affect how Soft or Hard of Shadows it will cast, Luminance can be adjusted accordingly, usually lower for a larger Sphere, or higher for a smaller Sphere.
If one were to want to include an Emissive Sphere in plain view within the Scene without having the actual Sphere itself be visible, just it's light rays (for example the main and almost only light source in the top of the Cage in my Render), you just need to load an image that's all Black into the Emissive Sphere's Cutout Opacity Parameter.
Good luck playing around and ask any further questions at all!
I'm giving it a try. Followed both your cube instructions and used a spherical emissive for light, turned down the enviroment (the sky was HDRI) to 15%. Its drastically increasing the render time so might be a while before I post it.
Edit: some hours later... The image never fully rendered as it reach the default 2 hour time limit.
Removed rework in progress ..
Ah, there's definitely a few more things I should describe in order to help make tweaking and testing those tweaks a little easier, as well as how I would recommend setting Progressive Render Settings...
I'll get some detailed info posted for you after work!
Now with more rim lighting!
The prop I used was actualy a sphere that was parented with this camera product. Our camera is outside of the sphere, The characters are just inside the edge of the sphere.
I might look into trying some of your ideas, and don't worry about me forgeting to rename things, each version that I post to these forums has a corasponding scene file with the same name incase I decide to go a different way for some reason, I just have to decide what version to go back to.
@Alewis478 Here's some things I should have probably mentioned, though I was trying to keep what was already lengthy, as concise as I could...
First, you can absolutely try using the Volume Cube with your lighting exactly how you had it (if you hadn't already)...
A harsh, bright white HDRI Light will possibly seem to overload the Volume, but it might not! On top of that, with a White Volume, if it is a bit too much, you can change the Base Color and Refraction Color of the Volume to shades of light gray, something like the color bar showing: [ 0.80 0.80 0.80 ], to tone down the mist a little while keeping it's "density" and without losing as much overall brightness as you might by turning the HDRI Intensity down.
Next, with the Emissive Sphere, when I said "start with 500" for Luminance, I should have said right there that the tweaking you'll want to try could be between 500 and 1,500 or it could be between 500 and 20,000 or 100,000 or more. I personally start low in the hundreds and if I see it's way too dark, I'll make a big jump to like 5000. If it's too bright, I know it's just finding the spot back toward 500. If it's still way too dark, then I haven't wasted time making smaller jumps, I know it needs to be more like 10, 20, 100k.
In order to help determine the above, let's talk about what it looks like to see DS rendering a Scene with Volumetric Atmosphere so that you're also not wasting time Previewing or actually Rendering for too long.
The final Render will absolutely take a lot longer with a Volumetric Atmosphere to resolve to the point where it doesn't look like there's Noise, but... the Volume you created should be pretty "soft", comparatively speaking. Only the first couple hundred Iterations should have enough "fireflies" to be hard to tell pretty much how it's going to look, at least as far as overall Scene Brightness, Contrast, etc... The main point of this info is, if you go into Iray Preview, don't feel like you need to let it go for any more than a minute or two at the most, (hopefully... of course System/GPU specs could affect this), before deciding that you need to keep tweaking your Lighting/Settings to get where you want to be.
Next is Render Settings...
I'm not positive that this is generally the best advice for all purposes, but I never use the Render Quality Settings, at all. I leave it turned off and have a few of the other Parameters set so that I almost always decide when to stop the Render. I also almost always use Volumetric Atmosphere and odd or darker lighting though, and all of those need more Iterations than the Default Render Settings allow. Here's how I pretty much always have those Settings (I'll list the ones that aren't Default):
Render Settings Tab > Progressive Rendering:
Max Samples: 15000
Max Time (secs): 250000
Render Quality Enable: OFF
These Settings will basically ensure the Render makes it through 15000 Iterations unless you choose to stop it. Most of the time no matter how dark or caustic the scene, I don't usually need more than 5 to 8k Iterations and I stop it, but I know I did a render a bit back where I had to crank it up to 50000 Max Samples to get all the noise to resolve.
The Max Time of 250000 is just a huge number it should never reach (more than two days). You can totally decide that you'd never want a Render to go for more than any number of hours... all you need to do is take that number of hours, say it was 10 Hours, multiply that by 60 Minutes, multiply that by 60 Seconds... 10x60x60= 36,000. Basically this would be a power consumption fail-safe kind of thing. Personally, I'd prefer to never have (especially a long render) stop because it reached a time limit that has nothing to do with it really being "done" rendering...
Render Settings Tab > Optimization:
Instancing Optimization: Speed
This is how you want to have this set if your Scene fits on your available GPU Ram without DS needing to compress textures, etc. If this is the case, Previewing and actual Rendering will definitely be faster. If this causes Iray to fall back to CPU and you can tell it's crawling, your Scene might not fit on your GPU without DS needing to optimizing things. In this case, Auto or Memory should be used.
This is up for debate, but...
Render Settings Tab > Filtering:
Pixel Filter: Mitchell
Pixel Filter Radius: 1.10
(A lot of people feel the default gaussian 1.5 is too much Blur and that mitchell is a better Filter)
Post Denoiser Available: OFF
(I usually wouldn't use it at all, but especially not if Caustics/Volumetrics are involved).
Keep playing around and good luck, ask any questions necessary!
Ah, nice and very interesting, actually... It looks like that product goes back to at least 2015, the same year SickleYield posted the Tutorial for creating Atmospheric Dust, and in that tutorial it's stated that the Camera must be outside the Volumetric Primitive. I wonder what's changed in DS and/or Iray since then... :D
You never know what anyone's habits are along the lines of Scene File management... You'r like me, everything non-destructive so that you can always revert backwards. Nice!
Good luck with your tinkerings!
I absolutely love the Advert style proclamation, "Now with more rim lighting!"
I also love the Scene, it's quite beautiful! The reflection of the dwelling and the single porch light are very pleasing.
The only thing I feel I could suggest (beyond peddling Volumetrics like some roaming huckster), is possibly going slightly further along the lines of the Challenge and playing on the interesting detail of that light on that island, by trying to find something unusual in your Library to possibly alter and discretely place maybe even just slightly sticking out of the water somehwere that implies some sort of unusual power supply? Like all else, just a random thought...
Very nice work, either way!
Intermediate challenge: "Working Modularly"
Title: Flying Toy, First Test Flight
Software used: Daz Studio 4.15
Since the contest says for new users, perhaps I should not enter as a formal entry because I have been tinkering with DAZ for quiet a while. However, I would be interested in feed back about the rendering I am attaching.
In this case I was trying to create a new item from various elements.
The Flying Toy for a “Cat World Universe”.
Items used for the image:
The flying toy is made from:
The main body is from:
darcassian-rocket-bike
https://www.daz3d.com/darcassian-rocket-bike
Sensor / proximaty domes are from the glass domes of the:
tick-tock-street-clock
https://www.daz3d.com/tick-tock-street-clock
The Earring (front sensor/light) is from:
Magus
https://www.daz3d.com/magus
Base camp (black base stand) for the center of the toy.
https://www.daz3d.com/base-camp-vol-3
Background:
Mobster Room
https://www.daz3d.com/mobster-room
Main character:
Catoon
https://www.daz3d.com/catoon
Thanks! These are great ideas! I'll think about that a bit more!
Thanks for the suggestions @Phatmartino! The sky is a backdrop and I'm using Sun-Sky settings for lighting. There are actually already emissives on the portal; if I turn them up too high I start to lose the ripple pattern, so I think I'll have to keep as is. I've added hills to the background and a beam of light in front of the portal. I also played around with the density of the Volumetric Atmosphere; here are two different versions.
Awesome!! The background mountains worked perfectly, the Volume is doing it's job very well. I love how the second one added so much depth to the scene. It also takes the "edge" off of everything, like some sharp edges you couldn't really control with the foreground terrain, etc.
Though I generally love the second render, it may be just slightly more "haze' than you need, but you can try to tweak this very slightly in a few different ways,,,
1. Dial back whatever adjustment you made between the two renders by just a little bit, or...
2. Try going into the Volume's Surface Parameters and clicking on the Refraction Color (Color Bar). If it's currently fully White... keeping the Brightness Slider on the Right turned all the way up, you could move the color wheel over to somewhere between a very pale Blue and/or very pale Purple (near the bottom so that there's very little saturation). Adding even a little saturation of an actual color will tone down the haze a little because it's no longer pure white refracting as brightly off of the particles and in this particular case, a tiny bit of Blue or Purple could help to bring out the Portal a little more, as the haze won't be quite as obscuring because it's no longer white, but it might lightly "multiply" the similarly colored Portal as well as add to the feel that the portal is affecting the lighting of the scene in general...
A couple other things...
I keep noticing the back of the horse... Everything about it and the Figure look great as far as Surfaces, but the thingy... I don't know the proper terminology for the "Garment" that's hanging over it's back side, but it looks a little unnaturally shiny or glassy... You could try looking in the Surfaces for it and tweaking (I'm guessing) Glossy Roughness? If that happens to be it, it'll be set on the low end of the scale from 0.00 to 1.00... Something like 0.3 to 0.5 maybe. If so, you could try bumping that up somewhere above 0.5 like 0.7, etc... If that's not it and it were a Top Coat thing, you could try tweaking that Roughness the same way. It could also to some extent be Glossy Reflectivity, as you see our hero's reflection in it.
Last thing, I took a Prop with Fire that looked real similar to your Flames in to test a few things because I wondered if it would be possible to tone down the Flames themselves a bit, without losing the Emissiveness...
You could try going into those Prop's Surfaces and find the Surface that's Probably called "Flames" or something (it'll be the only Surface that has Emission Settings), and if you look for the Cutout Opacity, if it has a map that looks like a black and white image of the flames, try setting the Cutout Opacity number value to 0.05 or 0.1... It may tone them down just a bit and with the Prop I was testing it looked a little more realistic.
All of the above are just ideas, don't go any crazier than your time or desire allow. Your scene is already looking great!!
I love the overall concept... I'm picturing this other-universally intelligent humanoid cat who's total basic cat intincts kick in the second this toy starts flying around...
I'm not sure if that's particularly the vibe you were going for, but I'd consider maybe backing the camera up to reveal just a little more of the cat, maybe enough to get the right arm and head in the shot or possibly leaving the camera's distance but using a wider aspect ratio to just include the whole right arm, leaving a little more room for expressive posing (if that figure's rigging allows)?
If you were to like the concept of the cat "losing his mind" once the toy starts flying, it could be even more impactful to maybe add the edge of a table in front of him with a couple tools to imply he created the thing himself...
Beginner Entry
Pilgrimage
Daz Studio
I couldn't make containing the scene in the volumetric cube work out. I'll experiment with that some more but I did use the spherical emissive for lighting, behind and above the camera, emitting a pale blue
Phatmartino,
Thanks for the comment and suggestions.
Actually you are pretty close to what I was originally thinking. I had originally thought about having the inventor's kids / kittens being the ones "loosing their minds" over the new flying toy, with "dad" trying to protect the prototype. At the time, I was focusing more on the "parts is parts" prop and obviously got a little to side tracked. I do like the idea of adding, the table and tools, it would add a lot to the image. I had not even considered doing that.
Art in general has always been difficult for me (just never had "the eye" for it), so I truly apprecate helpful suggestions and ideas.
Intermediate challenge: "Working Modularly"
Title: Flying Toy, First Test Flight
Expanded update to the orgional image.
Thanks again Phatmartino for the suggestions. The table suggestion made it a lot easier to put "the children" into the scene.
As always feedback, suggestions, and comments are welcome.
Paycheck Friday
Intermediate Entry
Rendered in the latest version of Daz 3d. No postwork
Diego was in a fine mood as Billy and he headed to town to enjoy their hard-earned money!
The truck is a kitbash of the following products:
Retro Pickup Truck - ahh, the truck!
Metro Police Truck - Tires and wheels
Big Bill Truck & Big Bill Truck Iray - cab marker lights, air horns, and the exhaust stacks
1971 AM Muscle Car 2n1 - Hood scoop
Farm Gear - The bleu chemical tank in the bed of the truck
After 2 days and 8 hours, I stopped this render at only 45% completion. Due to my old computer, it is unlikely I will have a second render of this despite its faults...But that does not mean I don't value your input!
Title: This is not the princess you were looking for
Caption: My hero! <3
Software: Daz 3D, Photoshop
Challenge: Beginner
Feedback is welcome!
Very fun scene!
How'd you do the flower petals floating in the air? Are those props?
@vamok,
Goood render. I particularly like the color scheme. A winner, indeed!
Cheers!
@katywhite,
I like the idea behind the scene. And the color scheme really stands out. Another winner? Yes!
Cheers!
Double post
Title: Journey of the red path
Software: Daz Studio / Photoshop
Environment / new user challange
A great challenge for me since past projects have been lacking in environments and mostly depended on HDRI's to set the scene. My first fully Daz scene with a little postwork in photoshop.
Environment-related products used:
Terradome 3 https://www.daz3d.com/terradome-3-iray <---- Amazing
Trearchi Folly https://www.daz3d.com/trearchi-folly
Tiny plants https://www.daz3d.com/tiny-plants--mossy-saxifrage
Feedback very welcome.
My own thoughts:
Overall turned out a lot better than expected but was using some good quality products.
A bit OTT with the blur in the post where the mountain blends to the sky.
The bottom right corner just feels off balance.
I really wasn't sure about using red flowers in the foreground combined with red outfit, there were other material options and shaders too, in the end it just felt fitting.
Great work so far, everyone!
@perlk the difference is subtle, but I definitely think the lighting is improved in your latest version. I like Phatmartino's suggestion as well...curious to see where you will go with that!
@kerry,
Beautiful! You put a lot of effort into it and it shows.
Cheers!
Thanks @Phatmartino.
I've dialed the haze back a little, upped the roughness on the chain barding (that's the proper term for it 
) and lowered the opacity on the flames.
Here's the first version of my entry for the Intermediate challenge
No kitbashing of unusual props, but I have combined Urban Backstreet and City Streets kits. I have also added a few boxes and a trash can
I have used 3 Delight here. I may add anoher figure and/or a dog. I may also add some depth of field.
This looks pretty cool so far. I think some depth of field would really compliment your scene. I would also recommend putting your musician on the ground. Judging by the shadows he is currently floating.