The Biggest DAZ Studio Iray Secret To Fabulous Lighting (Yours To Copy Now)

There’s a lot positive to be said about the new DAZ Studio 4.8 (Public Beta), and the new integration with Nvidia’s magnificent Iray render engine. But let me be perfectly honest with you; Forget most you know about lighting using 3Delight, DAZ Studio’s native render engine.

See, Iray differs in a very critical aspect. It’s for real. All your lights WILL bounce and scatter just like they do in real life. And they will either create beautiful effects, or they will DAMAGE your render. Most new to Iray will experience that everything suddenly bounces around. It’s going to be either too dark or too bright. You will notice that light angles, where you put lights and how you aim them will have CRITICAL importance. Unless you know a few tricks, and have experience with real world lights,  it’s very difficult to get Iray lighting right without hours of tedious trial and error. Well, let me give you one super important trick right away.

For a second, forget about the built in environment and the new photometric lights. First of all, if you have a camera in your scene, select it in the Scene Tab, then head over to the Parameters Tab and turn off the Camera Head Lamp (OFF). Next, go to Render Options -> Iray Tab -> Environment and switch to Scene Only mode:

This option will only use scene lights when you render and you don’t need to worry about anything else. Next, add a Plane Primitive to your scene; Create -> New Primitive -> Plane (Size: 1 m x Division: 1). Have it selected in the Scene Tab, then head over to the Surfaces Tab, and make sure you’re in the Editor Sub Tab.  Select the Surface of the Plane Primitive. Now, select the Presets Sub Tab in the Surface Editor. Choose Shaders -> Iray -> Emissive and double click on the emissive icon:

Get back to Editor Sub Tab in Surfaces Tab, Set Color Temperature to 6500 K (which makes it white when White Point is set to 1,1,1 in the Environment Tab), and if needed adjust the Emission Color to suit your scene or taste. Adjust Luminace to set the intensity and set Two Sided Light ON to make it easy to cast lighting without having to turn the light around (you can leave it single sided for more local effects):

You’ve now created one of the most effective and cool ways of using Iray, which is using emissive surfaces or light emitting surfaces. You can move, rotate and rescale these plane primitives around, and treat them as area lights, or as any type of object, since you can frankly make ANY surface (of any object) glow. Now for the magical trick… See, these plane primitives will fade over distance, like all Iray lights do. This can be a little awkward at first. But when you put a plane primitive close to an object, you can then naturally bring down the intensity of that light source. Because of its weaker intensity, it will mostly illuminate the object right in front of it. You’ve just created a “local” or targeted way of using these plane primitives:

In a similar fashion, if you put some distance between your light source and the subject and increase its intensity–you will illuminate the entire scenery at once. Like in this example:

I’ve been using Iray extensively for a long time now, and I’ve been rendering for hours, days and weeks while creating several video tutorials–and I have to tell you; this way of using Iray is FABULOUS. It’s easy, quick and gives you maximum control. As a side note, all renders on this page are done using this very technique. That’s how powerful it is.

The best advice I can give you is “less is more”. Use these powerful lights sparisngly. Don’t overlight. Let them do the heavy work for you. But with power comes responsibility, and Iray is no exception.

There’s obviously a lot more tricks than I can cover here… If you’re interested in mastering DAZ Studio Iray rendering and create gorgeous renders quickly and easily, then I’ve designed several special DAZ Studio Iray mastery programs, that go deep into Iray, and makes it sweat. Check them out HERE and save big during the next few days.

Keep lighting!

– Val Cameron

CEO and founder of Dreamlight

The Place To Be When You Want To Love Your DAZ Studio Art And Income

Val Cameron has been coaching and mentoring over 50,000 DAZ Studio artists during the last decade, is a bestselling DAZ 3D vendor since 2005 with over 200 light sets, props and video tutorials and aniMate DAZ 3D contest winner with his DAZ Studio music video “Love”.

P.S. If you’re interested in mastering DAZ Studio Iray rendering and create gorgeous renders quickly and easily, then I’ve designed several special DAZ Studio Iray mastery programs, that go deep into Iray, and makes it sweat. Check them out HERE and save big during the next few days.

Val Cameron

Happily sharing how to create great 3D & 2D art in DAZ Studio, Lightwave and Photoshop, Val Cameron, CEO and founder of Dreamlight, has been coaching and mentoring hundreds of thousands of artists since 2005. Bestselling DAZ 3D vendor with over 230+ video tutorials, plug ins and light sets.