The 2026 Behind the Scenes series continues, this time covering what most makes or breaks a 3D-rendered CG: lighting.
I don't consider myself a lighting expert by any means, but I've learned a lot of tricks in the past four years. This post is partly a tutorial for anyone else working in Daz Studio, but if you're just curious about my art creation process, you may find this an interesting read as well.
In Behind the Scenes #8, we began work on one of the CGs that will be in the Getting to Know Matt story update (previously called Getting to Know You, Part 1). In the CG, Matt is fucking his freshman year roommate, Henri, as imagined by Connor.
Here's where the CG currently stands, still lit by the temporary lighting I used to see what I was doing:
This scene has a few specific lighting challenges that I'll go over a little later. First, let's talk about the kind of look I try to accomplish when it comes to making any CG, followed by the tools and techniques I use to achieve that look.
Cinematic Lighting
In the game's description, I wrote that it has "cinematic" CGs. What I mean by that is I want the art to have lighting similar to the stylized cinematography you might see in a classic movie.
One of the main keys to achieving that is via contrast—creating areas of dark and light that highlight details and create depth. Here's one CG where I think I did it pretty well.
That isn't to say art created with brighter lighting is bad or not "cinematic." I use different levels of brightness myself to set a certain tone based on what a scene calls for.
I also haven't necessarily achieved "cinematic" lighting consistently. The locations and characters in the scene often call for workarounds that can prevent the look I originally wanted, which are some of the challenges I'll go over below.
Learning How to Light
Early on, I realized I needed to study how actual professionals work with lighting. That meant watching tons of tutorials made by photographers and cinematographers to at least learn the basics.
Setting up scenes in Daz Studio is similar enough to taking real life photos that this proved very valuable. If you're someone looking to develop lighting skills, both in 3D spaces and real life, it is absolutely worth it to take lessons whether that be via paid courses, or like me, by self-teaching.
I went through my YouTube history and found a few videos I liked that you may also find helpful:
Cinematic Lighting for Beginners
Top 10 Lighting Mistakes Beginners Make
The 9 types of portrait lighting photographers need to know
These barely scratch the surface of what all I watched to help me study. There are tons more videos like this you can find via a simple search.
Watching and reading guides is just one part of learning, of course. I had to make hundreds and hundreds of CGs to get to where I am now, and I expect I'll learn more tricks as I continue to make hundreds more. Trial and error is a great teacher.
Lighting Tools in Daz Studio
There are a variety of lighting options in Daz that mimic real life lighting, making it relatively easy to try out the principles learned via tutorials. Within Daz, I primarily use mesh lights and HDRIs. I also utilize ghost lights, sun-sky settings, and spotlights.
Mesh Lights
I use mesh lights (sometimes referred to as emissives) in almost every single CG. The meshes in question are primitives—basic geometric objects you can load in and use in a variety of different ways.
Primitives can be created either by clicking on the shape icon on the top toolbar or by clicking Create on the menu bar. A pop-up box then appears with the title Create New Primitive.
This pop-up box allows you to set a scale and divisions. The number of divisions determine how many facets make up the object, and in turn, how detailed the mesh is.
Of these objects, I'll occasionally use spheres, but 95% of the time I use a flat plane.
To turn an object into a light source, first select the object in the Scene pane, then open the Surfaces pane. Click the arrow next to Default to expand the options, then select Emission.
By default the Emission Color is black, meaning the object is emitting no light. To change that, first click on the black box, then change the color. Basic white is used the most, but in locations like a club I will pick bright pinks and blues to simulate neon lighting.
Once that's done, the emission settings show a bunch of new options to play with:
Aside from Emission Profile, I adjust all these settings when building the lighting for a scene.
Emission Temperature determines how warm or cool a light is. The scale goes from the warmest (most orange/red) at 1 to the coolest (most blue) at 10,000. The default of 6500 is the purest white light.
Two Sided Light determines if both sides of the plane emit light or just one. I almost always set this to Off to better control the flow of light.
Luminance is how bright the emission is. 1500 is a good starting point after changing the Luminance Unit.
Luminance Units decides what kind of light the emission is simulating. I believe the default unit, cd/m^2, is meant to have a strength similar to the light emitted by a candle flame. That means you have to set the luminance really high to see it.
I always change the unit to kcd/m^2. I don't know what that name stands for, but it's a bright light at the nice, digestible luminance number of 1500, which makes it easier for me to work with.
HDRIs
HDRI stands for "High Dynamic Range Image." Essentially, these are images placed inside a dome/sphere that surrounds the entire scene. The bright areas of those images project light inward.
Some HDRIs are created from 360 degree photographs, like the example above, or from rendered environments. Others use basic shapes to create more stylized lighting.
Outside of the game, I mostly HDRIs for portrait-style lighting in promo images.
For CGs in the game, I often use HDRIs to simulate sunlight or for coverage in a larger interior environment. Depending on the HDRI, they can also be used as a backdrop to make a scene feel a little more realistic.
There are plenty of HDRI products you can purchase, but a great free source for HDRIs made from real photos is Poly Haven. I generally don't buy HDRIs unless they come as part of a larger lighting pack.
Ghost Lights
Ghost lights are primitive objects that project light without being visible in the scene itself. I use them whenever a camera angle makes it hard or impossible to keep a normal emissive primitive out of frame.
They are especially handy for instances where a character's face is shrouded in shadow but moving the lighting setup would make the rest of the scene look bad.
In the following example from the Getting to Know Matt update, most of the scene is illuminated by an HDRI and a few primitives.
This is very close to what I wanted, but when I tested out how it'd look after being edited post-render, the scene was way too dark. The obvious solution of cranking up the lighting mostly just washed out the scene. It also made the lighting less consistent with the rest of the CGs in this sequence.
I added a lamp to the set so light coming from just left of the camera made sense, but placing a primitive to actually project that light blocked the camera.
A ghost light of the exact same shape and in the same position made it possible to keep the light source here without forcing me to change the framing. Here is the final CG:
Since ghost lights are just invisible primitives, they have similar emission settings to a normal primitive, so they're easy to adjust. There are ways to create ghost lights by making additional adjustments yourself, but there are products that have it all set up for you.
Daz Product Artist (PA) KindredArts has some ghost light kits that are pretty popular. They make a lot of other utilities and effects products I use regularly, but my ghost light kit of choice is actually Invisi Lights: Ghost Lights and Light Profiles by PA esha.
Sun-Sky
Sun-Sky is environmental lighting built into Daz to do what the name says, simulate the sun and sky. Although I mostly use HDRIs to get that job done, going the sun-sky route can also work great and offers some additional environmental effects like haze.
Here's a CG I made for a just-for-fun art challenge on Bluesky that uses sun-sky lighting:
To use sun-sky lighting, first open the Render pane, then select Environment. (If you're loading a brand new scene, you have to turn on the NVIDIA Iray preview in the viewport in order for the Environment option to appear.)
Once the list of settings is visible, click on the Environment Mode drop-down menu and select Sun-Sky Only.
I don't use this type of lighting nearly enough to know how to use all the settings. The two I find most interesting, though, are SS Day and SS Time. They let you pick any date and simulate what the light was or would be at the time of day you choose.
When I do use this option, I mostly use products that have predefined settings to pick from, either ones that came with an environment product or a dedicated lighting kit like Iray Sun-Sky System.
Spotlights
Lastly, I occasionally use spotlights, but almost exclusively for portrait-style images and sprites. I find them hard to move around and adjust compared to the other methods I use.
For sprites, I have a spotlight aimed at a character's face specifically to get a light reflection in their eyes. Without that glint, eyes tend to look doll-like.
When it comes to portraits, I use the spotlight settings provided in Render Studio 3 - HDRI by PA Colm Jackson. I use this product a lot, in part because it's so easy to pop in key lighting and rim lights without me struggling to position the spotlights myself.
There are other lighting tools in Daz aside from these, but none that I have real hands-on experience with. If you're interested in learning about those, as well as more details on how to use spotlights, YouTube should have some tutorials.
Three-Point Lighting
The lighting principle I first learned and continue to use is three-point lighting. In brief, there is one key light to the front and side of the subject, a fill light on the opposite side to lighten shadows, and a backlight to give a rim lighting effect that helps the subject pop from the background.
This is essentially what I use in the sprite photo booth, and it's a great starting point for any full scene. I say starting point because ultimately I add lights to simulate light sources in the environment, like lamps, or remove lights to adjust the mood.
Another principle that changed the game when it came to CGs is that light should never be direct on. That is, from the direction of the camera, like a headlamp on the camera itself. (Make sure to always turn off the automatic headlamp when loading in a new camera!)
This really stuck with me after trying to light an outdoor scene which didn't look right no matter what I did. After researching what I was doing wrong, I realized the sun needed to be behind the figures in the scene, creating the backlight from the three-point setup.
Here's how that CG ultimately turned out:
The sunlight was an HDRI that also serves as a partial backdrop; the environment itself had 3D tree models. I placed an emissive plane to the right to serve the purpose a reflector would in a real photo shoot. Then to the left was another primitive as a fill light.
I made this image nearly 3 years ago for the 2023 Pride Gallery, so there would certainly be differences if I had made it more recently. But it still sticks out to me as an early successful lighting setup.
Nighttime Lighting
Lighting a bright scene is pretty intuitive, but when it comes to lighting a night scene so it actually looks like it's nighttime, the dark areas can become too dark. I handle these a few ways.
One is to do some old-school blue lighting. A lot of shows and movies from 30 - 40 years ago used cool lights or just straight up blue lights to indicate a scene was taking place at night.
I've done this type of lighting for indoor scenes many times. A favorite is this Evan CG:
In this image, the only light sources are a night sky HDRI from Skies of Economy Redux - Volume 1 and a dim emissive plane coming from above and to the right of Evan.
The other method I use is to just mimic real life—the scene itself is dark but there are a few notable light sources that cut through it in a natural way.
For this CG from Trevor's Grind'm scenario, I had a blue ghost light simulating the glow from a dashboard with a few warmer lights set up to feel like street lamps.
One of my favorite uses of this technique was the entire November 2023 Bonus Gallery here on Patreon. If you can't access that gallery, here's an example.
Jordi and Wes were meant to be driving along a road off the grid, so it was dark dark except for some street lamps and the truck's headlights, dashboard glow, and cabin light. I think the warmth of the lamps contrasting against the deep shadows was especially effective at capturing the late night feel.
Lighting Matt and Henri
There are a lot of challenges I encounter when lighting scenes, and the Matt and Henri CG we've been working on has several of them. Let's break it down.
Skin tone. Henri's darker skin calls for brighter light, but that level of illumination will wash out Matt. Dimming the light makes Matt look better, but then Henri is lost in shadow.
Skin textures. Problem 1 is something often encountered in real life, but this one is specific to working in 3D. Characters using different types of skin shaders react to light differently.
Environment textures. One of the biggest issues of this dorm set is just how white it is. White surfaces are really reflective and can easily wash everything out.
Environment architecture. The positions of the walls, windows, and furniture make using techniques like three-point lighting a headache.
Those are some annoying hurdles I have to clear. Fortunately, I've learned a lot about adapting to issues like this, especially after handling the dorm room set while making the many new Connor solo CGs in the Getting to Know Matt update.
Challenge 1: Skin Tone
The skin tone of the game's characters range from Isaiah's darker, cooler tone to Matt's pale, warmer tone and everything in between. For someone like Isaiah, I want bright light to create a contrast that will flatter him. A guy like Matt, however, wants dimmer light that is angled in a way to cast shadows that bring out his features.
Although Henri in this CG has a lighter skin tone than Isaiah, he's still darker than Matt. I need to figure out how to flatter both of them at the same time.
This is a lighting challenge in real life that is solved by purposefully positioning the subjects in relation to light sources so that the darker skinned subjects are angled towards and/or closer to the light while the paler skinned subjects are further and/or angled away. That same method will work for us.
If you read Behind the Scenes #8, you know I already took this into account when posing the guys. Here's an overhead view of how I have them arranged in relation to where the light will be coming from.
The hallway is directly opposite the camera, so it'll provide the backlight. Matt and Henri are positioned in a way where the striped wall won't block too much of that light.
The brightest light source will be the "sunlight" coming from the windows. Matt is facing away from that light in a way that allows that light to highlight his physique while still leaving his face shadowed.
Meanwhile, that bright light will primarily hit Henri, where it will serve well to show off his body. Lastly, there's space for a fill light to the left to lessen how shadowed Matt's face is.
Challenge #2: Skin Textures
The textures and settings that make up the guys' appearance are called shaders. Different generations of Daz figures can have different base shaders that react to light differently enough that it's not just washing out I need to worry about, but also specific skin details losing visibility.
Henri is a Genesis 9 figure using PBR (physically based rendering) shaders, which became the norm starting with Genesis 8.1. Matt's body shape is built on the Genesis 8.1 base figure, but his textures are from a Genesis 8 figure that used Uber shaders, the previous base shader type.
The only real way to fix this is to make sure both figures are using the same shader base. That could be done by applying PBR textures from an 8.1 figure to Matt, recreating him as a Genesis 9 figure, or converting his textures from Uber to PBR. Matt's look is really defined by his textures, so I went with the last option, a base shader conversion.
(The to-do lists in the Status Report posts often mention model "tweaks"; this is an example of why those tweaks are often necessary rather than just done for aesthetics.)
Although this type of conversion can be done manually, there's a product called 1-Click PBRSkin that helps ease the process. You can still spot differences like how reflective the native PBR skin is vs. the converted textures, but it's not so noticeable that it's worth fretting over.
Challenge #3: Environment Textures
Unlike skin textures, this issue is very easy to fix. Just changing the underlying color of a wall's textures from white to gray allows me to brighten the light as much as I need without blowing out the image, and the wall still reads as white.
To change the color, select the surface and change the value of the base color. The easiest way to do this is use the surface selection tool, found on the toolbar above the viewport or under the Tools drop-down menu.
Then in the Surfaces pane, click on the box below Base Color and lower the value (labeled Val) from something midway between 255 (brightest) to 0 (darkest).
Challenge #4: Environment Architecture
The walls, floor, ceiling, and furniture in a set can be a hindrance when positioning the camera and placing lights. For this dorm room set in particular, it's easy enough to solve—just make the problematic surfaces invisible. Think of it like the set of a multi-cam sitcom where the rafters are filled with lights and the front wall doesn't exist.
Surfaces that will be in frame need to be worked around, of course, which we already considered when positioning the guys. There is still one problem, though, and that is controlling how much light enters the scene.
The ceiling and two walls were hidden so the light from the temporary HDRI could let me see what I was doing while creating poses. I now need the lighting to better match how it'd look in a real, closed-in room.
The ceiling can just be made visible again to block out the light from the top. The wall opposite the guys where the windows are located can remain hidden so HDRI light can still come through. That leaves the wall behind the bed's headboard.
I can't keep that wall hidden or the light coming in from that side will be just as bright as from the windows. But I can't make it visible because the camera is positioned past where the wall exists within the 3D space.
I could solve this by moving the camera, but I like the current framing and want to keep it. My solution is to use primitives to make a box around the camera so the light is blocked and the camera can still see.
First, I'll make the wall visible again, then move it until it's just out of the camera's view.
Now I'll make a bunch of plane primitives with a starting size of 2 meters—one to form a floor, a second to make a roof, and then three more for the sides. Once in place, the scale of each plane can be adjusted to completely fill the space I want to block.
The default surface for these planes is glossy and white. Since the goal is to block light, not reflect it, the base color of each one should be changed to black and the Glossy Roughness set to 1.0 to make the surfaces matte.
Here's how the scene looks after these changes, using the same temporary lighting as before:
Now we're ready to put all the techniques we've discussed into action.
Key Lighting
As mentioned above, I want the brightest light to come from the direction of the windows. I want to do this via an HDRI, and since we can't actually see what's outside those windows, the HDRI I use doesn't have to be of an actual sky.
That works out well because this CG is part of a series where Connor visualizes a story Matt is telling him. It being in his imagination means the lighting can be a little stylized. This is a real story, though, so I don't want to go overboard.
I have tons of HDRIs at this point, so I'm able to quickly find one that's at the right angle to flood through the open space where the window wall once was. Loaded in with its default settings, it looks like this:
Not too different from our starting point, but that can be adjusted in the Environment settings located on the Render Settings pane. Rotating the dome moves the HDRI around the set so I can adjust the angle it's hitting the guys, and Environment Intensity brightens the light.
Here's how the scene looks with those adjustments:
This seems like a decent base—the light is hitting Henri well and there are a lot of good shadows. We can't really see, Matt's face, though. We also can't see his dick!
Fill Light
Having established there's a lamp next to the bed, I think that position is a natural place to plant a light. I'll start by placing an emissive plane facing the side of Matt I want illuminated.
Light that's straight on doesn't necessarily look good, and I want the light to be able to reach the dick area, so I'm going to rotate it slightly and angle it so the emissive side is facing down.
Then, I'll move it back using the green arrow on the translation tool. (My planes are set so the green arrow is pointing the direction of the light, but your arrows may be different.)
...And whoops, the plane is in the frame. Time for a ghost light!
I can load one in that's the same size and shape as the plane, then copy the location of the first plane by selecting it in the Scene pane and pressing Ctrl+C. After that, the ghost plane can be selected, then the position pasted by pressing Ctrl+V.
Since this is meant to be lamplight, I want the temperature to be warmer, so I'll set it to 5000. That will also make a nice contrast to the cooler key lighting. Now it's time to preview and see if my guess at where to place this light was correct.
Not bad, but not exactly right, either. Now's the point where I make lots and lots of minute changes, look at the render preview, and then keep making changes either until I think it looks great or decide I need to move on, so it'll have to be good enough.
After some experimentation, I ended up with the HDRI rotated to 110 degrees from 60 and the intensity raised from 1.5 to 2.0. Since the key light was now illuminating the penetration, I changed the position of the fill light. I decided to try a straight on angle after all, and I also made the temperature even warmer.
I like this setup a lot more. It brought in more shadow and revealed more details, for one. I'm not necessarily sold on the warmth and strength of the fill light, though. I think it'll look interesting after going through final editing, but we're not quite ready to test that.
Backlight
Matt is blending into the background a little bit, but a backlight combined with depth of field should help. I'm going to repeat the process I did for the fill light. I know the light won't be in frame, so I'll use a normal plane since the light it projects is more reflective than what ghost lights can do. I'm also going to use a cooler temperature for the contrast.
Here's how the scene looks after this addition:
That halo effect on Matt's hair definitely helps separate him from the background. The brightness of the lights needs adjusted, though, and that wall in the back is way too white. I also think the dresser directly behind Matt could be a little darker, too.
Depth of Field
At this point, I also want to set the camera's depth of field. How the background looks when out focus may lead to more lighting adjustments.
I find it easiest to set depth of field using the top down view. To change the camera settings, first select the camera in the Scene pane, then in the Parameters pane select the second Camera label. Depth of Field can now be turned on.
In the viewport, you should see the lines representing the camera's view. If you don't, change the movement tool you're using to the Translate tool.
The small sphere within those lines is the focal point, meaning the portion of the scene that will most be in focus. That point can be adjusted using the Focal Distance slider; in this case, we want it in line with the guys' faces and dicks.
The rest of the guys' bodies should be in focus, too. The F/Stop slider can be moved up to expand the area. With the camera at this distance, 50 or 60 should work.
Now, this top view is a little deceiving. The camera is up and angled down, so the area seen from above may be cutting off parts of the scene we want in focus. I'll change to the Perspective view to get a side view to better gauge what all is in the focal zone so I can make adjustments if needed.
The settings I made from the top-down view look fine as is, so we're all set for now. Let's see how the scene looks with the lighting and depth of field changes:
I think this is pretty solid, but I can only fully tell how a CG comes together during the post-render image editing.
Testing the Final Edit
All CGs have color presets applied in Photoshop before they're ready to go into the game. These preset make the background more blue and the subjects more bronze. It can also darken the image, or it can reveal portions are still too bright.
So at this point, I'll take a screen capture of the viewport preview in Daz, then open that in Photoshop to do some very basic editing. Here's how the preview for this CG turned out:
I'm actually pretty happy with the lighting at this point. I'll probably make more lighting adjustments later on, but this is a good place to leave it so we can move on to the next steps.
Those upcoming steps include adding all the details that make a CG feel a little more real. Henri's weight should affect the mattress, for instance, and there's a lot of empty space that could use pops of color, like adding a bed sheet.
This is also part one of a two CG set. The second CG will have this exact same scene setup, but the poses will change. Fading between the two will create a very simple animation showing Matt thrusting into Henri. Setting that up and making all the other final changes will be covered in the next Behind the Scenes post!