DAZ|Studio Mood Master Review
So I purchased Dreamlight’s new Mood Master environment system from DAZ a week or so ago. I haven’t had a ton of time to play with it, but my initial impression is that it’s much like Light Dome Pro - it’s great at what it does, but it is important to note that it is suited to a more “epic” style of rendering. If you’re rendering Stonemason style futuristic cities, or broad vistas (though those might be a bit hard to set up in D|S) then you’re going to love the results. If you’re using the Cyclorama for a portrait shot with some mist in the background, this tool is probably overkill, and won’t give you the results you’re looking for. You need an imaging program that supports layers in order to combine the MM render with your original lighted render, but there are quiet a few freebies out there which allow that, so this shouldn’t be a problem.
I did some test renders (please forgive the sloppy mesh intersection, these were for test purposes only) using Stonemason’s A Quiet Street (2 instances). The first render was with just my basic lighting setup, to create a baseline. This (click for larger size) was a three minute render:
Then I upgraded the surfaces with Poseworks pwSurface, turning on ambient occlusion. This was a six-minute render:
My next render used Mood Master, with basic surfaces (no AO) I turned on Deep Fog, Deep Fog Texture, Deep Fog Sky Falloff and Rain. This was a 39-minute render:
And last but not least I used Mood Master with the above settings plus pwSurface. This was a 49-minute render:
I was really happy with the way the render with MM turned out, obviously it added quite a bit to the scene. There are a plethora of settings with which to play, and probably limitless possibilities when you combine this with different lighting techniques. Word of warning, the MM does remove your background image, if you’re using one, and set the background to black - so you can’t use these effects over a pretty sunset pic you have. When I have time to spare maybe I will try to use this with the snow tool and see how realistic an animation I can acheive. In any case, depending on what you like to render I will recommend this tool - it’s a great addition to the Studio toolset.
One Response to “DAZ|Studio Mood Master Review”
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Heidi on
July 28, 2007 9:04 pm
That looks really great! I love the rain!! :cool:
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