Hi folks, longtime lurker who recently decided to try his hand at Daz Studio. I’ve been having a blast so far, and I think I’ve got the basics fairly down. Mostly I’ve just been working by trial and error; messing around, pushing random buttons and toying with sliders like a curious child in the driver’s seat of a car (or a man with no experience in flying aircraft sitting in a cockpit desperately trying to pull the plane out of a nosedive).

One area I’m a bit lost on however is lighting my characters and scenes. I know lighting is a vitally important of any scene (perhaps the most important), and I’ve seen some truly amazing work from people on this site who have a firm grasp and understanding of scene lighting. I’ve been relying on the standard 3-point lighting setup and the built-in lights of pre-made environments, and while that has worked fine so far, it’s obviously not something I can rely on all the time. Unfortunately, I really just don’t even know where to begin with improving my lighting, and my “kick things until it works” approach just doesn’t cut it due to the complexity of lighting.

I’m wondering if anybody could give me some pointers on exactly where to begin; what I should be looking for when lighting my scenes, what I should avoid, helpful or useful assets, perhaps even some tutorials, videos or guides that you guys found helpful. I know HDRI’s are a good start, but they’re not a “one click” solution and not really suited for a lot of scenes.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

Well, I am sure you could use google and search for lighting for photography. That would be a start. Even using Hdri's is not the extent you should be looking for, you need to also have lights in your scene to put empahsis on specific objects.

I found Sveva's Tutorial on Lighting in Daz Studio to be the best way of understanding how lighting in Daz Studio works, what all the settings mean and how to go about experimenting with lights in a reasoned fashion.

https://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/sv-daz-studio-iray-lighting-tutorial/128669/

I've hardly watched any lighting tutorials myself, I just don't have the patience.. But I can second Bikdingles recommendation, knowing what all the settings mean makes you capable of kicking in the right places at least :-)

My approach usually starts with finding a HDRI that gives me almost a result I like, and then I experiment with one or two additional lights to get the shadows and highlights right. Other than that I would suggest tutorials on lighting in general. The few I've watched has been lighting in Daz and many of them is more of the technical sort for how to use lighting in Daz, they don't necessarily explain how to best light a scene...

You could explore using mesh lights too.  Drop a primitive in your scene like a plane or sphere and then make it emissive.  You get a lot of control this way as you can easily move it around, change its size, color and brightness.  They're especially useful for indoor environments where an HDRI doesn't light well.  Experiment with it!

Good luck with your renders!

I'm still learning myself, but I'd like to share some things I've learned so far.  I think sometimes the importance of lighting is overstated.  I still see awesome works with one or two main lights, or a basic 3 point set up.  I've also seen lights that add so much to a scene, but that should come later in the learning curve (in my opinion).  To start out, focus on your materials - colors, bump, displacement, and gloss - with basic lighting without colors and too many light sources.  Load every new character into the same light setup, such as Retrodevil's free studio linked below.  This will show the differences in materials across different assets by removing the lighting variable.  Fashion Studio by Maclean includes a very informative document about how real world studio lighting works (most real world photo shoots use 1 light).  I thought the document alone was worth the price I paid (wait for a DAZ sale, they have sales constantly). 

Welcome to the world of 3D.  Be careful though, it can suck you in and can be highly addictive. 
 

https://www.deviantart.com/retrodevil/art/Iray-Studio-Light-Set-FREE-DOWNLOAD-585763158

https://www.daz3d.com/fashion-studio

https://hdrihaven.com/hdris/

Thanks for the help guys! If you have any other tips, they're always appreciated!

I strongly recommend what bikdingle and Datoka suggested; to learn what the lighting in Daz actually does, but I also recommend knowing at least at a surface level how lights interact with Iray surfaces. I also recommend learning all the basic lighting concepts in real-world photography. Feel free to message me on discord to chat: zOh#4753

To reinforce what zOH said, I would start with basic 3 point lighting (front light, Fill Light, Back Light) and go from there. If you want to spend some money on good tutorials Dreamlight over at Daz has some excellent in-depth lighting tutorials  on various type of lights. Overall be patient with learning. I am still figuring out lighting it seems to be a never ending learning process that changes from project to project but is worth it when you pull off what you want to achieve. 

Don't be afraid to fail and get on with it.

My lighting is hit and miss with too much rendering overhead but after six months of tinkering, the experience does start to add up. My last post was a nightmare to light and I'm still not happy with it, but I learned a ton of things along the way and will eventually go back to get it right.

A small tip for erotic renders: resist the urge to get everything in the frame because it makes for very contrived/cartoony poses (unless that's your thing of course.) In real porn and glamour shots, models really need to contort themselves to enable the right camera angles and even then you get limbs blocking genitalia, bodies cut out of the frame or focus problems. If a couple of your models have three points of interaction (say, a kiss, a penetration and a grabbed wrist) don't try to angle all three in the same frame. It's okay if we only see the kiss and the grabbed wrist, leaving the penetration up to the imagination. Maybe you have a perfect facial posed but no way to get a dick hovering in the frame, just leave it out. At least that's my philosophy... experiment.

You can start with this great tutorial series by Andrew Price https://youtu.be/Ys4793edotw
Very useful, concise, and entertaining course. Must-see if you don't know where to start :)

Ah, now that looks very helpful! Thanks very much, man.

Really appreciate the advice from everyone, cheers guys. Always happy to hear more!

Youtube has some excellent tutorials with varying aspects of lighting.
It can be overwhelming in the beginning to understand how lighting works in Daz Studio. 

There is the dome, the sun and sky, distant, spot lights,  and glowing "official lights" and there are objects that can be turned into lights (mesh lights). 
There is the There is HRDI lighting as well. Some of these work together, some do not. 

There is the Auto headlamp that can be turned on or off. 

The render effects have parameters that affect how the lighting is interpreted in the final render. 

When working in low res, and have the auto headlamp turned off sometimes everything goes black in your viewport. Use Command L, or on a PC, Control L to turn on your preview lights.

I know, your head is spinning,

Check out Youtube, I learned a lot pretty quickly

The You Tube instructors do a good job of parsing out how it all works

Fortunately I've experimented with all of those enough to get a basic handle on all of them, so the head-spinning is thankfully minimal!

At this stage, I'm fairly confident that I know how to do what I want to do when setting up lighting; adding a sky, creating mesh lights, setting up spotlights, luminous flux and temperature, etc. I still have a bit to learn about Environment settings in the Render Settings, but I've found a few YouTube videos that go into depth with that (although I haven't sat down to watch them properly yet).

I was actually pretty surprised to learn that many of the renders I see on Slushe have had anywhere from a little to a ton of post-work done to them. I'd assumed people were creating these amazing scenes using just the lighting systems in Daz, which wasn't the case at all! Obviously lighting still plays a huge part, but it makes feel a little bit better knowing that post-work often plays as much a role as the preliminary lighting of a scene, and I'm not just doing things wrong. 

Thanks for the help!

Daz is like a photo studio, I try and set up as much as I can so it renders the way I intend. I use post work to fix little things, like poke through or to fix a part of the anatomy that doesn't quite look right. The makers of the models didn't want users to use their models for erotic scenes. The anatomy of the pelvis and legs acts  odd in extreme poses;  the genitalia is kept  in the "professional" packages that cost a lot. That created an opening for third parties to make decent anatomical grafts that work pretty well but may need some necessary post-production tweaks.

Hello there! I’m a newbie here, and haven’t officially posted much work on any websites as of yet, due to my limited rig.
The two tutorials I wish I’d gotten ahold of before I started down this Right-Hand Path would be 1) what type of specs your system needs to render quality stuff and 2) lighting.

 From my own experience and research, I’d like to share what I’ve learned (and what I *think* works), not just to help others, but, for feedback from more seasoned artists, to know if I’m doing it right.

If you see something that I got wrong, please, let me know so I can edit this/these posts.

I’m a newbie here just trying to figure this out. Trying to help out, but, also trying to learn – there are some assumptions here which I might be wrong about, and I wouldn’t take it personally if I get corrected.

And, I apologize if some of this info is already covered (or corrected) in other posts in this thread, in links to various places. I haven’t taken the time to click them all.

That said, INCOMING WALLS OF TEXT

Also, please note, many of the scenes I play around with are interior scenes – I haven’t really delved that much into HDRI’s or outdoor settings (Dome-Only, Sun-Sky Only).

Also also, most of my experience from lighting scenes is coming from my use of Render Studio 2.0 Volumetric + from the Daz store.

 

1)     SOME ENVIRONMENT ASSETS COME WITH LIGHTS (!)

For environments purchased from DAZ / Renderosity / Renderotica, some come with lights already in them. And, a lot of these will use different lighting setups. It’s worth the time to take the effort and explore those lights, what they do, and how the work in the scene before adding additional lights. Lighting the background is as important as lighting the foreground, and any lights you add to these environments will change the way the light plays. Also, you can deduce what various lighting styles do and how they work just by exploring the lights already in the environment. That might help you down the path to what type of lighting works for you – what you feel comfortable with using, and what makes sense to you.

You’ll find out quickly that different asset creators – much like different artists here – use drastically different lighting setups.

For example, some environments from the Daz Studio store by the artist Fugazi_1968 use large spheres as emissive lights (namely, Industrial Loft and Places of Power). That was something I had not thought of or seen when I bought those assets.

Not going to go into detail on that, because I don’t usually use these types of lights (Emissives, Ghost lights, Mesh Lights, w/e) myself.

 

But, from what I gather, I think he’s using them as a sort of stand-in for point lights, to illuminate the area within the environment (not a specific figure of prop) in lieu of using point lights. Either method will, if I’m assuming correctly, bounce a lot of light off of objects within the scene, and in doing so will bounce colors off of objects and props within the scene and bring that color to your characters.

This is just one example, but, FG rocks. Period.

I have spoken.

2) TONEMAPPER OPTIONS

• Exposure Value: Because I am working with mainly indoor scenes, I like to keep this set at around the default of 13. To some, this might seem too dark, but the thinking behind keeping it at 13 is – the scenes are indoors, with little natural light, and are naturally dark. This makes me focus on the brightness of the lights themselves, as one would in a photoshoot. Turning the exposure value up will darken the scene, and turning the value down will brighten your scene.

A higher exposure value, like I use, might make you increase the Lumens or Intensity in some of the lights purchased on Daz and elsewhere. Going with a lower Exposure value, you don’t need as much Lumens or Intensity from your lights.

    

• Shutter speed, F/stop, Film ISO, cm^2 Factor: Not sure what these do exactly, but I think they’re more related to your camera setting than lighting (not as sure about that assumption in regards to cm^2 Factor as I am about the others) . If anyone reading this can elaborate more on these settings, it would be greatly appreciated. Since I’m less familiar with cameras than lights, I leave these alone, and can’t say much about how they work.

• Vignetting: Darkens the area around the outside of the render. Useful in creating a “GoodOle’ Fashioned” style of render (like the sepia toned photographs from back around when cameras were first invented) but not really useful in creating a modern-looking photograph (or render).

• White Point Scale, Burn Highlights per component, Burn Highlights, Crush Blacks, Saturation, Gamma: These are settings that I don’t usually use, as I’m not sure what they do, so, I can’t speak much on them. It seems to me, though, that these are settings similar to other tools in other programs that you could use in post-work. If anyone else can shed some light on these settings, it would be great.

All I can really tell you is, I think that Gamma acts similar to a Contrast control – it adjusts the amount of redness in the picture, as well as the overall brightness/warmth. If that is so, turning it up will make the render warmer in tone, deepen the shadows, and overall make the render darker. Turning the gamma down will brighten the render, as well as take some of the warmth or redness out, but not really affect the highlights in the render (I’m assuming).

I also have a feeling that Saturation is used for controlling the amount of color in the scene, but, I never adjust that setting so I can’t say for sure. Probably wrong, but not willing to take the 5 minutes to find out.

3)     ENVIRONMENT OPTIONS

• Environment Mode: Dome and Scene, Dome Only, Sun-Sky Only, Scene Only

I work with Scene Only most times, because my renders are indoors. Dome Only, Sun-Sky Only – I can’t speak much on these, if anyone else can, that would be great! I’ve been experimenting with Dome and Scene

lately, and it seems to me that adding the dome will give you more light as though the scene indoors is taking place during a well-lit day outside and a lot of that light is entering the scene.

It seems to me that using Dome-and-Scene mode will bring more natural and even light to the background so you don’t have to use as much other lights, like point lights or distant lights to light your background.

• Environment Intensity: Much like the Light Intensity setting of lights themselves, I think that this setting increases the brightness of the light coming from the dome as turning this up brings more light to the scene and turning it down darkens the scene when in Dome-and-Scene Mode.

• Environment Tint:  This changes the hue of the light coming from the dome. I don’t play with this much, as I am more used to changing the hue using the Color Temperature of the lights themselves (more on that later).

But, judging by how this box works in other tabs that change colors, the default setting of 1.00 – 1.00 – 1.00 would be a pure-white light that might cause some unwanted glare, or brighter highlights than what you may want (working with an indoor scene).

I’m not 100% sure on this next part, and, if anyone knows more about this, feel free to chime in, but:

A more natural-looking setting for this might be adjusting the numbers down to around 0.34 (using the slider on the right of the box that appears when you click on the box under ‘Environment Tint’).

The reason I assume this, is because of what I’ve read when others are discussing an unnaturally bright glare that occurs on some white clothing. White fabric reflects a ton of light, naturally, and some content creators leave the color of the white clothes at 1.00 – 1.00 – 1.00. In doing so, the result is that the clothes themselves reflect more light than they should, resulting in a glare or unnaturally bright piece of clothing when lit in the scene and previewing in iRay mode. One suggestion that I read in that discussion, which seems to work fine, is adjusting the color in the surfaces tab of the clothing down to 0.34 – 0.34 – 0.34 to eliminate the glare / unnatural brightness, so that the clothing reflects light in a way similar to fabric itself. Doing so, however, seems to add some grey to the color of the clothing and darken it a bit overall. But, it does eliminate the glare.

If I’m wrong, or if anyone else has any experience with this setting, holla’ at ya’ boy, I’d love to hear more on this.

Keep in mind: when changing the color of a light, that light could bounce off of all sorts of stuff and onto other things, picking up and transmitting other colors from those surfaces / objects along with it, potentially onto your figure. If you’re going to use this, it might be best to limit the number of different colored lights, and also, to keep the intensity down (adjusting the bar on the right as described earlier).

• Lighting Resolution: Not sure what this does, I leave it alone at the default setting of 512. I’d love to know what this does, though, so if you know, please comment.     

• The Rest of the Settings in Environment Options: I don’t play with these much, as they seem to pertain more to the Dome-Only and / or Sun-Sky Only environment modes. I don’t use the Dome-and-Scene setting enough to feel comfortable with adjusting these, but perhaps someone who does more renders set outdoors using those modes would care to explain this in more detail. 

4)      THE LIGHTS THEMSELVES

• Distant Lights, Spotlights, Point Lights, and Linear Point Lights:

Of these, the lights I use almost exclusively are Spotlights.

So, I can’t say much about Distant Lights, Point Lights, and Linear Point Lights.

Any info that others might have to offer in regards to these – please, I’d love to hear what you have to say, so I can use these.

Quick Note – my Go-To lights for anything are from the Render Studio Volumetric 2.0 Plus. Which is badass and has helped me sooooo much. PLUG:

https://www.daz3d.com/render-studio-20--volumetric-plus 

For now, for here, let’s talk about the Spotlights and their Parameters tab

• Point at, Visible, Visible in Viewport, Selectable in Viewport, Display Persistence:

I don’t use these except one, so, I can’t say much about them. I use ‘Visible in Viewport’ to erase the wire frame of the light source when previewing in iRay, so I can see more clearly what’s going on in the scene.

• Ray Length: 

I’m not sure exactly the physics of this, but I do know that adjusting the Ray Length adjusts how far the cone of light coming from the light goes out from the light.

In regards to placement of spotlights, and how the light falls onto the character in the scene when using Ray Length as a guide to set how close or far away the spotlights are from your characters:

For some lights, you might want to place the circle at the end of the cone coming from the light directly on the character. do this with the lights that light the face, the hair, and the back of the character (the rim light). 

For others, you might want to place the circle at the end of the cone coming from the light farther away from the character, where the edge of that circle is nowhere close to your character (I do this for spotlights, both the key light and the fill light).

More on this later when I go into how I place the lights.

But, that’s something I picked up from RSV2.0+. (linked above)

• Opacity Scale, Ray Opacity, Show base, Base Opacity, Show Edge, Edge Opacity, Visible in Render, Render Priority, Visible in Simulation:

Again, I don’t use these, and can’t say much about them. Sorry.

I’d love to hear anyone else’s thoughts about what they do and how they work, though.

• Illumination: 

Turns the light on or off. Not sure about ‘Diffuse Only’ and ‘Specular Only’ settings, though. I’d love to get to know more about them, though.

Quick Note: one of the lights in RSV1.0+ is a Specular light, and I use it to light the face of my characters. More on this later.

• Color: 

I don’t use this much to change the color of my lights, instead, I use Temperature. More on that in a bit.  

• Intensity: 

I don’t use this to adjust the strength or brightness of my lights, instead, I adjust the Lumens. However, I think it’s easier to crank up the overall light by adjusting the Intensity as opposed to the lumens. The math is different, Intensity and Lumens.

• Photometric Mode:  

I always leave On.

• Spread Angle: 

A wider spread angle will disperse the light in your scene, and give it a softer look with less shadows. A narrower spread angle will focus the light in your scene and give you darker, more distinct shadows. I’d like to learn more about the actual physics of this one.

• Beam Exponent: 

This seems to me to work in conjunction with Spread Angle by further focusing or strengthening your light at a higher setting. At lower settings, it will soften or weaken the light and disperse it more. Like Beam Exponent, I don’t play with this much, and someone else can probably explain it better.

• Shadow Type: 

I don’t adjust this, but, I’m interested what it does when set to ‘Raytraced (Software Only).’

• Light Geometry: 

I’m assuming this sets the actual shape of the light source itself.

From what I gather using a variety of these geometries will give you a more diverse, more well-lit scene. Currently, I’m exploring using different Geometries with different Color Temperatures (more on that later when we get to Temp and light placement).

- Point: will give you more focused and intense light with stronger and deeper shadows. I don’t use that setting often, if at all. I’m thinking about experiment with it in Close-ups (like, face-only renders) but I haven’t yet.

- Rectangle: will give you a softer, less intense light with weaker shadows. I use this for my Key light (main light).

- Disc: this seems to me to bring more highlights out around the edge of the character. I use this for my hair light (positioned above the character) and my fill light (positioned on the opposite side of the character as my Key Light).

- Sphere: not sure, don’t use this. It would be cool to know more, if anyone out there does use this often.

- Cylinder: seems to work best for an atmosphere / background light, as well as for rim lights.

• Height (Diameter) and Width: 

Adjust the size of the geometry of the light, I suppose. I don’t play with these much, but it seems to me that a larger size produces softer light and shadows, and a smaller size produces a more focused or intense light with stronger and deeper shadows - might be wrong or have that backwards, though.

• Two-Sided:  

I think this means your light goes in two directions, the direction you’re pointing it in, and it goes the opposite direction of where it’s pointed. I keep this off, using lights that just go where I point them. My computer, like my brain, can only calculate so many different trajectories at once.

• Render Emitter:  Not sure. I keep it off. Because I think that this will actually render the light source in the image if it is within the aspect frame. Will it? Don’t know. Not going to bother.

• Luminous Flux (Lumen): 

I use this to adjust how much light the lights give off, as opposed to using ‘Intensity.’ 

The default is 1500, but I always need it way higher than that – then again, I like to set my Exposure Value high (around 13).  Therefore, my scenes are naturally darker, and I need more light from my lights. When using lower Exposure values (like 9 or 11, which I think are fairly common) you won’t need to crank up the Lumens nearly as much Also, you might notice that some other lights, such as emissives, (those spherical lights in the FG environ’sI mentioned earlier) they give you more options to increase the light generated (Luminance Units). cd/m^2, I think, is the default, but you can also use other units of measurement such as Lumens (lm) and watts (W). 

Spotlights don’t give this option, I don’t think, but when adjusting your lights in different types of units there can be a BIG difference in how many units you need compared to others.

That is to say, 1500 cd/m^2 is a different amount of light than 1500 lumens. 

1500 Lumens isn’t the same as 1500 Watts. The math is different. 

And I don’t like math. I like LUMENS.  Go square yourself, math.

• Temperature: 

This is something I’ve done a little bit more research on and have more information about.  That being said, I’m going to give it its own space here because I don’t usually see it discussed when discussing lighting.

5) LIGHT TEMPERATURE

Adjusting the light temperature seems to me a good way to diversify the lights within your scene – meaning, not all the lights are the same, and you get more variety in your highlights and shadows. You get a more complicated, sophisticated looking lighting.

Also, adjusting the light temperature can add more color and more diverse array of colors without actually changing the color of the light itself. The colors you are adding, however, are closer to the pure-white end of the spectrum, so it’s a far more subtle result than changing the actual color of the light. This adds to a more complicated or sophisticated look/feel while letting the colors within the scene do their thing without getting unwanted tones from other lights bouncing colors off of and onto your characters.

Again, I believe these affects can be achieved with post-work, but it might be something you want to try out in conjunction with post-work.

THE GIST OF LIGHT TEMPERATURE: Different light bulbs and light sources have different temperatures, and depending on the temperature, the lights can be described as ‘cool’ or ‘warm.’ 

The lower the temperature, the warmer the light.

The higher the temperature, the cooler or more blue-ish the light.

Think: stars, orange/yellow stars burn at lower temps, blue-r stars burn at higher temps.

• 1900 Kelvins: Around the same temperature as a candle flame. As such, this temp will give you a warm, orange glow. Good for fireplaces, and any type of flame / fire.

• 2000 – 2500 Kelvins: A ‘warm white’ temp that is calm and easy on the eyes, and is the opposite of what you would call a ‘piercing’ light. This is the same temp as street lights, just after sunset or just before sunrise.

• 2800 – 2900 Kelvins: The same temp as most indoor lights (not LED lights, but, the older light bulbs before LED became a thing) such as lamps and ceiling lights. Still calm and easy on the eyes like lights in the 200o-2500K range, but, providing more visibility and less redness/gamma/contrast. Many filmmakers mix lights with a temp of 2800/2900K with 3200K lights.

• 3200 Kelvins: The temp of Halogen bulbs housed in Fresnel lamps. Commonly used in theaters to light the stage, with wider soft-edged beams of light, good for back and top lighting.

• 3000 – 3500 K: This is the “Golden Hour,” the time of day right after sunrise or right before sunset. The light is redder and softer than when the sun is higher up in the sky. A key time of day for photographers to do their work.

• 3500 – 4000K: At this temp, the light is no longer warm and white, but ‘bright and white.’ Meaning, neither cold nor warm, but in-between. 4000K is a good neutral. This temp is used in kitchens, stores, and offices for its neutrality, so that colors are purer.

• 4100K: Around the same temp as moonlight, yet, warmer than sunlight.

If you’ve ever danced with the devil in the pale moonlight, it occurred at around this temperature. So, feel free to carve a smile on your face.

Or fall into a vat of acid. Whatever floats your boat.

SPOILER ALERT: acid does not float boats.

• 4500 – 5000K: The temp of the flash of a camera, or early morning / late afternoon sunlight.

Speaking of which, remember to turn that Headlamp setting on all of your Cameras to ‘OFF,’ and the ‘Auto Headlamp’ setting in Render Settings to We Are Never, Ever, Ever Getting Back Together. 

I apologize for that reference. But I’m not editing it out.

• 5000K +: Cool daylight, more blue-ish. Sunlight at noon is around 4000-6500K.

• 5600K: This temp is used in many consumer and pro LED lights. It will give you the daylight color temp of a high midday sun with no cloud cover.

As you might imagine, by combining and mixing different light geometries with different temperatures, you can bring a more ‘professional photographer’ look to your renders.

Anyways that’s enough posting for one day. Sometime this weekend, I’ll post something about lighting placement, and then, I think I will have said my piece on this matter.

Again, If I’m wrong in anything I’ve stated here, some of which is just assumption / speculation, feel free to disagree and set me straight. 

Feel free to add to the conversation. Just like the OP, I'm sure I'm not the only lurker / newbie / that would love to see others talk about this subject, and learn from them. Share ideas. Get a few tips. Maybe clear up some misconceptions, or get set down the Right Hand Path the right way.

I just want to see some well-lit porn, dang nabbitt.

And really. . . don’t we all?

Happy rendering

Having been out of the scene due to computer issues and outside influences.  I'm back and my own idea on getting back into the swing of things is to practice lighting.  The method I'm attempting to do it is by taking a photo of a posed model that is lit in a way that is interesting to me.  Then I'm going to work on creating a similarly posed model in Daz and then working on lighting her the same way.  Also reminding myself of the photographer's go too lighting styles.  This is informative.  https://digital-photography-school.com/6-portrait-lighting-patterns-every-photographer-should-know/  And this one https://www.borrowlenses.com/blog/portrait-lighting/  They do duplicate some lighting styles between the two but the example photos and terminology begins to bleed over into Daz.  I've personally seen some photos using 2 or more styles at the same time.