Residential Interior WIP

[furystylee]

I'm having the most problem with my lights. I know how important they are to a scence and would like some advice or tips. I want some interior (I havent modeled them yet), and sunlight. This is a beach house, so I want it to be very bright.

Right now there are two omnis, and a direct which is creating the grid shadow.

Thanks for your time.

[Evert Vandenberghe]

Hi furystylee,

I suggest you search a good final camera-compositing before setting up the lighting, otherwise you might have to go over it again and again...

rgds

nisus

[furystylee]

Well, I'm pretty happy with this angle, give or take a few feet. How can brighten up the scene? (Mostly, the ceiling at this point)

Thanks

[ad hominem]

I really would look at that camera setup. It is too wide angle causing too much distortion. If you pull the camera back, increase the focal length eg. ~35-50mm, probably back outside the room, then setup the cutting planes to cut past the closest wall. If you want to brighten up only the ceiling then turn up the self illumination of the ceiling material a bit little , also set up a light pointing up at the ceiling, put this light below the floor, and pull it back to basically the same direction your sun light is positioned, now set all objects except the ceiling from both illumination and shadow casting, this will only cast light on your ceiling without affecting anything else in the scene.

[furystylee]

What do you think about this composition? I'm using a 50mm lens and increased the self-illum of the walls & ceiling.

I tried the target-direct from below, excluding the ceiling (and floor) but didn't get very good results. Can you explain it again? Thanks.

[Stephen Leworthy]

i'd use a 35mm lense or lower personally, and move the camera higher up, atleast up to human eye level. and atleast use some fakiosity in there, it looks as flat as a pancake.

you dont lighten walls like those by making them self illumed, yuo lighten them by incidental lights.

[Ricardo Eloy]

Man, try to imagine how you'd feel in that room...I think it's very strange, this cam of yours. You're not really showing the place, ya'know? Try to find an angle from where you can see all the nice things in the room. If it helps, you can set various diferent cams and compare them.
Another thing I'd point is the lightning. It's too flat and over, I think. If the only light is the one coming thru the window, everything should be a lot darker. Check out the CG Gallery and take a look at some rooms like yours. You'll see some nice examples of lightning. Remember: background examples are never too much.

[]
Rick

[ad hominem]

I think you turned the self illumination up too much. I was thinking about 5. the best way to approach conventional CG lighting (yeah before everyone had radiosity and GI fakiosity was everything ) is to start from black (turn your ambient light swatch in the Environment panel to black right now) and progressively add light, working up to the addition of your main light. You build it up bit by bit. If you have a window then you know on the side other than where the main light is there'll be some diffuse light coming in so you set up an omni or spot to simulate, low intensity, play with the attenuation, use shadow map shadows with a large sample range to soften them, ou can also play with the shadow density and colour parameters. You have a door, will there be light coming in here, if yes, then set up another low intensity light to show this, again playing with attenuation, and shadow properties. Slowly building up to the main light. Your main light directly shines on a very saturated brown coffee table, as light bounces off this surface onto the low wall it would be coloured, so set up a coloured omni light to simulate this, again play with the attenuation. Also, use lights with negative multipliers to suck light out of the scene, like under the coffee table. Also use lights only affecting certain objects, get used to using include/exclude lists.

Lighting a scene manually requires a lot of understanding of how light behaves, you have to make an educated guess as to how the light will behave. I suggest you get some art books on stuff like colour and light and shadow (chiaroscuro) Look at some of the art of Carravagio. The way he lit his scenes was very unrealistic but the way he showed the light interacting with the surfaces would give the picture a very realist feel.

I posted some images lit only using direct lighting the other week, Lanni asked for a 'how-to' Hopefully next week I may have some time and I'll describe what I did.

[furystylee]

Thanks everyone for the replys. Here's an update:

[Tony Richardson]

I would tone down the sun light a lot. It's burning out the scene. I can't make out shadows in the room except the window framw shadows. With sun light there should be some shadows coming off everything in the room. Keep at it, your getting there.