Lighting preferences for interiors

Hi there

I've recently been playing around with interior renders of various places such as restaurants and residential homes.

I was wondering what are peoples preferences to lighting these kind of scenes. I've seen many people use different techniques such as HDRI maps, Vray Sun, Sky portals etc.

I understand that this is a broad question and that lighting can be changed for each and every scene but would just like some advice on what people think gives the best results as I've been having trouble on what and when to use certain techniques.

Thanks very much and I look forward to your replies.

I have found for interior scenes that IES files are important to achieve a "real" feeling.

It all depends as you suggest.... HDRI's can cause a lot of extra render time as they can be noisy, but they can also create a very nice environment light for your scene.

In general, I would prefer to keep it simple. Use Vray Sun/Sky and then Vray Plane/Disc lights. As your need for something more increases you can start to consider other options.

The trick is though, in my opinion, is that you need to use the Directional parameters on the artificial lights and make sure that they are not any larger than the fixture would suggest they are (i.e. don't use a singular plane the size of the ceiling.) I tend towards using Luminous Power and Temperature parameters because they allow me to control each variable without changing the others (size and intensity are no longer connected with Luminous Power).

For the sun, I suggest increasing the size to something a bit larger to soften shadows and then don't forget that there are 4 different sky models. I tend towards CIE Clear with low/no Ozone or Turbidity, but that isn't anything more than a preference.

Portals do seem to help overall light quality and in general are going to reduce your render times.

In the end you can mix and match ideas or use HDRI's for reflections and backgrounds only, but I feel like great lighting comes from balance more than from one trick or another.

This guy is a tremendous resource for lighting:

http://learnvray.com/features/english.php

I tend to light most of my interiors with a light dome with an hdri map , sometimes with a vray sun as well, unless the windows were really small, then it wouldn't make much difference to the overall look of the image, and just use a vray sky with the sun turned off.

The hdri always gives you a more natural look because it's a photo of a real sky so I tend to use those the most

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It all depends as you suggest.... HDRI's can cause a lot of extra render time as they can be noisy, but they can also create a very nice environment light for your scene.

 

In general, I would prefer to keep it simple. Use Vray Sun/Sky and then Vray Plane/Disc lights. As your need for something more increases you can start to consider other options.

 

The trick is though, in my opinion, is that you need to use the Directional parameters on the artificial lights and make sure that they are not any larger than the fixture would suggest they are (i.e. don't use a singular plane the size of the ceiling.) I tend towards using Luminous Power and Temperature parameters because they allow me to control each variable without changing the others (size and intensity are no longer connected with Luminous Power).

 

For the sun, I suggest increasing the size to something a bit larger to soften shadows and then don't forget that there are 4 different sky models. I tend towards CIE Clear with low/no Ozone or Turbidity, but that isn't anything more than a preference.

 

Portals do seem to help overall light quality and in general are going to reduce your render times.

 

In the end you can mix and match ideas or use HDRI's for reflections and backgrounds only, but I feel like great lighting comes from balance more than from one trick or another.

 

This guy is a tremendous resource for lighting:

 

http://learnvray.com/features/english.php

Any tips/tricks for when there are no windows? (mall shops)

There isn't any environment contribution here, so you are looking at all Artificial Lights.

Using the Directional parameter makes the Vray Plane/Disc light bounce light much more cleanly and to soften it up a bit more, you may consider raising the GI multiplier in the GI Tab of your render settings.

I can't that I have a set way to do this type of rendering, but these would be the things I would look at first.