library interior

[mskin]

3d max 9, mental ray.

[STRAT]

looking nice so far, only i'd like to see A LOT more light streaming in from the out side. so much so it almost starts to blow out. i thing the lighting atmos would look so dramatic. the out side needs more brighting anyway. (also, watch out for your brick tiling)

[mskin]

thanks strat, tried to lighten it up and changed the light fixture. im playing around with ies files.

[Tommy L]

I would turn off all the interior lights and concentrate on getting that natural light looking like blazing sunshine.

[SandmanNinja]

One thing that I've learned to do from the 5,387 lighting tutorials I've done over the past few months (well, it's felt like that many! haha) is to get the lighting solution as best as you can with external lights first. Once that's done, then start working the internals. So that really echoes what Tommy has said.

 

I imagine the tinted, thick glass would temper some of that natural sunlight, but I've sat in huge rooms with huge windows like that and the heat from the sun in/near those windows is almost too much to stand. So, the sun should very very strong there. The shadows should be stronger/severe under the chairs and tables near the window. And I would imagine the lighting would naturally be uneven due to the strong sunlight.

 

But I love libraries - am following this with interest! Are the books individual books?! Impressive!! I've actually scanned most of the books in my 'library' (a spare bedroom turned into reading room, with a massive lazyboy recliner, and a bunch of book shelves), and use them for books in my scenes.

[mskin]

thanks for the comments guys. how would you suggest this? i guess as mentioned, shut the interior lights off and concentrate on the sun first. but what component, the multiplier? or the final gather? i will start playing with them to see were it gets me.

 

I took a photo of some books (100 or so). cropped them in photo shop making an alpha and diffuse map. then i used the diffuse as a background image, tracing the books, extruding them about a foot... than mapping the texture onto them. looks repetative but i figured i would adjust the hue on them in post to give a slightly more dynamic color range. There are a lot of greens on the high resolution runs.

[SandmanNinja]

At the risk of revealing my ignorance, here are some of my Mental Ray notes:

 

WORKFLOW FOR GOOD LIGHTING

======================

01) Add the HDRI to the Environment and the HDRI to the skylight

 

02) Add the MR Sun, MR Sky and MR View? to the scene

 

03) turn off Final Gather and turn on GI with the following settings:

Indirect Illumination -> [x] Global Illumination & Max Num Photons per sample: 2 & Max Sampling Radius: 10mm

This shows you where the photons are hitting.

Try to get a good, even lighting solution with just this.

 

04) If the MR Sun solution cannot do it alone, add some Photometric Free Area lights over the windows

Keep the Global Illumination setting as per above to see the photon distribution

If the photons are too weak, adjusting the Mental Ray Indirect Illumination Global Multipliers for the lights

i.e. Energy multiplier (the more energy, the more the photons bounce around the room - try 1x, 10x, 50x, 100x

 

05) Increase the sampling radius from 10mm to 100mm to 250mm

 

06) We need more photons, so increase the Photons per Sample from 2 to 100

 

07) Turn on FG with DRAFT presets and no bounces for now. We just want FG to smooth the GI solution.

 

08) Turn the Skylight (with the HDRI Lighting) back on (Tools -> Light Lister -> [x] Skylight)

 

09) Render -> Environment -> Exposure Control

 

Once Lighting has been gotten to a good point...

(NOTE: it won't be perfect as there are no textures)

 

 

Tips

====

* Final gather “sees” the photon solution.

 

* First render with FG off, and make sure the photon solution is smooth.

It doesn't have to be as smooth as a solution that only uses photons,

but be aware that bright spots, or big jumps in intensity across an edge,

are “seen” by final gather. When final gather sees an unsmooth solution, it creates splotches.

Increasing final gather quality cannot solve this.

Shooting 10,000 rays at a bright spot will still see a bright spot.

 

* Always do the photon test first, and then add FG. Do not ignore this:

It is valuable information that can save you days of experimenting.

 

* If you don't follow this advice, combining photons and FG can, in particular, create artifacts along edges

[STRAT]

as suggested, start with 0 lights, then build them up from outside in.

[mskin]

Thanks a ton, im going to start looking at it this way. Will post once complete.