Night shots exterior

[Dave Buckley]

Do any of you guys use the daylight system when creating exterior night shots???

 

If not what is a typical setup??

 

I don't use it for interiors, i just tend to use photometric lights, but am struggling a bit with the exteriors. I'm following the tutorial in max but that just uses photometric lights which surely can't be properly correct as there is still some skylight at night???

[Dave Buckley]

ok guys so i'm givin it a shot, i have my night exposure set and i have a pool with photometric lights under the surface.

 

everything looks good, the rest of my scene has a default a&d white material. the 6 photometric lights under the pool are the only lights in the scene. Now how do i make the surrounding objects more illuminated in a realistic way??

 

i want a convincing night exterior shot

[shaneis]

Firstly, that looks very good. A good friend of mine has a pool very similar to that and when he only has the underwater lights on, it is quite hard to see the rest of the pool area. If you want a very realistic night scene, I'd recommend doing in the digital world what my mate did in the real world - put some lights in around the pool area.

[Dave Buckley]

thanks shane, for sure there will be more lights in there, but i'm just thinkin about, environemnt light. i normally use the daylight system but if i put in a daylight system and change the time to after dark the scene is really bright. hence why it is a daylight system and anot a nightime system

 

But in the real world there is other light contributing to scenes other than that of artificial lights right???

[Dave Buckley]

i'm gonna have a go at putting the daylight system back in and setting it to early evening (sun just above ground level) then play with colours and multipliers of sun and sky and compensate for having the daylight system with my exposure. I'm just really happy with the pool at the minute and feel if i change any exposure settings i won't be able to get it looking the same becasue i am no exposure expert

[mattclinch]

looking good.

 

use a daylight system with the sun off, and lower the value of the skylight. override the colours and use a dark desaturated blue as the colour.

[shaneis]

I suppose that would depend on how close you are to the city, street lights, neighbours' lights (light pollution) and if there's a full moon. Also, if there's people swimming, the waves change the surface, hence light escapes with a more irregular distribution. At any rate, artificial lighting would override most natural light at night, save a bright moon.

 

My friends house blocks all light from the street onto the pool, and the property is on a sloping block, down to the waterfront and is surrounded by trees, so it is a naturally dark area until about 11pm when the moon gets above the tree-line. If this pool you are rendering is in a similar situation you're close to spot-on, otherwise, some changes are necessary.

 

Christopher Nichols wrote in a post on this site that he tries to emulate real-world light sources as close as possible in order to achieve realistic lighting. I'd have to say it makes a lot of sense to me.

[Dave Buckley]

If this pool you are rendering is in a similar situation you're close to spot-on, otherwise, some changes are necessary

 

 

please elaborate

 

i've just made some changes to the water surface material itself which looks better i think and it lets more light out. i made it clear rather than having a blue tint to leave the lights to give the blue tint through there filter

 

will post it when its rendered

[shaneis]

please elaborate

 

i've just made some changes to the water surface material itself which looks better i think and it lets more light out. i made it clear rather than having a blue tint to leave the lights to give the blue tint through there filter

 

will post it when its rendered

 

Just stating that if the pool area you are rendering is in a naturally dark area, then the additional artificial lights would be adequate. If however, the pool is in a well lit urban environment, or you want to go for a full-moon/ dusk/ twilight, then yes, you'd need to adjust the amount of skylight.

[Dave Buckley]

thanks matt and shane

 

and how would i compensate in terms of exposure for the added daylight system matt?

 

current exposure settings ISO 100, f16, ss 1/0.02

[mattclinch]

just turn down the intensity of the skylight system so it works with your current exposure.

[Dave Buckley]

just tried that and got as low as 0.02 for the multiplier of the sky and was still way too bright.

 

i have a physical sky in there. could this be causing the problem??

[mattclinch]

what time of day have you got the daylight system at...? make sure it is below the horizon. 0.02 percent of the ambient light at midday will still be far too bright for the camera exposure setup you have.

[Dave Buckley]

yep my mistake.

 

it was set at about 4pm, so i have taken out the physical sky and lowered the skylight to 0.00001

 

i guess i could put the physical sky back in and change the time to 8pm and get my sky multiplier back up to something more like 0.02

 

i did think 5 decimal places was a bit of a face ache just to get a bit of ambient lighting

[Dave Buckley]

override the colours and use a dark desaturated blue as the colour.

 

 

any clues as to how you mean matt???

 

i put the physical sky back in and changed the time to 11pm, however my sky still looked quite reddish and quite bright, when i want a deep dark bluey gradient type look. whats the best way to do this??? leave the physical sky out and add in post??? or change settings of physical sky and daylight system and if so, which ones

[mattclinch]

In the Daylight system, under the rollout 'mr Sky Paramters'.

Make the ground colour near as makes no difference black.

Play with the red/blue tint and saturation to give yourself the right colour light/background (the Physical sky gets its colour from the daylight system by default but you can unlink these if necessary).

[Dave Buckley]

getting closer to what i want i think. i don't know what i want, this one has daylight system in there and i have changed the exposure from the first one with no daylight. also changed the water material to make it clear so the lights are doing the blue tinting

[Dave Buckley]

added a bit of post to brighten up the pool, not sure which one i prefer :I

 

don't really know what i'm doing in post though to be fair and not too sure why its blurred on me . hmmm

[Dave Buckley]

help me out guys, can't decide which i prefer,

 

i think i prefer the environment lighting in the first one but i prefer the water illumination/brightness in the second one, but then again i guess the first pool illumination spread will end up looking like the second one when i start to add more lights in there

[Tommy Burns]

I really just think you need some lights around the edge of the pool on the ground or small lightstands. Also when/if you are going to put in bulidings or trees in the background this will displace light elsewhere. It looks brilliant but needs some light other than just in the water.