how to light a 1500 sq ft electronics store

[chow choppe]

hi everyone

 

i am rendering a electronics store inside a mall with no natural light

i want to know how shud i light the scene.

it has a flat ceiling with halogens/cfls laid along a grid at ever 3'

shud i use ies file at each light point?

 

the area is around 1500 sqft.

 

please help me start lighting it

 

thanks

[Alex York]

you could probably get away with just having self-illuminated ceilings with a mask revealing the lights. that's if you're not too close up.

[erickdt]

In these sorts of situations I typically will have a VRay light plane directly over the top of the scene, pointing downwards, that excludes the cieling from shadow casting (the cieling and floor elements should be made into seperate groups in this scenario) and a VRay light plane below the scene pointing upwards including only the cieling for illumination and shadow casting. This will work well to achieve your general lighting while giving you alot of control over the relative brightness/darkness of the cieling vs. the rest of the scene. I'd recommend that you setup your lighting using a white material over-ride (located in the global switches roll out) to setup up these lights and save you alot of time in test renders. Once your light levels are set you can shut off the material over-ride. After that I'd use photometric and standard lights to highlight the areas you want to highlight, if applicable.