Studio lighting setup

[rossy007]

Hi everybody, I am new to CGA and would like to ask a question. I will be taking a 16 week modeling course in max starting May the 1st and I am trying to get a head start. I am doing some online tutorials of furniture modeling but my lighting leaves a lot to be desired. I was wondering if there was a basic studio lighting setup that I could use to look at my models in. If anyone knows of a good setup I would appreciate it.

 

Thanks again

David

[Peter M. Gruhn]

Some ideas trying to keep it too simple.

 

All of these rely on having a ground plane for reference, pretty shadows and bounced light.

 

All of these ask you to use Mental Ray with Final Gather turned on and Bounces turned up. I usually work with Draft and 2. Going up to Medium can sometimes help the shadows (sometimes a LOT) but it looks like w/ a single adequately lit prop it won't. Going beyond two bounces rarely helps me. And these settings are quick enough to wait the extra couple seconds. No GI. Oh, and turn on gamma.

 

Get familiar with the RAM Player so you can compare renders with different settings.

 

Get familiar with the Light Lister to quickly tweak levels and colors.

 

I have buttons on my toolbar for these. Use 'em alla timez.

 

The quickest thing I can think of is to just drop in a daylight system. Switch it over to mrSun and mrSky. Say "yes" to all the prompts. Hit the Setup button and put a little character in it, I just switch to month: 4 and hour:10. If your renders are "dude, that's whack" try increasing the Orbital Scale and check exposure (mrPhotographic set to outside day).

 

At school they teach them to use a Standard Skylight and a Direct Light. I don't know why. Set shadow to raytrace.

 

Something more studio-y. Make a photometric free light. Distribution uniform diffuse. Shape rectangular. Make it big, don't move it too far away, angle it in from the side. Generally light in line with the camera is bad. Light angled in from further away is better. Too far over to the side is bad again. You'll have to mess w/ exposure or light intensity. I left the intensity default and turned EV to 8 for the first soft box shot here.

 

Now I'm going to go fancy and try a 3 light setup. Keep the softbox on the right for fill but dim it down, echo it with a smaller light (disc) on the left for primary and put a rim light right to the rear. Hm.. my rim is really harshing the ground. Bet I'm using it wrong. Make it a spot so it does't spill light all over the ground at its feet.

 

And for my last trick... a bit of color. The classic gimmick is to copy and exagerate daylight colors. Make the main warm and the fill cool. I've seen nice things done with strongly colored rim, but not by me.

 

The attached pics were created on the fly so I'd have something to write this text from. Quick and dirty. I tried not to do anything I didn't mention here.

 

You might want to make more walls for more light bouncing. Chuck a light on the back wall to bright it up.

 

I pulled up the side walls and chamfered the edges to round them off. When I put in the leather chair it was pulling too much gloss of the side and rear walls. Well, think of a studio - they usually leave that stuff open and dark, no?

 

Then there's HDR.

 

Check http://www.amazon.com/Digital-Lighting-Rendering-Jeremy-

Birn/dp/0321316312/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1270951501&sr=8-1#noop

[pixelperfectg]

FWIW there's also a studio sample scene on the samples content DVD of 3ds Max Design 2010.

[rossy007]

Thanks everyone. I will give it a try