Interior lighting without windows

[darleneollerenshaw]

Hi everyone,

I'm a noob to this kind of rendering, but have many years of experience lighting exterior automotive scenes. I've been asked to render an interior of a small arena (more like a huge event tent). There are no windows in it, so it's all enclosed. The other catch is that the tent and most of the objects inside it are different kinds of black materials, such as matte black, gloss black and some carpeting. So I am already into the project but was curious how some of you might approach it? I have a Vray sun in there with its map. I have hidden the roof and have 4 vray plane lights and a dome light with a vray softbox map in it. I originally had a few spots and direct lights but the client said it was too "harsh" and wanted it much brighter. It is a fine line though between my blacks looking more like grey if I make it too bright. I feel it's overkill and I have too many lights. I'm used to lighting with 1 hdr!

Anyway, I had no idea the best way to approach this and thought it would be interesting to hear some thoughts. I really need to learn this stuff!

 

Thanks!

[heni30]

Why don't you post showing where the rendering is right now?

[darleneollerenshaw]

Thanks but I can't show any images publicly right now due to an NDA :-(

[Reitveld]

2 things to keep in mind. 1) nothing is black in reality... just shades of dark gray (so you will get better material results with dark gray than black) and 2) put in some artificial lights. Even in reality, a tent show will have artificial lights to show off a car... and it will look intense compared to the surroundings.

If all else fails... punch it up in post production with Photoshop (Curves, Brightness, etc.)

[Francisco Penaloza]

If it is a close place, you don't need VRay sun/Sky at all, did they give you any Light plans of the building? if not and it is a imaginary place, then using spot lights or VRay rectangular lights is the way to go, maybe your client didn't like you harsh shadows, maybe you didn't activate inverse square falloff in your spot lights. Check for VRay Shadows and give the correct falloff. Any interior even or show room has spot lights accentuating some areas.

I would recommend to create a grid of rectangular VRay Light covering the whole place, make them 2x4 or 6x8 try to keep it as minimum you can and give a try, if it is taking forever to render, select a few of them and check only affect diffuse. With that and the right exposure will create a good even lighting.

 

as mentioned above, do not make your materials pure black, make them rather very dark grays, always try to avoid use pure whites or pure blacks, and remember use VRay materials so you get the right light bounce and spill.

[CliveG]

...more like a huge event tent....

 

Just a suggestion, but this could also assist with softening or contributing to diffuse light;

 

Very dependent on the proposed tent material, but it could also let a small amount of light pass through the material itself. Look at images from the inside of a lot of normal marquee's and the material itself glows, especially where it's between the camera and the sun outside.

 

This would be a complex material (for me anyway) to then replicate, perhaps vray2sided but I'd leave that to those better than me. But even imagining this in my head with black material (I can't find any reference images straight off) I'd think that if it's a light day on the outside of the tent, I'd expect some small contribution to the light passing through the tent material falling off on the sides etc.

 

As a I say, just a suggestion.....