WIP - Museum Type Lighting

[Cannon454]

Hey Kevin,

I worked in Architectual Visualization for a couple of years and found out that everyone has there own tecnique for lighting interior spaces(and my spelling stinks). It looks like you have some sort of an area light in the middle of the space and possibly a couple of spot lights pointing directly at the figures.( I could very well be wrong) But my advice to think of how the space would be lit in real life where and how many lights would be placed. It very easily could be a 30 light scene. :bounce:

[just_p]

Yea, what you said is about right.

30 lights eh, oh dear. (o:

Any suggestions on what kind of lights.
Should it be a couple of omnis around and then area lights for the walls?

Thanks,

- Kevin

[just_p]

Okay.

I've taken some of the advice and made some changes.

I decided to ditch the more complex room as I think it's too complex to light with little benifit.

What's i've done now is added some drea lights for the 4 walls, and put a holder texture on the floor. There's a spot light on the 3 figures and there's abotu 5 or 6 omni's will a falloff around the room, high up.

Here's what it looks like.

- Kevin

[just_p]

Seems the pic is too big to be attached.

Here it is:
http://www.redbrick.dcu.ie/~p/data/scene_lighting2.jpg
http://www.redbrick.dcu.ie/~p/data/scene_lighting2.jpg

[CosmicBear]

i would recomment, that instead using one light from right above your objects to light them, use two (or more) from the opposite of the room. in a museum you seldom find objects being lite (is that an english word???) right from the top...

this will give you better shadows and give you better opportunites to 'shape' your objects with light...

the attached pictures suck, i know. sorry for that. (my comp is rendering, so i had to work with screenshots and thanks to mac os x i get only pdf's, which i had to open in photoshop)

one light

[CosmicBear]

two lights

[Cannon454]

Kevin,

In interiors my suggestions is using spot lights. If you try and use an area light in the center to fill in the dark space you are going to get an unrealistic look on the floor and cealing. My second suggestion is to start with filling the space with light. Think of where an architect would place the lights within the space to acomplish the job.. Then do the same in cinema. Think of a light grid. Then once that space is lit. Use more spot lights to focus on the particular objects in the scene... zigote figures and whatnot(try to only use shadows on these objects). I hope this helps... sorry for the long delay in replys but I am in the process of moving. I have limited internet access right now.

[Phasmatis]

Are you planning on using any windows in your scene? If so radiosity would work very well, for instance have a look at This (http://www.ghostworld.btinternet.co.uk/website/Gallery/RainyDay.jpg) I used a parallel (a sun) light as the main light source, I got this technique from a topic, with examples and a link to a tutorial a while ago but it’s gone now, if someone can remember the site that would be great.

The only other light sources in there are four lights in the hall to left and two visible spot lights above the sign and they’re all about 5-10% bright.

The sky material is just the clouds shader in the luminance channel.

Radiosity settings: (I made that scene ages ago so these setting may not be correct)
Strength: 210%
Accuracy: 83%
Prepass size: 1/1
Diffuse depth: 7
Stochastic samples: 200
Min. Resolution: 15
Max. Resolution: 17
Recompute: Always

Of course if you aren’t planning to make this an animation you could simply make some windows behind the camera so they will never be seen.

Or you could just play around with the radiosity settings with the scene you have at the moment, if you use just a few lights at a very low brightness.

[just_p]

Okay, so I decided to have a go with radiosity to see what'd happen.

Settings:
Strength: 210%
Accuracy: 50%
Prepass size: 1/1
Diffuse depth: 7
Stochastic samples: 50
Min. Resolution: 15
Max. Resolution: 17
Recompute: Always


Here's the result (with my real characters, not dummies now):
http://www.redbrick.dcu.ie/~p/data/3dcomps/radiosity.jpg

Also some other experiments:
http://www.redbrick.dcu.ie/~p/data/3dcomps/camera1.jpg

http://www.redbrick.dcu.ie/~p/data/3dcomps/camera2.jpg

[Phasmatis]

Good good :). Once yout get some textures on the walls you shouldn't get those artifacts with radiosity or you can simply up the Min. and Max. Resolution they only reason they're so low is because they cut down rendering time.

Where's Benders bottle of beer? ;)

[chi]

your best bet is to go with setting up 10-20 lights like you would in real life and then use radiosity on top of that so you get something like this

[That Adrian Guy]

CHHHHHIIIIIIIII!

he he he... sorry, it's becoming a habit.

You don't have any contrast in that setup, you should lower down the number of lights to get some shadows in there, oh yeah, and use lighting that looks more "incandescent"

K, thxbye

[CGTalk Moderation]

This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.