Real / Natural Lighting

[jeremybirn]

For sun light, just make your sun light bright, yellow, and distant, test that the light and its shadows work. Then add several dimmer bluer fill lights from different angles to simulate the sky, those can cast softer shadows than the sun, and make them dim enough so that the sun and sky add up to balance at white. Then add bounce lights mostly from lower angles that pick up your ground color and environment colors, and make them not create specular highlights.

-jeremy

[Maven]

Im abit of a newbie when it comes to Lighting, ive always tried to avoid it whenever I can but now I want to learn

I would love to hear about how you "aviod" lighting, thats great...I never heard of that before.

Lighting is just as important as Texturing, Modeling, Animating, etc.... I really can't see how you would avoid it.

Anyways, the best thing to do is read up on your software lighting functions so you understand what every parameter is acutally controling, and just keep experimenting. Also pay close attention to your surrondings at all times, even at night. look at the details of light and shadow where ever you are.

[Maven]

Also read up on movie lighting...setting up a stage.

[FClub_TDurden]

Yeah like Jeremy said...

Have a Key Sun with hard shadows....thats your main light direction...

Then addin diffuse only lights with soft shadows that overlap...the overlapping soft shadows will give it a ambiant occ look without need for raytracing or GI...

remember to have only one specular light...your SUN....multiple specs look very cg and just dont happen in natural light situations...

subtle bounce lights that dont cast shadows from underneath that only affect diffuse give it added realism.... i ususally tint mine a cool color..green or blue...

[Seven]

Thanks for the tips. How have I avoided lighting? well its been along time since i have made a finished scene. I suppose ive always made computer game characters or just been practising my high poly modeling skills or texturing.

I want to start lighting my models now :)

Sev

[Black&White]

some tips

-use decay lights for indoors, groundbounce.
-carefully adjust perameters for surface shader ie. highlight, roughness, glossiness, trasculency etc.


USE FULL
http://www.neilblevins.com/
www.3drender.com

[comfortablydumb]

Ive noticed that with outdoor lighting you need to use more directional lights with few yellows and more light blues.

In indoor lighting you need more spots or omnis and has more yellows for the lower heat giving lights. also you usually need to put more lights in the scene than outdoors to simulate the radiosity from all the walls. (or cheez it and use glaobal lighting)

[jeremybirn]

Also, use shadows on most (if not all) of your lights. A lot of people are in the habit of only turning on shadows for their Key light (which makes the boldest, darkest shadows) but then have no shadows at all from the sky lights or bounce lights. The shadows from the other lights should be softer and less distinct, but for realistic images you really need the secondary shadowing, with shading and shadows even within the key shadow.

A light that doesn't cast shadows is a light that can pass right through opaque surfaces, something impossible in real life. Using any light without shadows is a cheat, something you should think carefully about to make sure you can get away with it. For any bounce lights coming from beneath the ground, you can just exclusively link them to not illuminate or cast shadows from the ground, so that they only shadow the character.

When you watch movies with realistic looking creatures and characters that look like they must have been rendered with global illumination or ambient occlusion, but then you hear that they were just all lit with spot lights and depth mapped shadows, the simple secret in many film productions is just that the build-up of multiple overlapping soft shadows gives a natural look of shading and darkens all the interior surfaces.

-jeremy

[TiKiMoN]

So given a simple scene, with say a half-cube (2 adjacent sides and top missing) and a sphere, how many lights would it take to make pleasant GI? I haven't attempted this for a while now, and I'm trying to find some way to improve lighting on even test models, just because I want my tests to have similar lighting to what I want to use in the final product. However, last time I tried, I needed like the dome-shaped hemisphere of lights, and rendering approximately 70 lights using mentalRay for Maya would take HOURS. I just attempted a 3-point setup which didn't really work either. I have to feel like the answer is plain as day, but I just cannot figure it out. Any more tips, maybe for indoors lighting or general GI as well? Thanks!

[Stonepilot]

Here's the best advice that I ever got from anyone.

'Find a black and white picture with real obvious light source. Replicate that picture in 3D with any means necesary".

If you have basic understanding of how lights work in what ever your 3d software of choice is you'll be able to pull it off. I guarantee it. And you'll learn more from that experiece that trying to figure out how joe schmo did his lighting. The truth is that there's no secret techinque that people have that you'll all of a sudden just find and bam you'll get it. Try what I'm suggesting. Use as many lights as you need. If you see a ray of light hitting a wall use a spotlight and make it look like it looks like on the pic.
I use Maya and I've learn more about lighting from just looking at stuff than anything anyone has told me.

Make it your goal to try this excersice. And don't just do one do a few.

[FabioMSilva]

natural lighting huh? For natural lighting i use in (3dsmax) the sun tool, with some very soften yellow/oranged light. Shadow map usually does the trick but if u want really realistic choose raytraced(does take longer tought). For moonlight i usually use the same method, but with lower light strength value and for the colour a nice soft blue colour to give that Moonlight mood.
Usually i also create(for daylight) another sun tool with exacly the same values(to give that shiny effect on persons "strong" light effect(dunno how its called) but it´s realistic) like when the sun hits directly on yer face) of course u need to turn of the shadows for the second sun.

hope this helps, but guess what, i´m not an expert on lighting too...

:beer: cheers!

[Khepri]

Originally posted by TiKiMoN
However, last time I tried, I needed like the dome-shaped hemisphere of lights, and rendering approximately 70 lights using mentalRay for Maya would take HOURS. I just attempted a 3-point setup which didn't really work either. I have to feel like the answer is plain as day, but I just cannot figure it out. Any more tips, maybe for indoors lighting or general GI as well? Thanks!


could be just me but why didnt you use the radiosity/final gathering in MR to achive the GI "look"? thats what they are there for.


rendering 70 lights(raytraced shadows I pressume) in a raytracer totally takes away the advantage of using lights over a radiosity/GI algorithm/system.

it probably takes waaaay longer then GI/radiosity in the first place.


there are some tutorials about GI in MR for maya in the maya forum.

should be easy to find


cheers

[Seven]

hey wow, this is turning into a great thread.

Thanks for the tips/info/general chatter guys.

very helpful

I think it would be great if a mod could move this to the 'General Discussion' forum so more people could give input. The more tips on how to reproduce natural/real lighting, the more it would help everyone.

Sev

[Hazmatman]

I think one reason many people prefer not to use GI is that it is to easy. Sure GI is realistic, but it only tasks a few clicks, and there you go. I think that using lights with Dmaps, or even ray traced shadows gives you more control, and will also show the artistry side of lighting, which has been lost due to radiosity. But once everyone is sick of white models on a white plane with GI, i think we will come back to Dmaps.

[Khepri]

you could say that, but, how many applications have depthmaps(from what I read about them is that they where developed for fur rendering by pixar)?

aside from that, gi, isnt a "click&go" thing. there is a difference in people that use GI for the look/feel/effect of it and people that use it for functional purposes(architectural representations).

its an art to get clean renders that have a minimum rendertime, and are functional in animation.

9.9 out of 10 people use GI and get rendertimes that go through the roof, but that other 1%(may even be less)gets the quality they are aiming for AND get it to the client on time.


the thing that people that are coming from scanline background seem to forget is that these pluginrenderers(except one or 2) are RAYTRACERS. they are fast in what they are designed to do: raytrace. but if you have been using a scanline app, you expect this insane speed(1 minute a frame or even lower) that you just dont get with a raytracer that uses GI+high quality sampling and reflections/refractions and whatnot unless you have a very powerful computer/renderfarm.

so you can keep saying: "hey but its not artistic to use gi because its so simple to use"

but reality is: clients will expect that from you once they get to hear about it, and if you really want to get "that look" you are going to have to use it.

and like I said: when you use it correctly it can be very very fast.

cheers

[ceql]

Originally posted by Khepri
you could say that, but, how many applications have depthmaps


Virtually every program.... shadow maps in max = depth map shadows :p

[JA-forreal]

A light that doesn't cast shadows is a light that can pass right through opaque surfaces, something impossible in real life. Using any light without shadows is a cheat, something you should think carefully about to make sure you can get away with it. For any bounce lights coming from beneath the ground, you can just exclusively link them to not illuminate or cast shadows from the ground, so that they only shadow the character.

When you watch movies with realistic looking creatures and characters that look like they must have been rendered with global illumination or ambient occlusion, but then you hear that they were just all lit with spot lights and depth mapped shadows, the simple secret in many film productions is just that the build-up of multiple overlapping soft shadows gives a natural look of shading and darkens all the interior surfaces.

-jeremy


9.9 out of 10 people use GI and get rendertimes that go through the roof, but that other 1%(may even be less)gets the quality they are aiming for AND get it to the client on time.

the thing that people that are coming from scanline background seem to forget is that these pluginrenderers(except one or 2) are RAYTRACERS. they are fast in what they are designed to do: raytrace. but if you have been using a scanline app, you expect this insane speed(1 minute a frame or even lower) that you just dont get with a raytracer that uses GI+high quality sampling and reflections/refractions and whatnot unless you have a very powerful computer/renderfarm.

so you can keep saying: "hey but its not artistic to use gi because its so simple to use"

but reality is: clients will expect that from you once they get to hear about it, and if you really want to get "that look" you are going to have to use it.

and like I said: when you use it correctly it can be very very fast.

-Khepri

So why do the 3d software companies focus on selling software features that are not practical for any realworld production scenario? 3d lighting is a good example of an area of 3d software features that can tax your systems resources the most during render time. I've read of the connection between the sales of computer hardware and the aliance of certain software companies that create product applications have very little real impact or real practical use for the average end user.

-Have a good plan for all your future 3d projects. Ask yourself can I really pull this caper off? And how will I do it. Your choice of software will either heed you or feed you.

A soon as I really started using Blender I begain to research more advanced 3d studio production techniques. I found that almost every lighting, rendering, shader, particle and compositing process that was used by professional studios could be done in Blender. I wanted to get the mastery over my pc hardware and once past those limitations I realized that I could really create all my 3d works finally unhindered by my storebrought pc technology. My first renders looked terrible and I had wondered if "Ton," Blenders developer was really being truthful about Blenders capabilities. He was also a user of industry standard software like Maya, etc, so.

I kept at it I couldn't have learn Blender effinciently without the aid of other Blender users. The Blender interface was almost Martain, to a windows user. In the past I had studied some of the principles that Jeremy Birn supplied on compsiting and lighting. Also Alex Linsday started up DVGarage. The DVGarage texturing and compositing tips that I applied in Blender worked perfectly. I build my own systems and the systems at my work. So I have a history of pc systems all the was back to the amd 486 models.

Did you know that hollywood studios used to use 486 pc workstations? I ran some of my Blender animations that I made on the new intel P's series cpu setups on the old 486. The frames rendered nearly as fast a the new systems. Some of my new software hardly even ran on the old 486 setup. Some of my new software wouldn't even run at all.

Why all this talk about hardware and software on a lighting forum? Most of us here are artist merely trying to do what we do best, pump out great looking 3d or 2d art. Like most of you I get all excited when a see a wonderfully light highly detailed 3d scene in the "Finished Work" area. But unlike most of the users here I and the other more educated 3d artist know that half of the stuff other than realtime 3d work would not be used on a daily basis in any real 3d studio. Why? Because the render times would not be acceptable for production.

I know what a stuggle it is to chisel out a good looking demo reel on a store brought machine. My first 3d machine was a 486 HP Pavillion Pent- 166 with 128 MB ram. Today the hardware resource requirements of a software like Lightwave or Max for an adverage artist are at the level of a P4-3.0 gig Pavillion with 512 MB ram. The limits of this system can be seen quicky when an artist pushes their 3d work to the edge. High levels of polygons and high levels of lights will quickly let you know if you are in controll of your project or if the software and hardware limit your progress or your entire project.

So if you are 3d artist who is on the verge of bringing us your 3d masterpiece, take note of some of these little lighting disscusions.
Plan out your project based on the hardware and software that you use. Get to know your software of choice, read up on how the industry makes practicle use of your software in a production environment. All great 3d scene and animations begin with great lighting and end with great lighting. Yeah you paid 2 grand and up for your hardware and software included. Hopefully your 3d software has a scanline renderer. But hey that's no problem, every 3d artist has a free scanline renderer now called Blender.
Keep your eye on Blender and by all means, download it. Your begining 3d career could depend on it. Blender accepts OBJ files and vrml files. I will tell you that Blender is one of the best 3d lighting experiences that I have had.

Unlike the softwares that we purchased that "had better have a great lighting setup as soon as we select a few lights and hit the render button", Blender is not automatic. Blender is completely manual like.... Life. And like life it offers you endless opportunities.

Ask your software company support team how to use your 3d scanline renderer efficently, get a book on the subject or ask your fellow users on this forum.

As for natural lighting, you can use Fake GI as base to launch all of your 3d scene lighting arrangements. Do this right now. If you are running Max, Maya or Lightwave, turn of all ambient lighting. After that, start lighting from scractch and add only the lights that you need.

I just had ta rip ya off onto that experience.

Are you the one, Neo? For real, now at this time in 3d history, your only creative limit is your imagination. You can move beyond your machine.

[indianBoy]

and make them not create specular highlights.

-jeremy

can someone please tell me how does one exactly do that in MAX?

[Khepri]

Why all this talk about hardware and software on a lighting forum? Most of us here are artist merely trying to do what we do best, pump out great looking 3d or 2d art. Like most of you I get all excited when a see a wonderfully light highly detailed 3d scene in the "Finished Work" area. But unlike most of the users here I and the other more educated 3d artist know that half of the stuff other than realtime 3d work would not be used on a daily basis in any real 3d studio. Why? Because the render times would not be acceptable for production.


errr, well thats a bit easy to say since 9/10th of the stuff posted in the finished work section is free work.

:D

and when your using gi(or whatever expensive render methode for that matter) in production you will probably render a gi pass 1 time and render the other stuff without it.

gi is very production usable btw. and not just architecture renderings, but alot of commercials/music videos.

my showreel has alot of gi and dof and arealights and whatnot in it, and my longest per frame rendertime was 45 minutes.

its about optimizing and finding a sweetspot for the time/quality ratio that your client needs/expects from you.

sure you can fake it, but does it look the better than gi? no.

does it look good enough? sometimes.

-



celq
Virtually every program.... shadow maps in max = depth map shadows

no no they are not. :shame:

cheers

[ceql]

Originally posted by Khepri

no no they are not. :shame:



Khepri:

Are you sure u know what Dmap shadows are? They're not new technology or anything :)

I mean, I could be mistaken about Max, but it looks like it's just a matter of different names?

In Maya, you only have two choice for shadows: either raytraced, or depthmap. Whereas with Max, similarly you have raytrace or shadowmap...

-Both Shadow maps and Dmap shadows calculate their shadow processing information using images, and can be tweeked by controlling the Shadowmap/Dmap size (resolution). Making this smaller will typically make them less defined and blurrier, and you can apply and increase the amount of filtering to increase the blurriness also.

-Both Shadowmaps and Dmap shadows share the same limitations, for instance they cannot cast shadows through mapped transperancy on objects (whereas only raytracing can).

Otherwise, What can Dmap shadows do that shadow map shadows can't? and why do they share the same characteristics and limitations? :)

[mlykke]

http://graphics.stanford.edu/papers/deepshadows/deepshad.pdf

[ceql]

That's talking about deep shadow map, not depth map shadows.

the paper says: "rather than storing a single depth at each pixel , a deep shadow map stores a fractional visibility function.... *snip*"

depth maps, or shadow maps actually do function by *storring a single depth at each pixel*.... unlike deep shadow maps

[ceql]

Hmm, I think that must be what is causing the confusion... somewhere along the line "depth map" got confused with "deep shadow".

If you look at the thread in context:

Originally posted by Hazmatman
I think that using lights with Dmaps, or even ray traced shadows gives you more control, and will also show the artistry side of lighting, which has been lost due to radiosity.


^ Hazmatman was talking about using Standard lights with standard shadow techniques, which are "Dmaps, or even ray traced shadows". (i.e. Shadowmaps or raytracing, the two common shadow types in every 3d app)

Originally posted by Khepri
you could say that, but, how many applications have depthmaps(from what I read about them is that they where developed for fur rendering by pixar)?


^

Khepri must have been thinking about "DEEP shadows" maps.

DEPTH Map shadows have been around for ageeeeeees and don't have any special abilities at rendering fur.

[Khepri]

ah yes deep shadows, my flaw!

thnx

cheers

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