CGTalk - Desk Lamp Soft Shadows?

View Full Version : Desk Lamp Soft Shadows?

madmuffin

01-26-2010, 02:47 PM

I have no idea how to do any lighting what so ever and its really frustrating messing with all the numbers to try and get an effect I can envision perfectly but its downright impossible for me to reproduce.

http://www.istockphoto.com/file_thumbview_approve/6762461/2/istockphoto_6762461-night-desk-lamp-background.jpg

How do you get nice soft shadows like this here? No matter what I do, all my lights no matter what always have completely hard edges, one pixel is lit, the one next to it completely unlit. Is there some setting I have to change or turn on GI or what do I do? I can't find any decent mental ray lighting tutorials either, they are all either expecting you to know everything already, just talk about lighting theory and light bands, physics, and things I don't understand, or don't cover what I need.

http://img515.imageshack.us/img515/503/badlookinghardlighting.png

Quick render, notice the obvious bands where the light stops and shadows start. Completely unrealistic. Not to mention it gets super bright there from me trying to mess around with something, anything, to get the desired effect. How do I achieve this with my light, or any light for that matter? All I can ever get are solid shadows and I have to fill my scenes with millions of tiny lights with extremely low multiply to get rid of edges like this and it looks hideous and never works anyways.

Where is the 'Make Shadow Edges Soft Option'?

EDIT: Messed with dials some more and got this:
http://img715.imageshack.us/img715/4025/badlookinghardlightingb.png

My problem is I fundamentally have zero idea what I am doing. I could never get this effect consciously, I just keep randomly changing values until somethings happens. Lighting and rendering are completely alien to me. And it still doesn't look realistic, just better then it did before.

playmesumch00ns

01-26-2010, 03:22 PM

There are two things going on here:

1) You need an area light as the source (this is the main one)
2) You need to turn on GI/FG to bounce light around inside the shade and back out against the wall

madmuffin

01-26-2010, 04:26 PM

There are two things going on here:

1) You need an area light as the source (this is the main one)
2) You need to turn on GI/FG to bounce light around inside the shade and back out against the wall

GI and FG are on as far as I know, but right now I am using an Omni. I'll try replacing it with an area light instead.

EDIT: Forgive my dumb but I can't find any 'Area Light.' There is an mr Area Omni and mr Area Spot, did you mean one of these?

playmesumch00ns

01-26-2010, 04:30 PM

Also you're going to need a few more than half a dozen polygons in your scene if you want it to look realistic.

madmuffin

01-26-2010, 04:35 PM

Also you're going to need a few more than half a dozen polygons in your scene if you want it to look realistic.

Well yeah I know the scene is anything but realistic. I'm only worrying about the lighting right now. Maybe it would be a property of the wall that is giving that nice look, meaning it would be impossible to do in this low poly low texture size non arch&design setup.

playmesumch00ns

01-26-2010, 06:02 PM

Well not the wall, no, but the shape of the lamp is what gives the nice curve to the shadow. Ultimately we only see what light is reflected from surfaces, so if the surfaces aren't nice, your lighting isn't going to be nice either.

CGTalk Moderation

01-26-2010, 06:02 PM

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.