Mental ray lighting set up questions

#10

ndeboar that was amazing.

i’m gonna jump in and defend sun and sky too. every time i do exteriors my first go to solution is sun and sky, if i need something like REALLY custom for lighting then i can go for something else.

i have a couple of examples too of stuff i did with sun and sky for exteriors.

The Collector

Shell Lubricants

and even for interiors i think it is a great source for keylight along with portal light

Bored Robot

Classroom

Willie

Angel

Dinner

Jelly

Some are simple tests and other finished projects, nothing as elaborate as ndeboar’s animation, but in all of them it worked like a charm.

i think the trick to get nice custom results with sun and sky is to play a lot with exposure control, color temperature, night/day sun colors , night/day sky colors, or even replace mr sky with a skylight and add your own hdr, use haze, add a haze map with clouds in it…

all of that adds to your final gather solution so you’ll get nice environment coloring, of course if you leave it to default it’ll be like an Autodesk demo image, but adding customized mood will take you a long way.

#11

Nice work!

#12

ndeboar and jeb, both of you guys have great works!!
I have tried to use other lighting set up, but sun/sky makes much better result for me since I am a newbie.
Does sun/sky light works well with normal map? I tried to use a bump and a normal map for brick wall, and bump map looks much better than normal map. The normal map was created from ps3 with nvidia plug in… Since the wall is not be zoomed in, I will just go with the bump map, but I’m just wondering.

#13

I will play with the set up. I don’t know all the stuff you are talking about, but I am sure I will get there. I am really interested in replacing mr sky light with a skylight and add hdri image. I will try to do that too.
I want to make the scene looks like sun rise, but I haven’t gotten the result that I want. Well I haven’t finished modeling yet, I was just playing around with the lighting set up. It’s hard, but it’s pretty fun too.
Thank you for the advice.

#14

If you are claiming to be resposible for designing the look of Modnation then we worked together in the past and know each other.

I stick to my original post. Physical Sun and Sky produces a flat, dull, emotionless render!

Yes, in experienced hands you can get a realistic result if you are controlling lense shaders and exposure settings…etc, BUT you are advising a person who doesn’t know how to light to use it! You are assuming that the OP is a experience photographer and knows what to expect when adjusting gamma and ISO.

Not knowing anything about the OP’s project, my advice would be to use IBL and a directional. The only reason I suggest that is because the IBL can help him control the indirect lighting. If he was experienced enough he could do that manually. By using this method, he chooses the IBL to use (thinks about the tones he wants), he controls the contrast and balance between direct and Indirect light, and rightfully sets the mood of his piece. Bottom line, he can achieve the same result with less settings to manipulate.

I’ll stop here before I get on a rant. In closing, I just want to say that not one of Jeb’s examples showcases anything special that can not be achieved through other methods of lighting.

#15

I would use the sun/sky as well, unless you need a specific mood that cannot be gotten easily with sun/sky. As far as gamma/exposure go, you might as well learn about these things as well.
They are not “optional” when learning to light/render, they are imperative IMHO.

Regards,
Mike

#16

Not knowing anything about the OP’s project, my advice would be to use IBL and a directional.

You just described the mental ray Sun/Sky. Amazing to watch you argue with yourself about it, though!

The Sun/Sky is just a tool for introducing light into a scene. It’s no more “cheap” or “lifeless” than any other light you can setup, son. It’s a directional light with an IBL, which in this case is a simple gradient based on atmospheric values. The IBL is calculated by FinalGather primarily. Hope this information helps you learn how to use lights better, LowJack.

#17

sigh!

Physical Sun and Sky is nothing like using IBL.

For starters, the Sky created by Physical Sun and Sky is just a gradient. It has no brake up or shading changes that you get from an IBL. It also does absolutely nothing to help with reflections.

Secondly, the directional light in Ps&s has all its attributes linked to its orientation. When you adjust the angle of the light you also adjust the intensity and colour GIVING YOU NO CONTROL!!!

Why is this so hard for everyone to grasp??

Everyone here is arguing that Ps&s is the right method to light everything and telling me that I have no idea on how to light, yet I’m the only one here expressing the right way to light is to actually use lights and be creative!!! If Ps&s was so awesome then why bother having lights in the 3D software at all?

I’m done with this thread. Until someone respectable comes in here and can argue the pro’s of Physical Sun and Sky then this conversation is over.

Physical Sun and Sky and portal lights are the best lighting solution! They make everything so pretty and look so good. From feature film to gaming, Physical Sun and Sky and Portal lights should always be considered when deciding how to light your scene. LOL! Good luck with that.

#18

I’m done with this thread. Until someone respectable comes in here and can argue the pro’s of Physical Sun and Sky then this conversation is over.

We’ll try to miss you. Since you don’t “respect” any of us here and just called us all “unrespectable” for having different workflows and opinions, it’ll be a really painful thing to see you never post here again. It’s a thread about lighting, not some super-serious religious-belief argument or debate. Nobody’s attacking you. Get control of yourself.

However, I totally understand what you’re saying from a technical point, though. The problem is that you’re working backwards. Remember, son, that your method of lighting is what we used before the Sun/Sky emerged for mental ray. It’s not like the Sun/Sky is an old process, beaten up and overused. It’s the SUN, son. Think about it for a moment and leave your ego behind.

What you’re asking the Original Poster to do is take the most potent, quickest-rendering, most accurate form of lighting (which is that huge fireball in the sky, if you’ve forgotten what we’re talking about) and NOT use it. You’re asking the OP to perform piles of test-renders hoping to achieve “artisticness” or something. You’re implying that using the sun for lighting is wrong, and that PortalLights aren’t the best way to optimize the sun/sky for interior rendering.

Try telling that to this guy:

Also, if you’ve ever looked at a clear sky, you would know it’s a gradient. Any HDRI involving the sky also has gradients, albeit multidirectional obviously. Sure, some clouds for details are sweet, but you can control the atmospheric gradient in the sun/sky far, far easier than tweaking an HDRI in a separate application. And you can also add clouds just fine to the sun/sky.

But hey, go ahead and toy with all your random little lights and do dozens or hundreds of test renders per project. I’ll be long finished and have already signed the client; see you when you need to borrow some money, LowJack.

#19

Sho… Very succinctly put. I enjoyed your post immensely.

Regards,
Mike

#20

If you are claiming to be resposible for designing the look of Modnation then we worked together in the past and know each other.

All i’m claiming is that I lit it with a sun/sky setup.

I stick to my original post. Physical Sun and Sky produces a flat, dull, emotionless render!

Not in my experiance.

For starters, the Sky created by Physical Sun and Sky is just a gradient

It’s a physcially correct graident :slight_smile:

Not knowing anything about the OP’s project, my advice would be to use IBL and a directional. The only reason I suggest that is because the IBL can help him control the indirect lighting. If he was experienced enough he could do that manually. By using this method, he chooses the IBL to use (thinks about the tones he wants), he controls the contrast and balance between direct and Indirect light, and rightfully sets the mood of his piece. Bottom line, he can achieve the same result with less settings to manipulate.

The OP is doing an interior render, so the walls would block any contribution from a IBL. Just becouse someone doesn’t understand every setting on a light doesn’t mean they arn’t allowed to use it. The sun/sky will give physically correct results, and the portal light will nicly focus the rays. This is the method used in the mental ray documentation:
http://download.autodesk.com/us/maya/2011help/index.html

http://download.autodesk.com/us/maya/2011help/index.html

#21

The OP is doing an exterior render.

“The scene is on old house where at top of a hill, the sun is rising and lighting is spread to the house.”

You worked a little on True Crime as well didn’t you?

#22

The OP is doing an exterior render.

Doe!

You worked a little on True Crime as well didn’t you?

Nope. Stearing at dancing Penguins at the moment.

#23

I messed up normal map so it looked weird when I rendered it :slight_smile:
I am using sun/sky to just test my scene right now.
I am still learning with the set up. Like lowjack said, chaning the direction of the light gives the scene different mood. I tried to change the color of it, but it wasn’t easy. I need to study more of it.
I found a tutorial of IBL. I will also test it to see what kind of result I get.
Tweaking lighting is kind of fun. Yes, it is hard and time consuming, but I kind of like it.
Thank you for the advice guys.

#24

THANK YOU GORILLAJIN!!!

If you need any help at all, please feel free to PM me.

#25

Hey, im new to lighting and need to light a scene similar to this (http://www.dymee.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-o-matic/cache/200909-1/8ff87_8360-audi-r8-2007-studio1.jpg) i wanna use mental ray so anyone know how to get the samelook??..im creating a fake ad for the R8.

#26

Like lowjack said, chaning the direction of the light gives the scene different mood.

THANK YOU GORILLAJIN!!!

Wait, so what you’ve been trying to tell us this whole time, LowJack, is that the angle of the sun in the sky, and thus the time of day, changes the lighting and mood of your scene? So what you’re telling us is that the sun looks different in the morning than it does in the evening?

There was a sweet Pizza Hut graphic too, where just below the Pizza Hut sign, on the leaderboard, it reads, “WE HAVE PIZZA.” But I thought this one was funnier.

Nevermind the humor, all that matters is that we’re now all aware that you are aware that the sun’s light shifts throughout the day’s cycles. Also, at night, the sun has passed the horizon and casts even less light, and creates an even more dramatic mood! They call this style, “night”. Hope this helps.

#27

The link you sent didn’t work so I googled the jpg filename and came across this (hope we’re talking about the same thing):
http://www.freewallpepper.com/audi-r8-gt3/8ff87_8360-audi-r8-2007-studio1/

The easiest way to do that is to use IBL with an HDRI that represents a studio-like environment. Try googling “hdri studio” and see what you can find. I’ve found several free ones of decent quality.

If you want to go a bit more long-winded you could try actually building your own studio environment. Lighting cars like that in the real-world is fairly simple (I think there have even been articles on how they do it linked here before) - and is often mainly about just sticking one or more “area lights” above the car.

Complexity in the reflections is what makes the lighting look real, and that comes from a) light hitting the surrounding environment, usually a flat-coloured room, perhaps with a cyclorama in it, and b) Variation in the brightness of the light source.

Here’s an example of an artificially generated studio panorama. This one’s probably better suited for product shots rather than cars but it illustrates the points I’m talking about:
http://dev.designdroplets.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/HDRI-Example-Map-1.jpg

#28

To answer the original issue about the render coming out blown out one of the main parameters that can help is to turn down the multiplier for the sun/sky node. By default it is 1 which is full intensity. Yes you can, compensate for this by adjusting the physical lens shader on the camera but I find that a value of .7 or .8 is good enough for starters. Hope that helps.

Jon

#29

Just except the fact that you gave the original poster bad advice and in the end he went with IBL which I suggested.

Good luck with your future clients. Just remember to ask them; “you want fries with that?”

( ))==D