Industrial theme lighting advice? (Cinema 4D)

#1

Hi if I posted this in the wrong section please move it in the right section.

For a couple days now I had a idea to replicate a picture I ran across on the internet. Which is a industrial warehouse building from the picture down below.

 [img]http://i48.tinypic.com/2pyaw74.jpg[/img]
 
 What I really like about it is the lighting in the picture. I would like to use this warehouse to take render snap shots,and maybe even animation when I get the chance to. So I decided to create a rough draft of warehouse that looks somewhat like the picture. Now the problem I have is getting the lighting close or exactly right. I'm not great with lighting in Cinema 4D. Which is my weakness. I can normally do ok with one light on a one object. But I can never get multiple lights to look good together. Let alone trying to replicate this picture. 
 
 For this type of picture. [b][i]Should I use "Light Objects" or should I use boxes with a Luminance texture over the boxes to create the lights? [/i][/b]Right now in the picture I've use long rectangles with a Luminance set to 590% on brightness. I also noticed that there isn't any shadows on the ground. So I guess I need to use a "Light Object" to do shadows with lights?
 
[img]http://i48.tinypic.com/2yjsqy8.jpg[/img]
 
 I know the picture is nowhere near the first picture I've posted but this is the closest I got. Over the past few days I've been googling information on how to do "Professional" lighting, and been watching some how to videos. It has helped me for other stuff I can do down the road but it hasn't further my progress on the warehous scene.
 
 These are the settings I have for the project. [b][i]Any help or advice you guys have to maybe enhance the lighting, and the shadows to replicate the main picture better?[/i][/b]

Click the link for bigger picture.
http://i47.tinypic.com/2dhxj6v.jpg

 [img]http://i46.tinypic.com/2ptebr7.jpg[/img]
#2

Actually the lack of shadows is mostly due to the lack of detail in your GI. Personally I’d just use QMC particularly with the new radiance map function in R14 if you have it. These will be able to get the crispness such a large environment with so many small illumination sources would need.

With Irradiance caches, there is no way low Density is going to be able to achieve anything useful. It is also why your floor not only has no shadows but also has lots of dark and light splotches. Basically you have only a few samples covering that entire floor, and some are shadowed samples some are not, and so you have very bright and very dark random giant spots that blur together.

I think my question would first be what is the goal of this project. Learning to light with GI specifically or learning how to use lights. My first pass at something like this would be to not use any GI at all. It will be faster and more stable typically, but GI will get you yo a more accurate result with less work on your part. There is no way your going to get a good enough quality irradiance cache render with any reasonable rendertime without breaking open the settings and editing them with custom values. The maxon presets int he dropdowns will simply not be suitable for such an environment. If your goal is to learn how to render GI with C4D then this is a prime subject to get out of simply using the dropdowns and start learning the actual parameters.

#3

Are you sure those are lights? They could be opening on the ceiling or transparent materials letting sunlight through. See how the light shine on the floor retaining their shapes? The brightness on the ceiling also seem to match those outside the doors.

Try remodel the ceiling. Leave those space open, throw in direct light with ray trace shadow and turn on GI. Create pass with alpha for those opening so you can throw in white background and some glow effects in post.

#4

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