Lighting suggestions

LungFatang

Hi guys,

I'm creating some renders of my teeny little apartment. Right now I have two portal lights at the windows and a sun shape outside of the walls. It seems a little flat to me and I was wondering if anyone might want to throw a few tips my way.

BARDLER

What are you rendering this in? Also what kind of reference are you using, and what kind of mood do you want?

LungFatang

I'm using Maya, my reference is real life (the room I'm sitting in). I'm looking for a morning light. I think at this point I want to bump up my quality but am unsure if I need to add artificial light to the scene to make it read better.

ysalex

It does look very flat, a lot of it is the empty room with the pure green walls and brown floor, they are a very similar hue and saturation, so when the light starts bouncing it flattens the image.

Adding specular to the floor will help the light bounce and pick up illumination. Making the floor darker or separating the hue and sat of the walls and floor a bit more will go a long way.

Also filling the room with more objects will help.

The sun is going to be the primary light, so don't add any more lights until you get it the way you want with your primary, otherwise you're just going to out-think it and lighting is best when it's simple, plus interior lights will wash out the sunlight atmosphere/aura and will work against trying to set a mood or feeling.

Just my .02 cents.

Also I think bardler was wondering what you're rendering in, looks like mental ray but I could be wrong.

Anyways, nice apartment, keep it up.

LungFatang

Sorry, yes, I am using Mental Ray. Thank you for your input!

Port-Seven

Are you using final gather? This will help calculate the light as it bounces around the room and brighten it up a bit, providng a more realistic lighting situation. You can create a photon map specifically for this in the Indirect Illumination tab under the Render Setup menu.

I would highly suggest doing some research on photon mapping and global illumination. It will help your scene significantly (we're doing similar interior renders at work right now and there's a ton of information on this stuff). Also, digitaltutors has a pretty informative tutorial on interior lighting using mental ray, which if you have access to would be a great place to start and pick up some basic tips.

LungFatang

@Port-Seven Thank you so much for the information.

BARDLER

LungFatang wrote: »

I'm using Maya, my reference is real life (the room I'm sitting in). I'm looking for a morning light. I think at this point I want to bump up my quality but am unsure if I need to add artificial light to the scene to make it read better.

Well the problem with that is natural sun light changes every 15 min. Every 15 min the color, temperature, direction, and brightness of sunlight changes so trying use that at reference is going to be nearly impossible. Capture a photo, or a bunch, with a nice camera so you can really study the light. As for the technical side, take a look at some Mental Ray tutorials on Digital Tutors or something because it looks like you not using a lot of basic rendering features.

LungFatang

BARDLER wrote: »

Well the problem with that is natural sun light changes every 15 min. Every 15 min the color, temperature, direction, and brightness of sunlight changes so trying use that at reference is going to be nearly impossible. Capture a photo, or a bunch, with a nice camera so you can really study the light. As for the technical side, take a look at some Mental Ray tutorials on Digital Tutors or something because it looks like you not using a lot of basic rendering features.

Thank you for the advice.