Outdoor Environmental Lighting...

Striff

Hey folks.

Currently in the process of making a scene and I am trying to light it. Lights have just given me a wave of problems in the past and they seem to be haunting me again.

The scene is outdoors, and is in Maya. Right now I have Final Gather on, and have a spotlight pointing at the building. What are some of the stratagies you guys use to light outdoor scenes?

Here is what it looks like right now. Just seems pretty bland and washed out. Like many people say...a scene can be awsome, but bad lights kill it.



I am about ready to quit on lighting all together and export it out into an engine when it is complete....but I wouldn't mind finding a way to do it in Maya as well. =

noritsune

for outdoor lighting, usually just a blueish ambient (or gray if it's a cloudy day) plus a bright white directional for the sun (weak if it's cloudy) is all you need, especially if you are using ambient occlusion. Setting the sun light at a lower angle and making the color more orange adds atmosphere.

there's a great lighting tutorial linked on one of these threads ... I'll just put the link here as well:

http://www.itchy-animation.co.uk/tutorials/light01.htm

Kevin Albers

First, think about what time of day it is, and what the weather is like. Like Noritsune said, often late afternoon/sunset is a very dramatic time, lighting-wise.

Before lighting, you might want to decide how your camera/s are going to be set up. Right now it seems as though the render is taken from a hovering helicopter. Maybe a lower camera would be better.

Get the main sunlight how you want it first, then the ambient light, then other lights. Position the sun so that you get interesting shadows, depending on the mood you are going for.

Get some textures going on. It's hard to make good decisions about your lighting without seeing the lighting in context of it hitting the textures.

Daz

Nice link noritsune. Heres a decent maya mray FG tut Striff: http://www.jozvex.com/tutorials/fg.html

funshark

Start with Final gather only.
Open the attributes of your light and uncheck the "illuminates by default" button box. ( Uncheck the one in the common render settings tab too : "Enable default light" )
Then play with the Min Radius/Max Radius of Final Gather ( max: 10% of your scene size; min: 10% of max ).

Then post results and think of what type of final image you want. It's difficult to help you without references.
Good luck

motives

this is a pretty neat tutorial made by zortech over at game-artist.net. Not very lenghty but i found it pretty useful:
http://www.game-artist.net/forums/showthread.php?t=413

Striff

Alrighty well I textured most of it, but havn't really dirtied it up yet.

Here is what I have so far. I have FG on, with a orange-yellowish directional light acting as the sun, and a blueish point light behind the building. It still looks a little bit washed out and blehish.....anyone got any suggestions?