Outdoor lighting
polycounter lvl 9
Hey I was just wondering a decent lighting setup for an outdoor environment? I have never lit an outdoor environment so I would just like to get a general direction. I will be doing this inside of Max 2009. It is a tropical jungle environment. Thanks.
Replies
1st, shadow calculation is the number one thing that causes your CPU to choke when rendering. Controlling your shadows is key to keeping render times low. Shadow map does a good job of this.
Skylight:
In 3dsmax there is a light that is called "skylight" its placement doesn't really matter it draws a large dome over your scene at render time and does a good job of casting a lot of light around by casting rays but takes a while to calculate shadows.
You'll probably need to add in other lights for bounce and key lighting or turn on advanced lighting and set it to Light Tracer, this will allow to adjust the amount of bounce lighting after it hits an object, giving the scene much needed life but clunking up render times. Personally I do option 3.
One of the biggest tells that something is 3D, is the lack of bounce lighting. If you can get rid of the harsh shadows you're one step closer to realism.
Light Dome:
There are several light dome scripts floating around for 3dsmax one that's been customized a few times and updated is E-Light Dome its pretty easy to find. Does a good job at faking a sky light in half the time. Its not for commercial use but you can recreate it by hand in very little time, save it and apply it to any scene you're working on.
One big light:
Drop in a main shadow casting direct light and two opposing non shadow casting lights of lower intensity. These lights should encompass your whole scene. Why 3, read up on 3 point lighting it applies to everything. This will probably be the fastest way to render your scene and get fairly good lighting.
Of course every scene is different and lighting is a very specific and localized thing, per scene. These are as general a lighting set up you can get without starting to take the make up of the scene into account.
http://boards.polycount.net/showthread.php?t=51209
I wrote this up a while back and it applies to just about everything you can do with basic lights and scanline render in 3dsmax. Don't get caught up in thinking that Vray or Mental ray will yield better results just because, a firm foundation in the basics of lighting is required to pull off any good lighting set up be it for real time, or one time renders.
your main light should not be the colour of the light you are trying to acheive, the ambient and the main light should add up to the colour you want to acheive. if you make it the colour of the source your ambient light will alter the colour of the direct light. EG if you have very blue shadows(ambient) and a yellow sun, your lit areas wil be too blue., remove this by subtracting the value of the ambient from the main direct.
if you have a refence image, take a colour sample from the nearest to mid grey surface in the scene, in both ambient lit and direct lit surfaces, this will give you two sets of colour values to play with, now subtract the ambient values from the direct and you will get a new set of values that should be correct for your direct light. add these to your scene and you should be able to get pretty accurate results fast.
if you are using a texture in your skylight/dome light, and you want to match the colours to reference, avearge blur the texture, take that value, look at the difference in values between it and your ambient value and alter the original texture by the same value.
hope that helps
Skylights dont work well with normal maps so wouldnt a skylight option not be suitable? That is one of the reasons I never use skylights except for AO baking.. Also, this is for beauty shots for my portfolio. Thanks..
that scene looks like it is using GI
Test one light at a time.
But here is a tut that will go in-dept, PART 3 is on natural light. Good luck and dont forget to post your renders (if possible)
http://www.itchy-animation.co.uk/tutorials.html
I have a skylight with it turned to .5 and a directional light at 1.7 with a slight yellow tint to it, with its shadows on and so far 2 omnis. Feed back is greatly appreciated thanks..
True, I dont use skylight or fg for objects only for lightmap, as it does have somewhat a direction from the sky and it has radiance, AO works better to texture and fill a simple object, the skylight fits exactly what name says a sky dome lighting, but instead of skylight i use FG as im a maya user.
Bounce light is not always blue, bounce light normally consists of the overall color of your scene. In this case you might need more green and more yellow. Also jungle scenes might have less direct light which means shadows would have softer edges. The most accurate type of shadows are "Area" since they fade over distance and take a bunch of factors into account as they are calculated, they also can chunk up the render time quite a bit.
Also keep in mind that the skylight method while easy to set up, isn't actually used in any games.
i use sky domes and emissive materials all the time to bake lighting in for games across levels this is the same as using a skylight.
and your bounce light should be the colour of the sky so blue (or greyblue if overcast), the colour of the materials in the scene will be picked up on the first bounce, this is more physically correct is it not?
also if your direct light is used in the GI solution then your scene will be even more physically accurate, cant remeber exactly but dont some lights in max work wth the GI and some dont (i think the standard ones dont)
Is there much point in using a HDR map as your skydome? as the range in a normal image will give you almost exactly the same result once the lights been bounced around scene esp if the directional light gives you the extended range.
a way round this could be a green/brown sky dome as you say, and adding a second very soft shadowed directional pointing straight down with a blue colour, this will give you a more accurate colour in open patches and keep render times up
I think the main thing to look for is eliminating harsh whites and dark blacks, while using pools of shadow to add depth to a scene. Im no professional lighter though so the only advice I can really give is study some photos/screen of the effect you are trying to get and replicate it. thinking to hard can often complicate things...hahaha dunno if that makes sense.
Here is an update with the scene. The lgihting is still being tweaked.
Only the far left directional light has shadows on and they are defaulted.
will try and get a soloution to you tonight that should work better tonight
You should have a nice result with nothing else than a sunlight and a skylight. Tweak them one by one and then together. Move that sun around and see which position fits your scene better keeping in mind the time of day.
You could add a projection texture to your sunlight this can have a simple b&w or colour image of treetops or whatever. This will break up the light so it wont hit everything with the same strength.
If it looks ok try some renders with bounces (indirect illumination menu) that will get rid of the black areas you will propably need to decrease the intensity of your sun/sky at this point.
Here are some ideas hopefully your endresult will look better than my crappy paintover lol :poly122:
/cropped your pic to get rid of the empty areas/
I hope SHEPEIRO will give you some advice as well :poly142:
A strong key light with mapped shadows of tree's leaves would look great in this scene I reckon.
In Jeremy Birn's Lighting and Rendering book he talks about this...off screen space and how important it is to show things that are happening off the screen without you actually seeing it.
It helps sell the shots a lot and one great way to do this is to use shadows, especially lights using "fake" shadow maps.
I'm sure this is covered in the 3DS Max help file and from ancient memory I think it has a tutorial on this.
But keep in mind that some interesting shadows in this scene will help sell the "jungle" feel a lot more.
http://www.neilblevins.com/cg_education/projector_lights/projector_lights.htm
as to where to put it > select light > advanced effects > projector map
It is not really working to well. The shadows arent small enough and only on the sides. How can I adjust this?
if youare laoding it staight in you may not be able to do this but if you load it in to a material, then instance it from there you should be able to
sorry ive not got round to helping, but you are doin much better anyway,
I also want to add a bit more contrast to the shadows, and in the parameters I am taking the density up and down and it doesnt appear to soften or harden the shadows. Also I am gettign closer to closing this scene out so all crits would be appreciated, things to add, subtract, change etc. Thanks
dont darken your textures if your using light bounces as a darker texture will mean less light is bounced, therefore not fillling your scene.
up the strength of your skylight and decrease the strength of your sun, thing is overblown areas are somewhat correct, only it looks alot better with a touch of bloom and some HDR
Ta Prohm is the name of the famous Cambodian temple with the overgrowth. Do some searches until you get a lighting style you like, then try to get as close to that as you can.
For example...
Shep, what would you recommend for HDR considering I ahve never used it in a render. I used a post bloom effect for the more saturated image.