Stuck with specific lighting - Help! I need some body. Help! just any....

Playdo

I’m in need of a specific render look and it’s been evading me. How do I setup lights and settings to achieve dark shadows close to the object that blend to soft shadows that quickly blend to a pure white floor? Just like shown in my attachments, especially the first one.
I’m using 3DS Max + Mental Ray.

ZacD

Try to copy this in Max

DarthNater

Increase your shadow densities if it looks too thin. I usually jack my omni's densities up to 2

Playdo

Have either of you got the same results as the ones I showed? If so could you post an image and talk me through the set up? Zac I wasn't getting nice results that way.

ZacD

Something like that?^

Tactical Bagpipe

ZacD has the right idea. Look at some lighting setups for product photography and you'll see that they are all usually variations of the same theme of a white backdrop and a couple of large area lights.

I did this up in modo real quick. The idea is the same in MAX/MR. A couple of large area lights to cast soft shadow, balanced with some global illumination. You will need to play around with the intensities of the global illumination and the area lights to get a good balance.

Playdo

Close Zac but I need much softer transitions

Playdo

I'll play around with that TB. I've been trying to get it with a 2 light set up using final gather but not GI. Are those area lights similar to Max's Free Direct lights? MR's area lights emit light from a point source and not a rectangular source. I take it they're at default setting ie. no attenuation?

Tactical Bagpipe

I really have no idea what the equivalents would be in Max and MR terminology.
They are just simple area lights with default values other than the different intensities, which were 3.0 W/srm2 and 2.0 W/srm2. The GI is set to 0.75 W/srm2.
It probably doesn't mean much to you, but conveys the balance of the different elements.

Playdo

OK. Thanks TB. GI isn't making a difference. I've been trying to get this for longer than I want to admit. If anyone knows how to set this up in Mental Ray please let me know how. I need the same results as the images I posted.

ZacD

For FG to work you need materials with their ambient color turned up, for gi you have to make sure lights are emitting photons.

bbob

What you need to use is photometric lights with a big light shape for blurred shadows, preferrably a circle. Just crank up the radius untill you are satisfied.

Ark

You need to use 'area' lights to get those kinda shadows. You can try to fake them using multiple spot lights just offset a little from each other.
You coulld also use luminous white cards and use FG to illuminate the scene, but this can cause alot of extra noise in your renders.

Those shots look like you'll need a 'studio' setup to get looking anything close to whats pictured. Just invert then polys of a standard cube and bevel all the edges and place your objects inside the scene.

Try using 1 large area light and your main key light, then use some spots for fill lights to remove the shade from the non-illuminated areas.

You'll probably need to crank the samples up fairly high on the area light to get rid of the noise in the shadows.

MattW

With MR to achieve that look rectangular or disc photometric lights are your friend. Like Tactile Bagpipe has shown, look into 3 point lighting. You're also going to have to mess with your exposure highlights, contrast and midtones to make sure it isn't low contrast or washed out.

This is a single photometric light set to rectangle and a skylight to fill in a bit. You're probably going to want to go with a more traditional set up to get it as illuminated as you'd like but the shadow type you're looking for is demonstrated here.

Playdo

Great. I'll play around with all these suggestions and see how they go.

Mark Dygert

Playdo wrote: »

I’m in need of a specific render look and it’s been evading me. How do I setup lights and settings to achieve dark shadows close to the object that blend to soft shadows that quickly blend to a pure white floor? Just like shown in my attachments, especially the first one.
I’m using 3DS Max + Mental Ray.

You can get the faded shadow over distance with Scanline and lights set to "Area" shadows. It's a shadow type specifically created for this effect.

http://www.kxcad.net/autodesk/3ds_max/Autodesk_3ds_Max_9_Reference/area_shadows_rollout.html