Lighting and other issues
kksmith6515
Posts: 201
Hello everyone,
I'm having some problems. This image is sort of a rough draft of a larger series that I'm creating. In this image the mother is looking back at the two girls who are reacting to something on one of their cell phones. Now, this image was done through a camera with the headlamp turned off. I also used an HDRI as my sky and background. Here's what I don't like, the lighting on the girls is not right. I tried adding a spotlight pointed up at them which put a little light on their faces but you'll never be able to see them holding their phone.
In addition, I don't know if you will be able to see it in this render but there is a strange black spot on the mother's forehead. I have no clue what could be causing that! finally there is a hole in her shirt but I think that could be fixed but increasing the scale or one of the other morphs.
Thanks! Any and all comments are welcomed!
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Comments
That's a pretty tough challenge - you have brihgt light shinging in, but other areas have very little light. You may need to tweak the gamma setting (and perhaps others) in Render Settings, or use the Canvasses feature (Advanced tab of Render Settings) to render out an .exr beauty pass that can be tone-mapped differently in an image editor.
As for the hair, is the sceen moved away from the origin? That can cause issues.
I simply choose a different HDRI image as my background and got rid of one of the spotlights, which did seem to help a little bit.
You could try ligting up the phone screen to make it a bitmore visible.
Sometimes I have hair issues like that too and I just make that section of the hair larger just a bit and it usually goes away and you can never tell the difference.
And quite honestly, I don't think anything is going to look quite right lighting wise for you because the cell phone illumination wouldn't really make an impact on someone's face in broad daylight. If you made the environment nighttime, then they'd be illuminated, but I think that's what might be feeling off to you.
Yeah, I think you're simply dealing with real world lighting of the scene. You could put a light under the children's faces to make them more visible but it won't look right either.
Well actually, I was looking back at a thread I started about a month ago and the answer might be in a posting someone made there. Here's a link to that discussion: https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/288966/sky-dome-realistic-renders#latest
The basic problem, I believe stems from the whole issue of using an HDRI background image to light your scene (which is what I did here) verses using a different type of skydome. A person in the other thread suggested https://www.daz3d.com/iray-worlds-skydome which is currently on sale. I figure for 8 bucks, I'm willing to gamble if it will provide better results.
The thing about this image is basically I just want the lighting to be more balanced. I like the way the light shines across the mother's face but the two girls in the back are WAY too dark and I have to find a good solution because the next image in this series is going to show them getting out of the vehicle. I'm going to be using 22 Parker Road and so the scene is going to require a lot of indoor and out door shots. Also, it's going to begin during daylight but as the scene progresses it will change to nighttime. Thanks for all the suggestions!!
For virtually all of my iray renders I use mesh lights to light the scene. For outdoor scenes I use a n hdri background to provide "sunlight" but that is mostly to get shadows that low somewhat natural. The mesh lights do the actual of the subjects.
Phones give off a lot of light; you would both add light and believability by having the phone assist with the illumination.
Forgive me for sounding completely ignorant but what are mesh lights anyway?
Mesh lights are models set to emit light via their material settings/shader.
Probably the most important detail is since the entire surface emits light it illuminates a scene far better than a Daz light without the downsides of a high intensity light.
You can give local lights in Iray a shape, includign disc, plane, and sphere.
You can but it seems to have no impact on how the light works ime.
It should, it works for me - try some extreme values.
Or even mild values - two cylinders, 1m by .1m, on a 2m plane. Two default spot lights, the one on the right with its shape set to disc (using the default 10 cm height and width).
Keep the HRDI you have now & use something like the Boss Light Pro kit to light the girls in the back seat. Or more realistically you can make an emissive light with a 1 length x 64 sided cylider and put it over the girls like a car dome light in the back seat.
Then try both your current framing, which I like better & then try to frame the rearview mirror with both the mother's eyes and the girls in it (although I think that won't be possible as there is not enough room but it's worth a try).
I think your right. I've actually heard this from a number of different people and after trying different things and purchasing Iray Worlds SkyDome, I've come to the conclusion that ghost lights or emissive's are the only real answer. I've had Iray Ghost Light Kit on my wish list for quite some time, now might be a good time to purchase it with all the discounts. It also looks pretty easy to use and again that's important because I am no expert in any of this! Thanks again for all the wonderful feedback and I'll keep you posted!
You can also use IES Profiles on lights to give real world light distribution. They work on all lights, except the spotlight, and primitives made Emissive.
http://www.cgarena.com/freestuff/tutorials/max/ieslights/
Well, now due to the Ghost Light Kit 2, I finally figured out a way to make this image look better. There is still a long way to go! The poses aren't right and the phone still needs to be added but it's getting there.