Any tricks for lighting a character in a tightly enclosed space?

mavante

Here's the problem I keep failing to overcome: I have a character based on Gen8 male sitting inside an enclosed vehicle (Calypso MSBN, to be exact), and it is in the underwater environment of Lagoon Living. I need the charachter to be waving out a side window of Calypso at someone inside the Lagoon Living underwater lounge.

So far, I am having the devil of a time trying to light his face and waving hand as though he were lit by interior lights of the Calypso. If I put any kind of light (point, mesh, Ghost Light, whatever) close enough to him to have the light source inside the vehicle, at the side closest to his face, it blows his face out hideously. I have tried various intensity settings, but I can't seem to overcome the "blow-out" phenomenon.

The inherent "lighting" of the underwater environment is so dim that he is little more than a silhouette without some way to light up his face and hands from that side. Lighting up that whole side of the vehicle looks pretty silly, because there is no sensible source for any such light underwater. I want him to look as though there are some interior small lights in the vehicle lighting him warmly against the cold blues of the underwater environment, for medium shots and a close-up. But to light him well, they have to be on the inside of the side of the Calypso.

I'm hoping that some of you who are far more experienced than I am can point me to some tricks, or some lighting products, that might make this possible. Thanks.

Richard Haseltine

Check the Burn Highlights option in Rende Settings - it may be that causing the face to blow out. You could also adjust the gamma value. Both are in the Tone Mapping section.

Silver Dolphin

I would have a colored spot light to simulate instumentation shining on subjects face so you can see them. Just look at the tricks cinematrographers use in underwater movie scenes to show main characters's face.

mavante

Richard Haseltine said:

Check the Burn Highlights option in Rende Settings - it may be that causing the face to blow out.

Check it for what, and do what with it?

Richard Haseltine said:

You could also adjust the gamma value. Both are in the Tone Mapping section.

Adjust it how?

mavante

Silver Dolphin said:

I would have a colored spot light to simulate instumentation shining on subjects face so you can see them. Just look at the tricks cinematrographers use in underwater movie scenes to show main characters's face.

Thanks. I tried that originally, mainly because it seems to be what was done for the main promo shot on Calypso packaging. The problem, as I tried to describe up front, is that the character is turned to the side, looking straight out the side window (driver's right side), with his left hand up next to his face (on the instrument panel side of his face), waving. Even if I move the hand somewhat so it doesn't cast shadows on his face, the opposite side of the character's face is still very dark. Some combination of such a light, plus some other kind of light toward the back of the vehicle passenger compartment may work, but so far I haven't found any working combination.

Connatic

There is a feature within iRay allowing a camera to have a clipping plane, behind which everything becomes invisible. If you use this you could use an hdri to light the interior, which allows a wide range of adjustment. I often use multi-pass renders and composite.

Richard Haseltine

mavante said:

Richard Haseltine said:

Check the Burn Highlights option in Rende Settings - it may be that causing the face to blow out.

Check it for what, and do what with it?

Check it's current value and see if adjusting it helps - the default is 0.25, try halving that

mavante said:

Richard Haseltine said:

You could also adjust the gamma value. Both are in the Tone Mapping section.

Adjust it how?

As you would in an image editor - the advantage of doing it in DS is that you don't throw away any of the limited range of values in the saved image (assuming you aren't using Canvasses to create an .exr file anyway). I am not sure how useful a simple gamma adjustment will be, you want to stretch the upper range of values without further compressing the darker values, so it really needs a Curves adjustment.

JonnyRay

This is the sort of thing where I tend to use KindredArt's Ghost Light Kit to add some low-level lighting that can be controlled easier and doesn't provide a lot of sharp shadows. Tehcnically it's an implementation of Iray mesh lights, it's just KA provided so many time saving features that I rarely build a mesh light myself.

nonesuch00

I've noticed if Spectral Rendering in the IRay Rendering settings it decreases the brightness of the lights in the scene by an large amount.

cm152335

i suggest to not use spot lights but "EMSSIVE PANEL"

create a primitive flat panel and apply emmisive shader on it (find on default Daz shaders)

i had used the trick in past scene placing the panel inside the car 
once you get the right luminance, make the panel "invisible" ((cutout opacity  0.000001)

 

 

mavante

Connatic said:

There is a feature within iRay allowing a camera to have a clipping plane, behind which everything becomes invisible. If you use this you could use an hdri to light the interior, which allows a wide range of adjustment. I often use multi-pass renders and composite.

Thanks, Connatic. If I understand you correctly (not to be taken for granted, but ...), I don't think that could work for my particular setup. The camera is zooming in the animation, and the character is moving, viewed through a relatively small window. I've never worked with clipping planes, and would have to study it, but because of the camera motion it seems to me this would require a traveling matte, and the thought of all that would entail gives me shudders, at least for compositing in FCP.

If a clipping plane can accomplish it, I have no idea how. If all else fails, I'll try to bone up on it.

mavante

Richard Haseltine said:

mavante said:

Richard Haseltine said:

Check the Burn Highlights option in Rende Settings - it may be that causing the face to blow out.

Check it for what, and do what with it?

Check it's current value and see if adjusting it helps - the default is 0.25, try halving that

Richard Haseltine said:

mavante said:

Richard Haseltine said:

You could also adjust the gamma value. Both are in the Tone Mapping section.

Adjust it how?

As you would in an image editor - the advantage of doing it in DS is that you don't throw away any of the limited range of values in the saved image (assuming you aren't using Canvasses to create an .exr file anyway). I am not sure how useful a simple gamma adjustment will be, you want to stretch the upper range of values without further compressing the darker values, so it really needs a Curves adjustment.

 

Thank you, Richard.

P.S. I somehow got the quoting on this FUBAR, but my "Thank you" is for your whole post and suggestions.

mavante

nonesuch00 said:

I've noticed if Spectral Rendering in the IRay Rendering settings it decreases the brightness of the lights in the scene by an large amount.

Well, that's a handy tip, nonesuch00. I will definitely look into that.

mavante

cm152335 said:

i suggest to not use spot lights but "EMSSIVE PANEL"

create a primitive flat panel and apply emmisive shader on it (find on default Daz shaders)

i had used the trick in past scene placing the panel inside the car 
once you get the right luminance, make the panel "invisible" ((cutout opacity  0.000001)
 

Very interesting lighting and renders you got. That's very much along the lines of what I'm trying to accomplish—but I'm not sure how your suggested approach differs from the commercial Ghost Lights I've already tried with unhappy results, as I mentioned in my original post. You sure made it work the way you did it. I guess I'm going to just have to keep struggling and fiddling with settings. Right now I'm setting the scene up to try some neon lights. The frustrating part is that every twitch and fiddle requires so long to see the results in Iray (on my machine).

Fishtales

Is it something like the attached image you want?

All I did was create a Point Light and place it above right and slightly to the rear and made the control panel, or screen as it is in the surface tab, emissive.

mavante

Fishtales said:

Is it something like the attached image you want?

All I did was create a Point Light and place it above right and slightly to the rear and made the control panel, or screen as it is in the surface tab, emissive.

Yes, it is similar. Nice job. Thanks for taking an interest and sharing your method. I did try at some point (no pun intended) using a Point Light near the character, and then a Linear Point Light, but I never could get either of them to cast enough light to make anything workable. I got fed up fiddling with different settings and growing old waiting to see the (non)results. It is an enduring mystery to me why.

I ended up using a hodgepodge of Ghost Lights, and I made one of them a green color to imitate light from a control panel. The animation is rendering now and I think it is going to be okay. I can't use the close-up camera I wanted to use for part of it because the Ghost Lights are doing the weird thing discussed in a different thread of showing white strips of geometry behind the character's eyelashes. But as the old saying goes: "Fix it in the mix."