Indoor lighting
comixfana
Posts: 268
[Indoor lighting -] That seems to be one of my stumbling blocks, especially with lovely models such as Daciana, Tessa and Felina, indoor renders invariably end up so dark I can't clearly make out their lovely faces...I've been muddling away with various spotlights, which only seem to make things worse...so I might as well ask those who know: indoor lighting for my lovely Latina and African American ladies? I'm trying to make their traits visible!
Case in point, in this render, Miss Réjeanne (Tessa) was wrongfully arrested for moonshining. Special Agents Sullivan (Michael) , Baxter (Zander) and Montoya (Daciana) are getting her version of the facts. I'm trying to make Réjeanne (Tessa's) face visible
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Comments
what I recommend is
1) a good hdri that achieves the lighting you like without the enclosed room
2) an iray plane parented to your camera (or even better the wonderful iray plane camera that PaperTiger has)
and
3) a small highlight to flash the eyes of your character.
iray planes cut a virtual hole in your scene letting light in from behind the camera so you never see the hole. This video shows what an iray plane does: https://youtu.be/qmbXk0s-LE4 and you can search deviantart or sharecg for an iray interior camera. PaperTiger includes one in some of the Renderosity products.
i did a quick render of this sci-fi brig which is a completely enclosed box so it is totally black inside except for some glowing elements. I added a parented light to give the character an eye glint, loadeda favorite HDRi as well as the X-ray iray plane camera. I didn't complete the render since there are some slow elements such as the camera is looking through two layers of "glass", there is depth of field, etc... thus it is grainy but not bad for 2 minutes of rendring time.
photographers have the same problem & I'm not really got a lighting myself but add multiple spotlight/point/linear point lights to the area where the 4 people are are arrange them so they emphasize the jailed lady. Look up own to set up 3 point lighting via a DAZ Studio tutorial on 3 point lighting via a search engine.
I was under the impression this person is using 3Delight.
When a photographer does a shoot they use BIG reflectors to get the effect you want. So, create a person-sized primitive plane and make it emmissive. You can move the plane around just like you see in Hollywood movie making.
You don't need emissive planes to get soft shadows in Iray. The Iray spotlights have Geometry parameters that allow the user to emulate real world photographic softboxes. The Iray spots also render faster than all but the simplest planes. Using emissives just to get soft shadows is an "old" 3DL relasted practice and not needed with Iray spots.
If you want realistic indoor lights you need to emulate the real world with multiple light sources. This scene has dozen of light sources working together to generate realism. There is a HDRI outside the interior to light the outside beyond the window glass. The interior lights come from the light fixture just like in real rooms.
All true. The condo is nicely lit. I find that things usually look like real lighting if you put light fixtures where you'd normally find them in a given space. Likewise, in an outdoor scene, you can put a tree between your sun, and the subject if you want that kind of light, regardless of whether it's an HDRI sun or a spotlight. Just about anything looks better than relying primarily on big, flat emissive ghost planes in narrative scenes that are supposed to portray real life situations. Studio lights are fine in studios and for portraits. They look unnatural elsewhere, because they are. That's not to say that you can't cheat a little and fill in shadows a bit, just that it should be a last resort sort of thing.
For instance, in the image in the OP, there should be multiple overhead flourescent lights in the hallway and one inside the cell, which would also function as a kind of rim light for the hair. You can use simple planes for that, but they should have the approximate dimensions of real life fixtures.
Finally, there's post work. With 32-bit renders (canvases) you have a lot more options than with a regular PNG or JPG render, since you can almost always recover some detail from shadows or areas that would be blown out in an 8-bit render.
As mentioned, it's not clear what render engine you use, but it sholdn't really matter. Why not simply make the light fixtures emissive instead of fiddling with spotlights and stuff?
Old 3DL render I found, only lights are the included fixtures.
This! A thousand times this. I'll add photographers lights if I need to but more and more I look for quality sets where the creator has actually made the light fixtures emissives that actually work properly in iRay.
This is why I wish buildings came with a studio mode or houses came as a collection of studio rooms
Okay guys, checking in after a night shift. Yes, I'm rendering in iRay, I find the lights that come with the interiors 4 The Jail not to be very bright...unless I remove the roof for external light, at best I get this (Tessa's traits still aren't very clear)
Make the lights brighter. Do you have the headlamp on here? The light is very flat and uninteresting, in addition to being insufficiently bright.
I've been muddling my way trying to do exactly this, you gotta keep in mind I'm by no means an expert...I enabled the photometric mode on the lights and increased the lumens to 14 000...still not bright enough, especially if I want a ceiling on there. Where would I find the headlight?
Generally you don't want the headlamp on. It's fine for setting up a scene, but not for renders. The headlamp for perspective view is in Render Settings. The headlamp for the camera is in Camera settings.
Also: don't be afraid to turn up the lights. It's free.
Thanks, I'm trying a test render with the lights bumped up to 500 000 lumens, I'll check and see whether or not the perspective view and for the camera are on, now that I know where to look :)
500k is way too high.
How many lights are in the scene? First is the scene natively iRay? It looks old enough to be 3dl. You might want to manually apply the uber shader and then start working on the lights then.
Ghost lights are amazing for indoor sets...
https://www.daz3d.com/iray-ghost-light-kit
https://www.daz3d.com/iray-ghost-light-kit-2
https://www.daz3d.com/iray-ghost-light-kit-3
I know Maclean has updated some of his older sets to iray, but the jail interior doesn't list it as being updated for that yet. Unless the product page just isn't up to date, it's likely a 3DL set so the lights won't be set up to illuminate yet, possibly even if you apply the default iray shader to them. That may be why it looks like it's the headlight on the camera illuminating everything.
If you have added some spotlights, or the lights that came with the set converted to iray spotlights, part of the problem for not seeing enough illumination may be because the default render exposure is set for outdoor, sunny locations. Go to render settings, go to tone mapping, and adjust the Exposure value to something lower, maybe try around 11 to start. Shutter speed should automatically adjust when you change the exposure value.
You may still need to work on adding lighting, but setting up the render for lower light situations should make a big difference.
I shall try :)
I have to disagree. I find that simply placing lights where they would realistically be is not enough with iray indoor renders. It's a starting point but it doesn't end there.
I think indoor renders are more like film sets. An indoor film set is never just lit by normal lamps, the way you might light an actual living room. There are additional lights and reflectors off-panel and all kinds of tricks to make it all look good.
Anyway, I would start by placing an indoor HDRI that roughly matches the mood you're going for. How about this one: https://hdrihaven.com/hdri/?c=indoor&h=empty_warehouse_01
Or if you're going for somthing more moody and stylized, the blue one from this set might look good: https://gumroad.com/l/DXEPj
Make all off-panel walls invisible, perhaps by using iray section planes. See how it looks and place more lights as needed.
You'll probably want some light sources from above since that's where the light realistically would come from. Some simple emissive planes will do that.
I usually place a warm point light in front of each character's face for emphasis.
Good luck!
I'm suprised no one has mention Tone Mapping. The default tone mapping setting on the camera are great for bright sun outdoors but absolute crap for any indoor scene. I would recommend upping the ISO to 400 as a start, then going from there. This is a good link for figuring out what the settings in the camera do.
Well, I'm experimenting with the exposure value as suggested by AlmightyQUEST, I'll definitely give the ISO a try
Okay thus far, the ISO 400 solution seems to give the best results
Took advantage of Grab a deal, got the Z Questioning Room bundle at a ridiculously low price as part of the deal...redid the above render from scratch. The lesson here? From now on, make sure the sets I purchase are iray compatible ;) (other lessons learned include making sure the poses, figures, hair etc. are Genesis 8, but I digress) Here's the new and improved render: