lighting concept for bedroom

ps2000

until now I used premade rooms for my scenes which had a lighting solution included so that I only had to add a three point lighting system to get a better light in some cases/scenes when necessary.

Now I built a custom bedroom with a room building kit. Consequently there are no premade lights.

I would appreciate some hints how to get a good lighting solution. 

It's a typical bedroom that has one big window but the dome lighting of the hdri  is far too weak.

What and how many lights would you use, what settings for the lights?

Example renderings of your lighting solutions of custom rooms you created would be very appreciated. 

Thanks

evacyn

Personally, I almost exclusively use HDRIs with an X-Ray Camera (one that has Iray Section Planes parented to it) and then add some ghost lights where I need them. I still use the three point lighting system for some rare renders, but there are HDRIs that mimic the lighting for almost any room, location, environment, etc. and they're much easier to set up.

ps2000

Can you name some of those hdris?

Do you render without roof? I have the problem that the rooms are always too dark if I only use a sunny hdri. And if I increase the brightness by changing the tone-mapping I get undesired reflections of the hdri for example on the floor.

ps2000

Ok, just read about xray cameras. Didn't know something like this existed. Are tere still problems with reflections if I use a xray camera?

Thanks.

Thyranq

Whenever I've set up a room from scratch I've always tried to light it with actual lights, like lamps, or ceiling lights. Depending on what I use and whether or not it's in frame, I'll either use an emissive surface with some bloom for the bulb, or set up a point light or two (or however many I need) off camera. 

Honestly a lot of the time you can set the wall behind the camera to be a faintly emissive surface and use that as a fill light. It's big so it's soft lighting. If I'm shooting from a corner and my camera sees all the walls, I'd set up a primitive plane or two to sit in the spots of the wall that the camera doesn't see, and use those as fill lights.

Depends on the scene, there's no one way that's going to work all the time. If the ceiling isn't visible in the image you could hide that and just let the HDRI light it. If it's just a window with light coming through it, you can up the intensity of the HDRI until it mostly does the trick, then add a point light (or turn a wall into an emissive) to add some fill if needed.

Hylas

My more recent way to light indoor scenes (and I think I'm going to stick with this for a while, because it's working quite well):

- Place a few point lights in your room, evenly distributed and all at about 250m height.
Make them bright enough to light the room nice and even.

- Cut away off-panel walls with IRAY section planes (or use an "X-Ray Camera").

- Place a low-res, low-contrast indoor HDRI that more or less matches the mood of the room.
Don't set the intensity too high; the HDRI is mostly here to provide reflections (since the actual walls are cut off) and some ambient light

- Add some additional point lights to illuminate your characters.

- For the view out of the window, place a primitive plane (or a cyclorama if necessary). Drop a flat picture of a landscape into the emissive slot.

richardandtracy

Another way is to change the tone mapping a bit, and go for a higher ISO film setting, say 800 from the standard 100. If you have a window in shot there's a risk of burnout, so can't be used for any image with a window in shot.

Regards,

Richard.

Fishtales

In this image I used the ceiling and made it Emissive Temperature 4500; Lumen at 3.0 at cd/cm^2; set shutter speed at 60, the rest default; an HDRI for outside the window again default settings except I turned the dome to get a better view, there is also a desk lamp top left of the image shining on the desk with the bulb set to Emissive Temperature 7500; Lumen at 15.0 at cd/cm^2 . The interior is well lit and the window isn't blown out.

Click on image for full size.