Simple lighting set up?
Ted Berlin
Posts: 106
Hi, I am very new to lighting and want to set up a scene that I can use over again that will produce very soft even lights on portraits thats very simple and basic. Is it better to just buy something with presets or make your own?
I have experimented with it and find it confusing how far the lights are suppose to be from subject, intensity, angles etc....
Suggestions?
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Comments
How do you expect to get more experienced with lighting if you don't experiment?
I don't think one solution is better than the other here, it all depends on context. Personally I'd set something up myself, it will give you a good excuse to learn more about lighting, it allows you to create sceneries which are truly your own and yah.. you can always re-use your work if you want to.
See, the main problem that I see is that most sceneries use lights which best match that one scenery - according to the artist -. Which might not match your ideas.
If you're familiar with real world photography, you've probably seen where photographers use light boxes, which are like a rectangular panel of diffuse light. So if I were you I'd start there. It's quite simple.
In D|S add a plane, size it maybe 1meter/3feet square or whatever. Select the plane, and under the Surfaces tab/Default, go to the Emission section. The Emission Temperature is typically from 3,000 to 6,000, with 3,000 being a yellow-er light, and 6,000 being a bluer/whiter light like sunlight. Then set the Luminance, I use units of kcd/m^2 (which is basically how bright the light is), and play around with the Luminance values. You may have to get up into the 10,000 to 50,000 range or more depending on what you're looking for.
Personally, I've never had the need to buy lighting sets. Easy to do on your own.
By the way, for what it's worth...
I find lighting to be just one more area where people don't comprehend how complex it is, and you can't do what so many want these days and "find an app for that", and be able to push one button and achieve perfection and suddenly be an awesome expert. As with most things in this world, it depends, and it's complex, and if you want to really be good and understand it you have to be willing to take a lot of time and effort to learn it.
So I've found the best way is to actually model the real world. Which means taking photos and trying to match them with your renders. See what the ACTUAL light sources are, and try to model them. And that requires you understand complex terminology and how light works.
And once you have somewhat of a handle on that, you next need to figure out how you want the lights to be in your scene in order to tell a story and convey an emotion. That's a whole 'nother universe of learning.
Thanks for that, I agree with what you said. I am creating primatives and using those for the lights. One question I have, once I get the setup the way I like it do I save it as a scene so I can place other characters in it or a lighting preset? Not sure how to go about it
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBSxVUGR4rGM_cJGfSLJk14huiqbG4h3m
I'd like to make a setup with lights and save it as a scene without anything but all the lights in it. Create a floor spot where to place a character so the lights will be right. Am I getting somewhere? There is a Daz product called BOSS lights that does this for you.
It's up to you, but again I think the best approach is to learn for yourself. I'm a big fan of making default startup scenes with lights, etc. And again, in the real world there's usually not many lights you need to consider. A lot of the illumination of objects is the result of light bouncing off surfaces and inheriting colors and diffusing and so on.
One thing I see people doing a lot is cramming their scenes with so much stuff (lights, objects, etc.) that it becomes too complicated to figure out what's going on. That's why I always stress that people start simple. Figure out what the REAL lights would be in a scene, model one and start with that. If you buy a light set and it's designed to give you everything and have a zillion features, all of that is just complexity. Focus on simple stuff, get the first light right, then focus on the second, and so on.
Oh I totally agree with you!! I will not buy anything to make lights. My question, how do you set up your default template scenes with lights? I have made a simple lights setup with primatives, 2 rim lights in back, one light on top for hair and one main front.
My default scene typically has a front facing and rear facing D|S distant light, mainly so I can see my scene when I'm in Texture Shaded view, and I typically turn those off during renders. I also have one flat panel light, as well as one HDR Environment light.
As an aside, I also set up standard Groups to categorize my scene components. Lights, Characters, Building, Furnishings, etc. I also use VWD a lot to do cloth sims on OBJ's I make in Blender for clothing, so I put the base meshes in a ClothingMeshes group so I can pull them out and use them in a cloth sim.
But usually I don't use interiors (ie, building/room objects with walls and ceilings) since they slow things down immensely, so I prefer minimalist scenes with maybe only a solid color background and a few props that tell the viewer immediately what the location is. Since that means there won't be much bounce light lighting things up, often I use the single panel light as the main light source. Or I add a hand-modelled spot light object with an emissive bulb if it's appropriate.
But again it depends on the mood, etc., that I want to give the scene. So for example, let's say it's a bar scene or something. Just a black background with maybe a single neon beer light on the wall, so immediately the viewer knows where it is. And maybe a few handmade spotlights. Or outdoors just an HDR for general lighting, and maybe a D|S sunlight.
Less is more.
What is HDR? Same as HDRI? So can you see the difference between a convential setup with lights versus using HDRI? I also want my portraits with a transparent background, so using the dome will not work, correct?
I think the correct term is HDRi (High Dynamic Range Image)
HDRi is an image map with light information that you project inside a dome. This dome provide IBL (Image based Lighting) via that HDRi map.
In DS case you still can get a transparent background and while using the dome. You just need to turn draw dome off in your render setting.
Yeah, the nice thing about having an HDRI is that if you are working with a minimal scene like I described (no walls or enclosed spaces that cause crazy slow rendering) there isn't bounce lighting off the walls & floors. But if you choose a good HDR you can use it to simulate bounce light, and not have to see the HDR image in the scene background. So you can get fast response and fast renders and good lighting, and all you have to do is choose a few props carefully that substitute for a boatload of (unnecessary, IMO) scene objects that just clutter everything and take focus off the main character(s) and the important stuff.
If you're doing portrait, I would not stress so much on the "HDRi". In portraits, you only use the environmental lights as ambient lights. You should tweak your artificial lighting (parametric lights and or mesh lights). Imagine you're a Studio photographer. Many indoor studio photographer don't or seldom use environmental lighting for their portraits. There are, however, exceptions. Outdoor portrait photography take advantage of environmantal lighting. Just as difficult it is to control environmental lighting in real life, it is not as easier to do it in DS. But at least you can bring the environment into DS and not the other way around.
So I have a basic "emmisive" lighting setup, scene only, never a headlamp, use primatives as light sources and mainly do portraits. I like to use the png final transparent render and place the subject on other backgrounds in PS. I don't see a need for HDRI unless I am missing something.
It's alright to use mesh lights (emmisive) for portraits, but you don't really have the flexitilities of parametric lights.
First, emmisive lights aren't truly lights in terms of DS as such, they're being ignored as lights so it doesn't trigger the headlamps to turn off automatically. Your headlamps (at default) turns off as soon as a paramettic light is introduced to your scene.
Second, It's harder to control your shadows, hotspot or falloff with mesh lights, With a parametric spot light you can adjust all that. A spot light can even emulate a mashlight, but a mesh light can't emulate a spotlight.
For indoor portraits, a 3 point spot light set is your best default setup..... A spotlight has both point and mesh light properties, hence you can control your shadow harshness/softhess, and you can adust the hotspot of your lighting (focused or scattered) In addition, each spot light has it's own camera, so you can use the spot light cameras to aim your lighting target.
Those properties give you a good range of the type of portraits you want to render. From soft beauty shots to dramatic film noir shots.
There is nothing wrong with that approach. I used to do my renders that way 10 yrs ago when Poser and DS wasn't powerful enough to get decent renders. Today, DS has come a long way. If the lighting/materials/poses/environment is setup up right, you seldom need to much post processing work. Taking you zero background render and slab a background on it is not as easy as you think. It is a lot harder to match the background lighting to your render. Spend a little more time to setup your scene and you don't have to do the work afterward.
Good advice, didnt know this. So replace the emmisive primatives with spotlights to achieve better results?
No, it may or may not give you better results, it just gives you more tools/options. For better results, it all depends on your input. I hate to disappoint you, It is not a "make art" button.
As ebergerly stated, simple is better...and I agree.
First, thanks for creating tutorials
Question: The sound I heard was distorted. Is that only on my side or do other had this experience as well?
I ever use a digital free voice, probably is the issue, she is not perfect but speaks better english than me
(I'm hispanic)
So what I understand, its fine to mix HDRI "dome" and scene parametric lights
Not only is it fine, but for seasoned artists, it is a prerequisite.
Your model galleries look great JVRenderer, thanks for your replies