What gives us more realism? Warm or cold lighting?
usuarior222
Posts: 0
in New Users
I have tried different options. And I've gotten more realism with cool lighting.
I mean, the lights with the same location with 10,000.00 k Kelvin and colors lightblue o lightviolet are more realistic than 6,400 k Kelvin and colors like lightorange or lightyellow.
When I use warm colors the characters looks like cartoon.
Always I use only scene lights, because the sun or dome lights cause similar effect.
Any explanation or recommendation?
Thanks!
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Take this with a grain of salt as I am hardly an expert on this.
I don't believe there is a a "correct" answer to this question. There are so many other variables other than light temperature which will affect this.
With Studio, first and foremost will be the skin texture you are using. There is a wide varience in how they are set up and how realistic they look to begin with.
To my eye, a darker skin tone benefits more from warmer lights, where a lighter skin benefits from cooler light. As with most aesthetic choices this is dependant upon the observer.
One thing which caught my eye in your question was that you are changing the light color along with the temperature. Unless you are going for a particular effect I don't think this is necessary.
I had a character loaded in that I was working on so I decided to try it out. The skin is too shiny and some of the hair choices are questionable so ignore those.
Everything in the following attached renders is set the same except for the temperature. All the lights are set to white.
From left to right - 2000K, 4000K, 6500K, 8500K and 10000K.
The differences at the cooler end are more subtle than the warmer end. I believe 6500K is considered a more neutral temperature.
As pointed out, there are way more variables than just lighting tone. Ideally I believe it depends more on how you have your surfaces set up more than the lighting. I have been doing thia for years and still don't have a magic setting.
You are right. There is no unique answer to the topic.
The analysis and the examples are very interesting.
I will keep trying different options.
For more realism. Do you always use spot light? (with diffuse)
Is it better if the lighting is far and with more intensity or close and less intense?
Thank you very much for the help!
If you don't like supplying your own lighting, then why not use HDRI environmental lighting instead? They have some very convincing natural lighting schemes right out of the box.
Have you ever noticed there are lightbulbs with warm light as well as cold light ones on sale in store. Think about it, why would that be?
What colr lighting used is often about the mood you are trying to convey.
light temperature doesn't equate to realism. It's used for mood setting in an image. warm lighting invoke calmness to the viewer, while colder lighting tension. Colder lighting do give you a better contrast on skin (warm color) so you may perceive that as 'realism'.
You can obtain realism with both tones. It matters on what direction the light source is coming from and the mood you want to set for the scene. You can get very good results with both warm and cold. Neither one is a half to. Some of my best lights utilized both warm and cold. Cold for the main light source and warm for definition and shading. Along with the lights, you also need the proper render settings. To an extent they both need to be set properly or you won't obtain what you want. Factors to think about: lighting, render settings, camera, environment/back drops, and textures (very important). You can have the best lighting and render settings and it the textures are pixillated at the distance your trying to render at, no amount of realism is going to matter, because its always going to look artificial. The problem with making a pack is trying to figure out how the buyer is going to render your product. The texture clarity plays a big roll. It is very hard to get a lossless textures that are good for far out scenes and very close up shots. Whenever there is an HD option for the pack utilize it because the textures were made in such a way that they hold up to both extremes. Portraits are the hardest to get that kind of quality for. If there are any discrepancies in the texture, it will show. My suggestion would be to find light sets that you really like and examine how they have them set up and then build your own once you understand what you need vs what your looking for out of a light.
I really appreciate your comments.
I've been doing tests adding different types of lights.
I have noticed that the distance and intensity of the lights also affects the quality and realism.
Very close and intense light can remove the details of the face.
I am working on achieving softer shadows with rectangles and discs in larger lights.
You might look up color temperatures for various kinds of lights to see what values work for them. I find that if I match the kind of light that should be in an image, fire, moonlight, reading lamp, etc.. with it's correct color temperature I get a better looking image. If you need furter tone control you can manipulate the image with photo filters in Photoshop.