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yes - mjc1016 said it allready...
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A hdri wont work... you are in a closed building.... if you want see more you have two options - director and cameraman - you will need both
your the director: i want see this and this better, evrything is to dark!!!! - add ligth.
BUT...
your also the cameraman: The director want this scene to be the opener and everything must be to see while at the same time we want this strong ligth contrast from the tail and still have dramatic light and the red ligth shine in in background.... i need to find the cameravalue which shows the whole hall in a dark diffuse light and the read light - and tell the light technician how strong he has to set spot and object (mesh) lights for accents and drama...
STOP FX light boy - switch off dramaturgic light for the moment - first we set up ambient and my cameravalues correct - then slowly turn in your effects (monster light, accents, drama).. and so on...
SO: first find the camera value and ambient ligths which shows the whole scene in a diffuse even light (ambient and your red shine in the background.... THEN add ligths for FX and dramaturgy (your actors)... just then listen to the director again (yourself)... and finetune - position of lights and actors, dimming (luminance)....
All you have is a dark room and ligth ( pointligth, spotligths) and diffuse light (mesh ligth, or what i do, use photometric lights and add geometry)...
your in a dark hall - you want strong contrast.... set your camera (rendersettings) to something like:
shutter 60
f-stop 2.8 - 5...
iso 400 -800
then add ambient ligths till everything is to see but still has a dark feeling..
then bring in the actors and finetune their ligths.
do this till the director is happy
I tried removing the ceiling but it didn't look right. I am now experimenting with the Dome Finite Square setting which is a box dome that can be set to fit inside the room with an HDR attached just the same as the normal dome and the lighting from the HDR will then be inside the room.
This is the room now with fill light coming from the HDR inside it, nothing removed. The only light is from the car lights and the HDR. The image is still grainy as it stopped at the 2 hrs. I am now running it, hopefully, until it is fully rendered.
looks way better now - but the car is a little bit to dark to my eyes... good idea using a box dome.
It's a black car
The long render is still going, 4hrs 21mins---50% done--------1518 iterations--CPU only. The HDR is also dark with a small light area at the top and turned 70º, it is the inside of a derelict factory I think. I am only using the light HDR as I didn't need the reflection from the full one.
Just over 5½Hrs. Not much difference from the last one.
Problem with the box dome....if it's set up the way I'm thinking it is...haven't tried/used it so I'm just going on name here. It's probably set up to take the HDRs in a 'cross' format, not lat-long(equirectangular). Which could explain the longer render time with little improvement.
Probably what I would do is to turn the ceiling of the room into an emitter and set it to a fairly low value...just enough to give a bit of 'glow' and then work up from there, especially since it isn't actually in the shot.
@Fishtales
- yes but the beauty of black cars are the reflections - and i definitly see them to less ....
It's a black car
i would use one or two large diffusers diagonal sidewards over the car /roof) - just out of view.... and so that the direct reflections (angle) hit the lens .. without making your scene (pillars) brigther.
Anyone know if you can make a primative iray emissive? I keep trying to apply iray materials to one but it doesn't seem to take.
@MacSavers
Yes - no problem.. maybe you must flip your plane because the light has just one direction...
and use a camera and turn off the headlamp - check also my render settings )here scene only)... that way you are sure that you can see the light.
One of the nice new features in 4.8...the ability to set the primary axis when creating primitives...change the axis, instead of flipping the plane.
@MacSavers
Another easy way is to add geometry to a point or spotlight...
here what happens when you add a disc with 100cm diameter to a pointligth - simulating a golden reflector here...
With this one i would send the light boy up on the latter to lite fishtales black car and create reflections exactly where i want them
@MacSavers
and if you need to HIT a exact spot and get ligth (reflection) exactly where you want it (dramaturgy) - well a spotlight does that
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Add geometry- and you can do the same as with the plane above - BUT the advantage of a spotlight is - we can WATCH trough the light and see exactly the spots target and can finetune the beams angle and control the beams exponent - that's actually a fresnel lens spot... that's the one we used to PAINT reflections on objects and actors in addition to ambient diffuse reflection.
I use a disc with 20cm in the example - because that comes close to a fresnel lens spot...
here a link with some additional infos about fresnel lense and what i am talking about
http://www.seleconlight.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=90:what-is-a-fresnel&catid=59:knowledge-bank&lang=en
I promised to come up with more photolight real world setups this weekend. But i am delayed because i want finish my candlelight examples with a as best as possible low light portrait composition.
... and also the candle flame mesh and camera/render presets will follow for download
I also faced different problems mainly with the shaders and textures of my actor - for a kid portrait - i use brodie and some custom morphs...
One of the main problems i had to fix was his fingernails - they gone black using backlight ((scattered light (he has his fingers around the flame....
the final solution was to remove the texture map which was in the transluscency channel - and switch on "thin walled" - because the fingernails dont have volume.
Working on the lips and theets right now - render time is very long - a final image will not clear up in 4 hours (same as the black car example above)...
However... here a preview on what i'm working right now..... photolight examples will follow as soon as i am happy with my candle light portrait (maybe next year - arrh
I am finding the same issue with sun and sky and spotlights not showing at all. I have switched it to dome only and turned off the image to get the sun and sky options but the spotlight still seems to do nothing. Even with the lumens turned way up. Any suggestion for using other lights? Thanks
OK, it looks like it has to be dome and scene or something to have the spotlights show.
Dome only....environmental lighting (HDR, sun/sky)
Scene only...photometrics/mesh lights, other lights.
Dome and Scen...all of the above.
Interior Renders
All my examples in this thread for photometric lights are for the "scene only" environment mode.
Camera settings would change in bright daylight - and the lights are not strong enough to have a notable effect using a sunlight hdri in a dom.
It helps to think of a dark, closed room (scene only, dosent matter if there are walls or not) while trying to figure out how photometric lights interact with the camera.
It also helps to use the headlamp of the camera while setting up a scene - the headlamp works like a FLASHlight. But it sits not exatly on your camera (offset) using the default values - that means it generates a strong sharp light with hard shadows- those shadows are irritating and the headlamp is to brigth for indoor camera settings (everything clips - goes white)
Thats how i start setting up a indoor scene:
1. Set Environment mode to "scene only"...
2. Set your camera (tonemapping) to something like
shutter 60
F-stop 4
iso 200
3. include a camera - bring the headlamps intensity down to about 0.05 - 0.1 (if you use auto or headlamp on - which HELPS while setting up a scene!)
4. set all values of the headlamps position to zero... that gives you a ambient light - close to zero shadows (and is the most easy way to lite a scene "even" without much shadows.
5. add photometric lights...
Switch of your headlamp for final renders (or use it as a filllight, ambient light.)
Never realized with this render engine that the camera actually plays into the amount of light in a scene. THANKS so much for this insight Andy.
its a shame that this thread kind of peters out.
I had forgotten about it.
Time for some necromancy.