NEED MORE DRAMATIC LIGHTING/SHADOWS

[simbob]

I've got a scene - a restaurant with lots of chairs and tables, pretty regular grid system of 'point' lights in the 3.2m high ceiling above and a few pendant 'point' lights but it's all looking a bit flat and the shadows are very subtle.

How can i get a bit more drama into the scene? Spot lights? Angles of lights? reflectivity of finishes? Less lights? any suggestions gratefully received

[PVA - Admin]

Disabling ambient lighting will help, this can be done within the rendering settings or within a Renderworks Style.

Fewer, more powerful lights tend to create more dramatic contrast between lit areas and shadow, especially with ambient lighting turned off.

If you're going to keep the scene very well lit, then generally the textures need to do the heavy lifting to make the scene really come alive and texture work is a lot of trial and error and in my experience, more time consuming than altering lighting.

Also, its often worth playing with your view angle, making it much lower or higher than a normal human standing height can make a shot more dramatic. Similarly, using perspectives rather than the default orthogonal views can lend some flair to the shot as well.

[zoomer]

And proper material settings.

You have watch the absorbance of the materials

Diffuse color + spec coler + reflexion + transparency has to be less than 100%

Even a clean white wall will hardly reflect more than 80% of the light.

A bright concrete maybe 40 %.

[James Russell]

Low levels of lit fog.

A Renderworks custom background with a 90% black cloud breakup. Even if you're indoors for good measure.

Fall of distances set to realistic.

That's a good start... haha.

J

[Kevin McAllister]

Render using Custom Renderworks and set the Custom Renderworks options to enable Indirect Lighting (its a drop down under Lighting Options). Essential for good renderings.

KM

[zoomer]

Render using Custom Renderworks and set the Custom Renderworks options to enable Indirect Lighting (its a drop down under Lighting Options). Essential for good renderings.

KM

Of course !

Did not think of that as I never render anything without GI.

[simbob]

thanks, will look into these

[AlanW]

Hi, if you want dramatic lighting make sure you indirect lighting is set low otherwise it tends to wash out the shadows. I tend to have real low indirect and sometimes none, use realistic and use HDRwhite as background lighting with 2 bounces. I also tend to render with custom renderworks realistic fast, either interior or exterior. After you do you first render go to your resource browser and adjust the saved lighting style unless you set it all first.

HTH

[Kevin McAllister]

make sure you indirect lighting is set low otherwise it tends to wash out the shadows. I tend to have real low indirect and sometimes none, use realistic and use HDRwhite as background lighting with 2 bounces. I also tend to render with custom renderworks realistic fast, either interior or exterior.

When you say low, I am assuming you don't mean lighting level but rather the quality level for Indirect Lighting (View>Rendering>Custom Renderworks Options and using the dropdown). Be careful because turning the quality up is necessary for resolving lower lighting levels and elements such as sign backlighting (see another thread).

Remember that an HDR background is representative of a light source or series of light sources. When you turn the quality level up and things get washed out, its not so much because of the quality setting, its because your light sources are too bright and more details are getting resolved. The HDRwhite background is like a large, white cyc surrounding your scene and turned on at 100% intensity. I don't think there's a way to turn this down because the lighting levels are inherent in the composition of a HDR image.

I use the HDRwhite background all the time, but I'm creating contrasty greyscale images. If you want something more realistic containing subtleties I would try some of the other options.

After you do you first render go to your resource browser and adjust the saved lighting style unless you set it all first.

HTH

Alan's advice about saving a Custom Renderworks Style is really good. This is a great feature.

Kevin

[PVA - Admin]

Ahh yes, another thing:

As a general rule for learning Renderworks, don't set anything to maximum while you're still learning. You almost never ever need the very highest settings and the difference between High and Very High, while often visually imperceptible, can be hours or even days in extreme cases.

Stick with the Medium or High equivalents for output, but Low and Medium for doing test renders.

Time spent on a high quality render is worth it when the result is going straight to a client or for review certainly. But sitting an extra hour waiting on a render that you're just going to be tweaking a light on and then re-rendering is a waste of your time.

You may even want to create multiple Renderworks styles, some for doing very quick rendering tests and then some presentation Renderworks styles, where the quality is much higher with the intention of setting these higher quality renders to run right before lunch (or in some cases... bed).

Edited June 2, 2015 by JimW