Lighting Change

[Amelia S 3]

I'm rendering an interior view. When I first rendered it, there were nice shadows cast through the windows from my heliodon. Later I went in and introduced a few lights to the scene.

I lost the beautiful shadows, and when I delete the lights, the shadows are there but very subtle. I think I remember reading something about renderworks detecting light sources and adjusting to them, but cannot find the thread.

Any ideas how I can revert to the original lighting? I haven't changed the heliodon. The background is a physical sky (also not changed).

[PVA - Jim 2,314]

Perhaps Ambient Lighting turned back on? It will sometimes wash out renderings and make shadows less obvious, it can be changed in either the Renderworks Style, or under View > Set Lighting Options if you arent using a style.

[Amelia S 3]

You're right, Jim! Thanks.

So here's the follow-up:

Is there a way to make the room brighter without upping the ambient lighting? There are 4 windows and a pair of french doors, so I know this room would get pretty bright in real life with just the sun.

[PVA - Jim 2,314]

Two main ways:

1) Probably the easiest, select the Heliodon and up its "Sun Brightness" value. You can set it higher than 100%. This is basically a multiplier on the default light that the Heliodon emits, generally you don't want to crank it to something like 500% but often 150 or 200 is useful.

2) If you create a viewport with a Renderworks Camera, you can increase the cameras Exposure setting to artificially increase the amount of light that appears in the final rendering.

[PVA - Jim 2,314]

You could also increase the number of indirect lighting bounces, but while this might look good it is extremely expensive render-time wise and generally the above two options I mentioned will work better without affecting render speed dramatically.

[Amelia S 3]

Great! I got the shadows back and they look good. My white walls (where in shadow) are a bit blue, so my first instinct is to try to change the emitter temperature?

[PVA - Jim 2,314]

Yep!

[Jonathan Pickup 212]

if shadow areas are blue, look at the background rendering colour

[Amelia S 3]

Thanks Jonathan! I have a physical sky background that I don't want to change, but changing the Environment Reflections seemed to do the trick!

[Amelia S 3]

Thanks Jonathan! I have a physical sky background that I don't want to change, but changing the Environment Reflections seemed to do the trick!

[zoomer 687]

I always like the difference between bluish sky color and warner sunlight.

It gives a lot of depth.

It is just that VW and C4D look quiet yellowish by default.

I finally realized the right direction to set color temperature in Render Settings.

Decreasing temperature to lower values will make look the rendering colder

or more blueish (or more natural).

I always went to 6500 K daylight, which makes everything worse of course.

So in your case, too cold colors, you can increase the color temperature.