Lights

[sadekhnd]

I was wondering something. I play a lot porn games made in DAZ studio and renpy (F95.com). Sometimes the lights in a room are stunning and sometimes not. Probably it has something to do with PC and artist skill. I want to make lights in my rooms like in these games.

I know how things work in hook but my question is: How you guys make lighting in your rooms?

How you play with shadows, omni, spot lights, ambient and other options?

[HDiddy]

I personally suck at lighting, but I know enough to make sure  my stuff doesn't look like complete crap. For Shadows I tend to limit the lights creating shadows to 1 or 2 lights.  I find sometimes with a bunch of lighting producing shadows things start to get weird.  From there All the other lighting I use is to fill the scene.  I mainly use Spotlights and don't mess with omni's as much.

Driver posted a good real life guide on lighting setups and the effect they have.  You can probably use that as a starting point for where to position light sources.  In the end it is all trial and error

[IIIlll]

i think the easiest thing u can play arround with, and get a huge difference, is light source color. In reality u can almost never get pure white (255,255,255) light, so i think it makes a huge difference to ur scene if u get the light colors right.

these are some real nice light color settings i found some time ago, which u can use to simulate different kinds of light sources and time of day for the sun

http://planetpixelemporium.com/tutorialpages/light.html

[Sexvision]

Its actualy not only the spotlights that light a scene. Spotlights are mostly used for highlights and shadows. 

Most of the lights will come of these two ways.

 

The easy way.

Use Cubemaps to set the overall light of your scene and use spotlights to create shadows. The Cubemap function will use the light of the cubemap image to color and light your scene.

Add spotlights to create shadows. try to avoid omni lights for fps. 1 omni is the same as 7 or 8 spotlights.

You can select a cubemap here:

You can change how strong it is with ambient here:

For a Cubemap do not go above intensity 1 or it will give your model strange artifacting. I like to set a skintone color here as it will influance the whole scene.

Exposure. try to keep this below 1 if you use a cubemap.

You can change the colors of the cubemap by changing the HDRI colors with the HDRFuncVars here: (these are very powerfull)

Also play with the envsource angle will change your scene a lot. so try that also.

If you have a dark or bright cubemap play with the EnvDiffuseScale and EnvSpecularScale to fit your needs.

This will set the base lighting of the scene and will be used to save as much fps as possible to setup a lightplan with spotlights.

 

For the lights i like to look at things like windows or light origin points so the shadows match these. Use the spotlights to highlight or create shadows.

Most of the time i set the color of the lights as a skintone. This will bring the shadows out on the model body.

 

plus:

easy to setup.

minus:

if you have reflective services you will see the cubemap image.

 

The Hard way.

In our combined project with Kraegar he told me about IBL lighting. Its Image Based Lighting. What this means is that you can build up the lighting with the objects you add to your scene.

Use Auto Cubemap: The colors of the scene you build will be used to create the cubemap. 

press turn to auto in enviroment lighting.

You will need 4 things for this:

1. A boundbox around your scene. This will tell the rendering engine what to use and what not to use. Everything within the Boundbox will be used in the rendering engine and buildup the colors and lights.

2. Some kind of reflection service. Think of glass and shiny floors or furniture with chrome. you can do this with specular maps. All the colors of your placed objects are used in the rendering engine.

Chrome specular maps work best for this. Also try them on the floors and windows.

3. Glow objects. these will be used in the redering engine and will make the scene lighter or give it the color you like.

4.  Ambiant color. use this and keep watch of the light on your model. Here is also where you can bring color in your scene.

If you are happy with the overall look you can play with spotlights to get the shadows and highlights in the places you like.

 

Here is also where you would use a LUT = Lookup Table. this will calculate the lights according to the Lookup table used.

You can compare this with a color correction filter that you can tweak.

 

plus:

reflective services show whats in the scene.

preformance gain when you use spotlights. you can use more.

you can push the colors way more than with a cubemap image

you can make realy dark scenes without losing detail.

minus:

changing the objects in the room will also change the cubemap

hard to set up as the cubemap changes while you build your scene.

 

 

 

 

[sadekhnd]

Thank you, I think you have just made a tutorial  Post it in the tutorial section. You should get some kind of reward for it.  

[Sexvision]

1 minute ago, sadekhnd said:

Thank you, I think you have just made a tutorial  Post it in the tutorial section. You should get some kind of reward for it.  

I was just thinking of the same thing. I should copy that to my blog  and tutorial section.

Would be great if someone could fill in the gaps. i most probable mist some important detail somewhere because thats how my head works

So try it and comment your findings for finetuning.

 

[sadekhnd]

I make boss office now, so I use your tutorial when it's ready  

[Sexvision]

3 minutes ago, sadekhnd said:

I make boss office now, so I use your tutorial when it's ready  

I will make sure to check it out and give loats of comments

[Dutch17]

On 11/15/2021 at 1:59 PM, Sexvision said:

Its actualy not only the spotlights that light a scene. Spotlights are mostly used for highlights and shadows. 

Most of the lights will come of these two ways.

 

The easy way.

Use Cubemaps to set the overall light of your scene and use spotlights to create shadows. The Cubemap function will use the light of the cubemap image to color and light your scene.

Add spotlights to create shadows. try to avoid omni lights for fps. 1 omni is the same as 7 or 8 spotlights.

You can select a cubemap here:

You can change how strong it is with ambient here:

For a Cubemap do not go above intensity 1 or it will give your model strange artifacting. I like to set a skintone color here as it will influance the whole scene.

Exposure. try to keep this below 1 if you use a cubemap.

You can change the colors of the cubemap by changing the HDRI colors with the HDRFuncVars here: (these are very powerfull)

Also play with the envsource angle will change your scene a lot. so try that also.

If you have a dark or bright cubemap play with the EnvDiffuseScale and EnvSpecularScale to fit your needs.

This will set the base lighting of the scene and will be used to save as much fps as possible to setup a lightplan with spotlights.

 

For the lights i like to look at things like windows or light origin points so the shadows match these. Use the spotlights to highlight or create shadows.

Most of the time i set the color of the lights as a skintone. This will bring the shadows out on the model body.

 

plus:

easy to setup.

minus:

if you have reflective services you will see the cubemap image.

 

The Hard way.

In our combined project with Kraegar he told me about IBL lighting. Its Image Based Lighting. What this means is that you can build up the lighting with the objects you add to your scene.

Use Auto Cubemap: The colors of the scene you build will be used to create the cubemap. 

press turn to auto in enviroment lighting.

You will need 4 things for this:

1. A boundbox around your scene. This will tell the rendering engine what to use and what not to use. Everything within the Boundbox will be used in the rendering engine and buildup the colors and lights.

2. Some kind of reflection service. Think of glass and shiny floors or furniture with chrome. you can do this with specular maps. All the colors of your placed objects are used in the rendering engine.

Chrome specular maps work best for this. Also try them on the floors and windows.

3. Glow objects. these will be used in the redering engine and will make the scene lighter or give it the color you like.

4.  Ambiant color. use this and keep watch of the light on your model. Here is also where you can bring color in your scene.

If you are happy with the overall look you can play with spotlights to get the shadows and highlights in the places you like.

 

Here is also where you would use a LUT = Lookup Table. this will calculate the lights according to the Lookup table used.

You can compare this with a color correction filter that you can tweak.

 

plus:

reflective services show whats in the scene.

preformance gain when you use spotlights. you can use more.

you can push the colors way more than with a cubemap image

you can make realy dark scenes without losing detail.

minus:

changing the objects in the room will also change the cubemap

hard to set up as the cubemap changes while you build your scene.

 

 

 

 

Thanks for you explanation, very clear.