Hey everyone, it’s time for this month’s episode of our video tutorial series! After our recent column on the criteria for choosing your environments, we’re now going to take a look at how to light them. The trick with environmental lighting, or scene lighting, is to create illumination that works for multiple poses. If your goal is to create a set of renders, you don’t want to re-adjust your spotlights for every single shot. Spotlights are often designed to light characters from a specific angle in a specific way. The moment you abandon that space, the lighting suddenly falls flat.
To avoid this problem, we have point lights. They emit light from a single point in all directions, allowing your characters some room to move around. If you have to relocate the lights to follow your characters, they will still cast the same light. You solve the problem of having to get the angle right each time. With footage provided by yours truly, have a look at how we go about this!
Rendar Rockbrok
December 14, 2021Another great tutorial. I did have to go with much brighter ceiling lights and higher K values to properly light my particular scene. Could have to do with the grey painted walls. Now I’ve got a shot that’s not just sexy, but beautiful in an artful way as well. Thanks!
Undercity4
April 10, 2021spot and point lights are an outdated way to light a scene anyway…Can’t believe people still rely on those methods.
Emissive Lighting is the way to go.
Rendar Rockbrok
December 14, 2021Yeah, definitely. I intuitively gravitated towards it from the beginning: experimenting with all the different lighting modalities and all the others sucked in comparison to point lighting.
JACK CHEN
December 20, 2016Send video
jack pinder
December 17, 2016Thanks for the walk through video. Have not really begun composing my own 3DX but enjoy this behind the scenes peak at the process.
Rendar Rockbrok
December 14, 2021If you’re working with DAZ, start right away. I had my first sexy pinups rendered within hours on my very first day, and I still enjoy those. It’ll open up worlds to you. Blender looks like the learning curve will be steep. The physics in Blender are insane and I can’t wait to take it on. DAZ is perfect for stills and scenes though, and the animation it can do is easy to learn.