Do I Need More Light?
 

Hey y'all!

Okay, so I'm rendering this shot, right, and I notice a little snag... it's reeeeeeally dark. I kinda wanna keep the dark look but not overly like. I'll need it lighter when I finish the shot as something will be going on here later on. How would you guys and gals do this? Do I need more light? Wall light? Overhead light? Bounced light? What?! LOL!

Danke! :thumbsup:
Russell

Looks like you have ambient light still in your scene. I'd suggest killing that. Also, put a few more watts though those wall lights, they should be lighting up alot more IRL. If you want to get fancy, try adding an ambient white light outside the window and get the "moonlight" shining through.

Vampus,

What color for the light and what should the Intensity be?

Russell

Lighting really isn't my thing yet :p I'm just saying it like I see it at the moment. Someone else will be able to answer better then I could.

For moonlight in early spring, I would suggest a simple LIGHT blue, almost white.

Ok dont use an ambient light because they make things look flat (because they illuminate everything equally, even occluded objects so they suck) ;)

You do need some bounced light in there, think how the light would bounce down from the ceiling onto the floor and the desk etc. It's gonna be a bit hard to do but I'm sure you can get it. The only thing I'd say is that in that room, were it real, the desk would be quite dark because there isnt a heck of a lot of light available.

If you want to do the light outside then use a directional light and lower the intensity (Not an ambient) ;)

Alan

I would use GI_Joe.

surely not for an indoor scene? I think GI_Joe tends to make scenes boring and uniteresting. Most GI implementations dont give you any real sort of "mood" in the scene. And most people are too lazy to try and light a scene that evokes feeling from the user.

Take this scene above it could be made to look really moody and dark almost sinister by turning the lights down a bit and casting some strong, long shadows . Or it could be made really bright and sunny by upping the lights a bit, having lots of bounce light and some nice soft shadows.

GI is good for showing off a model but pretty crap for lighting a scene with any real purpose (There are exceptions to the rule I know but generally speaking)

Alan

I agree.

*seconds that*

I wouldn't *only* use GI_Joe. I would use it to first light the scene giving everything the desired lighting effect, then go back and use other lights to achieve different effects. It's definitely doing more than what is needed I guess, but that's what I would do.

So many times in animations I do, I think I have a scene lite properly, but get into the animation and realize that some sides of objects are completely black because no light can reach that particular area. GI_Joe does a good job at preventing this. I usually have it just bright enough to make everything visible. That's all its purpose is - to make everything visible.

ahh but if your scene was lit correctly then no objects would be complely dark.... ;) j/k I can see why you would use it. Dont you find that it pushes your render times up too much though? I hate to say it but if you want to make sure that everything has at least a little bit of light then you could use an ambient light at a very low intensity.

Alan

WOW! :wow:

More responses than I was expecting and tons of great ideas too! Kewlage! Okay, here's something else that has sparked in my mind. You guys have mentioned GI Joe... I USE that sucker all the time... BUT, for indoor use, it sucks, at least for me, anyway.

I once created a room, a square one with just four walls - no windows, no door, no way for light to get in at all - and I took my GI Joe and scaled down the sphere to where the lights came in sort of throught the walls, and it sort of worked. Not quite sure what my settings were, to be honest. So far, I've not used GI Joe in this project (though I did early on - it put my render times to crapola!) and I probably won't as my processor speed is only 533 MHz - still working on scraping up the money for a better computer. :banghead:

I haven't made any changes yet since last night when I used the ambient light - what setting should I use with the directional light and do I need to make it ore of a blue color as well?

Onto the shadow comment... I've used a few of the tricks I've seen on this site as well as the Maya 4.5 Savvy book on using Depth Map Shadows and the settings of depth mapped samples. A world of difference it has made.

I've been battling myself and losing painfully on whether or not to make the mood of this film dark and spooky or fun and warm. I'd hate to send this short off the festivals in the hopes of getting a happy response when all it really brought with it was an "Empire Strikes Back" emotional snag. :saywhat: It tends to be leaning more towards that warm and fuzzy feeling (which seems to be what I really want b/c I think my next project is going to ebd up being quite dark and morbid and even violent (!)) Anywho, I still appreciate all of your helpful comments and critiques. I'll try the directional light and get back with you all soon. Thanks again... Oh, BTW, here's one of my renders with the ambient light from outside the windows...


Russell

Pure_Morning - Push my render time up? Technically yes, but not that much. I don't really care about render times because I'm not exactly pressed for time these days. I'm running a 2.5 GHz machine as well which isn't too bad as well. Also, I only create 16 lights for the bottom section and 16 lights for the top section of GI_Joe. Additionally, you were talking about the sphere thing in GI_Joe. I usually delete it. There is no reason it shouldn't work on indoor scenes unless you are using shadows with it, which you shouldn't do if you're just trying to barely light everything like I said before. Sorry for not explaining more. Guess I'm getting lazy.

hence why the render looks quite flat... ;) Ambient lights are baaaaad! seriously! They are IMHO about as useful as an ashtray on a motorbike! ;) Just thinking actually look at my old WIP that might give you some ideas on how to light a room in a warm and fuzzy way (i didnt get it 100% right but :p)

http://forums.simplymaya.com/showthr...ighlight=plane

Alan