Lighting

For this lighting challenge I decided to do 3 versions...one with global illumination, one without just using area lights, and one with shadow maps and ambient occlusion. The software used was Lightwave 9.3.1, fprime, and Fusion for some image enhancements.

The first step was composition. Framing the shot. I wanted to make the tree the focal point of the image. So I framed it in a way that several of the natural lines of the scene drew the attention to the tree. The hi-contrast light of the right window draws grabs the eye but then because of the natural lines around it it migrates our eye to the tree. If you look at all the lines in the scene most of them are pointing at the tree. Of course I used the standard thirds rule to place things in the frame as well. I didn’t want to go to creative with the positioning of the camera because my real intent was the lighting of the scene and showing off as much of the scene as possible.

This first image is the GI image. I wanted it to feel like it was first thing christmas morning. So I put a “sun” really low in the sky. And I wanted it to really hit the left wall, this does two things. First it creates this high contrast area both sides of the tree, second it gives a nice glow to the scene. you would get a lot of bounce off that wall which adds a nice feel to the scene. I used a background gradient to help introduce some light from the outside. the color of this gradient as well as the sun was particularly important. I knew I wanted a warm fire inside so I didn’t want to warm of a sunrise or the whole scene would be just a blob of warmness. So I compensated by making the gradient be a little colder color palette. It went, dark blue. 000R 040G 080B to light pink255-102-251. then 255-000-255 and the final was pure black. I did pure black because I didn’t want it to feel like there was a bright ground outside the windows. just some slight overhead light and mainly a pink fill light from the sides. That’s what the gradient did for me. The color of the sun was. 255 180 157 and the intensity was 400% For the fire I did another area light of 500% 255-128-000

with a short falloff. Essentially I wanted create a really hot area just off from what we are seeing. So in the reflections you can see something is really bright out there and also fires are naturally bright with a short fall off. The last light was a blue light from the top right. this corner was particularly dark so I wanted to fill it up a bite but wanted to do so with a different temperature again to really add interest and variety to the shot. so that light was 193-228-255 50% and a relatively short fall of as well. For the Shading I did a lot of soft reflections with a Fresnel effect. You’d be surprised at how many things actually do reflect to a very small soft degree. Depending on the angle you look at them.

Last was the post processing touchup/finessing. there’s some things that light does naturally that are easy to do post work to simulate but harder to do with a renderer. I did this in Fusion. And essentially did the same thing on each image. I only did a handful of things. First an overall bloom from the windows. So I took the alpha from the windows and used that to tell what to bloom. This was a large bloom. second was a small bloom. just to give a nice little soft glow around the little highlights. then did some color correction. I already did a little depth of field in the 3d render but wanted to enhance that with a quick roto. also I did some vignetting. then last was a quick roto to bring down the hot spot on the wall just a touch.

Below is a close up of my favorite part of the image.

Above is the Area lights with no GI. I did this version to really test myself on how like bounces and works. it’s just area lights no AO. I had around 8 lights the same 3 from the GI setup then 5 to simulate where light was bouncing. I even did one negative light to pull light from an area that was getting to much. I’m not going to go into detail here because it comes to to observation. Actually that’s the secret to most lighting always look are what the light around you is doing. What is making different things happen and how to simulate that. What different surfaces do. Anyway it was the same for the spot light test. I did that test to see if I could do it. It required a little different setup as well. It was just spot lights with shadow maps and an ambient occlusion shader. I anyway the last 3 images are. the Area lights no GI light setup. then the Spot lights, AO setup. fallowed by the Spot lights AO render. I hope this has in some way been helpful to see different possibilities.