How can I get sharp dark shadows in close contact areas (like where she's sitting) without blowing out anything else? (Like her hair).
I've tried all the lights and searched around for videos but I can't figure out how to achieve a nice gradient to really sell that there's contact between the char and the seat or any surface with close contact. I either have too much light hitting the character or not enough shadows and it looks like they're floating.
Any help would be appreciated.
You already have a sharp shadow there, so I am not sure I understand the request. Are you sure you want a sharp shadow, since you also mention "gradient"? A gradating shadow would be a soft shadow/light. To get a softer light, which produces a more gradual shadow, put a spot or pointlight above her, in the place you want, and then increase its radius size. Play around with the 'clip' properties of the light -- those fields above the strength value -- until you get the look you're after.
Also, more realistic shadow interactions are achieved with Ambient Occlusion (available as a postprocessing effect in Graphics (F5)), which might be what you're after if you haven't already thought of it. Ambient Occlusion looks great from mid-to-long distances, the type of distance you have in the screenshot. In closeups of faces it tends to distort the face (if you upscale the render), so you might want to disable it then. Make sure you save the graphics preset after you play with AO settings and get something that looks good.
Also, for realistic lighting, here are some general tips that help me and might be useful for anybody:
- Don't over-rely on cubemaps. Cubemaps look great as backgrounds, and when prominent in a shot they should influence the lighting, but they tend to wash everything out. So, usually, decrease the Intensity value down to below 1.0, around 0.7, while letting the Exposure value be 1.0 or even more. See next point.
- One way to test this: switch off all the lights that are placed in your scene, leaving an unlit character, objects, and the map and/or cubemap. Is the character darkened enough for the scene so that it still looks realistic? If not, you need to change something. You want the unlit scene to look like it actually would look for a character in the darkness. In some scenes (f.ex. a room without windows), if you turn off all the lights you've placed there, it should be literally pitch black. So, lower cubemap intensity, change material render settings (i.e. don't have over-saturated colors), etc. until you achieve realism.
- Don't rely on character-only or map-only lights. Why would there be a light that only affected a character and not the world around him/her? Not realistic. You want characters to blend in with the world. Maybe the #1 mistake in lighting I see in HS2/Studio renders is that a character stands out because of lighting.
- Match colors, and most importantly, match blacks and whites. The objects in your scene, their shadows need to match both the direction and the intensity of whatever background you are working with. The lights and shadows on an object should be roughly the same as the lights and shadows in the cubemap.
- Smoke/fog/volumetric effects are your friend. They're not needed when you've set up lighting properly (in the way I described in the last point), but they can help sell a scene because they enforce a uniform color scheme while giving depth. One way is by using Volumetric Lights. They work just like normal lights, but you can click the Item button on the left and increase the volumetric intensity, giving a smoky effect to the scene. Obviously don't overdo it.
- When it comes to the color of lights, 90% of the time or more you want to use natural colors: light beige or light yellow to simulate lamps or the sun, a bit more orange if the light is meant to be the evening sun. Generally, don't oversaturate the color, make all 3 RGB color-levers somewhat aligned. Sometimes you want to place soft point lights to simulate reflected lights coming off the ground or a wall, which should then be the color of whatever is reflected (e.g. grass, or a white wall). Whenever you use nonnatural colors (purple, cyan, etc.), that immediately signifies that the environment is artificial, which is good for cities and so on. Still watch out for oversaturation: it looks unrealistic.
