Indoor lighting question

[Vinyard]

Hello, first post here. Working on releasing my first game, still working on the intro, but i seem to have a problem with indoor lighting.

Every interior asset i use is dictating the kind of lighting i have to work with. For bathrooms, it doesnt seem to be an issue since the lighting is usually bright and i can get excellent renders on those but most of the living rooms have temperature bulbs that give me a grainy, somewhat dark render. For some rooms that have larger windows, it does help alot to get exterior lighting in.

I'v tried a couple of games here and i'm really trying to avoid the type of lighting that looks like a studio set(very bright). I also noticed some games remove the roof to let exterior lighting in but that limits the options for camera angles. I did read some answers here about using planes but i'm really new to using Daz or even Coding for that matter, working my way through tutorials and such as im going along.

I also tried adding spotlights but the glare is either too bright or too dim and the shadows are too strong . If there is a ready asset that can be bought from the Daz store or found here, i'd be grateful for any information or a simple workaround for a beginner.

My PC is not exactly built for rendering but i'm using intel 5-7600k @3.8Ghz with 32 GB ram and a GTX 1070

Thank You for any responses!

 

[MissFortune]

HDRI's through windows are your friend, for sure. That said, there's multiple avenues to getting good/decent indoor lighting. It's still a bitch regardless.

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are easy enough, and even better, invisible. Just put one or three in a scene and turn up the brightness until you're satisfied. Some YT tutorials will teach you how to make them free, as well.

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is a long one, but Jay does a good job going into detail on his thought process in this scene and why he's doing what he's doing.

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(he also has a nice

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which he does indoors with point lights and I believe spotlights? I forget with the latter.) does a much shorter one with the linked Daz asset. While ghost lights are definitely great at certain things, you lack the amount of control you have with spotlights. Another option to look into would be

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.

Another option is dimming the lights that come with the indoor environment to make them look 'on', but using spotlights to enhance the lighting already used in the image. Like so (quick and dirty here, so ignore the noise):



This isn't quite 3-point lighting, but it's working under the same idea. Keylight is the same color as the candles here, and the fill light is the moon (bluish tone) coming in on the left to faintly illuminate her body. Then there's a spotlight coming from above, acting as a psuedo rim light to illuminate her hair and shoulders.

I think you're problem with spotlights is that you're not distancing the light enough from the character. If you see the second image, they're all relatively close, but the lights remain soft. This is just the effect of changing the light's geometry (Point, rectangle, disc, sphere, etc.), of which Rectangle and Disc are typically the most often used. The bigger the light, the softer the shadows, so if you change the spotlight's height and width to say a 100 x 100 Disc spotlight, your shadows suddenly get a lot softer. Then you can play spready angle to soften the shadows even further, and darken as needed with the "Intensity" and "Luminous Flux" sliders on the Parameters tab for each light. This is probably the hardest part to grasp, 'which light do I use and when?" is something that just sort of comes with experience and knowing what you need per scene.



Hopefully that'll a help a little.

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might be worth a look, as well. He explains what the lights are and the effects they achieve and puts them into real use. It's not especially aimed at VNs or anything of the sort, but it's a solid beginner course into lighting.

 

[Vinyard]

Thanks! I'm sure this will help. Just one more thing. What kind of luminosity numbers did you use for the close soft spotlight?

 

[MissFortune]

Thanks! I'm sure this will help. Just one more thing. What kind of luminosity numbers did you use for the close soft spotlight?

By the closest, I'm assuming you mean the Key light (or the one used in place of the candles). There's multiple ways to rome here depending on the look you're trying to achieve. On the third/bottommost image attached above, the far left panel titled "Key" shows the numbers I used for that. I started with a big number (150,000) and turned up the spread angle (which is basically what it sounds like, it more or less spreads the light around and therefore inherently dimming/softening it.) and lowered the intensity until it was at a point I liked.

To make it a bit easier, you could simply start with a rectangle/disc spotlight (anything but "Point" in the Light Geometry drop-down should work fine.) and adjust the size according to the softness you're looking for. Unless you're looking for that harsh shadow, I usually start at 50 x 50 (heigh/width) or 100 x 100. Anything bigger will usually be moon/sunlight, in my experience. Then slowly up the Luminosity Flux, start at 50,000 or so and up by 10,000 until you're satisfied with the brightness. At which point, you can use either or both the spread angle or intensity to make any minor adjustments.

 

[Vinyard]

Already seeing improvements. Thank you very much