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ViperGts151 note Part 1 too long to post in one go
Hey, everyone!
Not necessarily a post about the game itself today. However, I got quite a few of you asking me how I light my scenes in the game and my random renders, so I decided to make this not-so-brief, but in-depth sort of tutorial.
Keep in mind that I am by no means a master of the craft, in fact I’m still learning a lot of things every day.
Use this guide as a one way of doing this, but not as a definitive guide.
I really hope it helps you somehow.
There are many different ways to light a scene, especially since there isn’t one specific time of day or environment. I follow some fairly simple concepts known as ‘Two Point Lighting’ and ‘Three Point Lighting’ and apply my own twists to them.
Keep in mind that you don’t necessarily need to do exactly what I do. You can take this concept and apply your own way of doing it.
Personally, I like using emissive surfaces for my light sources since it gives me better control over the objects and colors I can apply to the lights. You can increase or decrease the size of the emissive objects, and it emits a nice, smooth light overall. Not only that, often the characters will have a shine reflecting on their eyeballs which adds to the aesthetic.
You can use any type of light you want though: point light, spotlight, sun-dial. Just keep in mind that the results will differ according to the type of light you choose.
HOW DO I MAKE MY EMISSIVE SURFACES?
This is the simplest part, in DAZ you can navigate to
Create > New Primitive.
A small window will pop up with a few options, I usually choose the Plane at it’s default options.
Once we have our plane selected in the scene, we need to make it emissive. In order to do so we need to navigate to the Surfaces tab. In case you don’t have the Surfaces tab open, go to Window > Panes (Tabs) > Surfaces.
Now in the Surfaces tab, expand the categories until you find the
Emission. Here you will notice that the color is set to Black, this means that there is no emission set to this object.
When you click on the black color, a color picker window will open, in here is where you can change the color of your emissive surface. You can pick any color you want, but for this example I will just set it to white, and click Ok.
Notice that now your Emission options changed, there are more options in there, this means that your Primitive is now emitting light, but it’s not bright enough, so let’s set the Luminance to a higher value. Maybe 250000?
Great! Now we have an emissive surface lighting up our scene!
You can change it’s color, increase or decrease it’s luminance in this exact same options within the Surfaces tab under Emission.
Each render will have it's particular settings, so you will need to experiment and tweak to find what's suits best for you.
IDENTIFYING YOUR ENVIRONMENT AND YOUR POINTS OF LIGHTS
The first thing you need to understand is where you are; maybe it’s an open space, a small enclosed room, a big hall, a photo studio, etc.
Once you know where you are, you need to find your Key light, which is your main source of light. This can be coming from a light bulb in the ceiling, a small table lamp, a phone, a window...
For example:
In this image, the main light source is the window.
In here, it is coming from the lantern she is holding.
But what exactly is the Key light?
It is the strongest point of light in your frame, it’s the light that wherever it is coming from it’s illuminating most of your focal point. It doesn’t necessarily need to be pointed straight to the subject, but it is usually doing so.
The second point of light is the Filler light, or Bounce light. This light will counter the strong shadows that the key light is casting, giving your image a better balance making it less dramatic. I will explain this better in a little bit, for now just remember what it is used for.
The third is the Back light, this has many different applications, it can be used to light an environment as a whole as well as to “separate” the subject from the background by illuminating their silhouette.
USING THE LIGHTS
Example 1 – Outdoors:
This first example is in an open space, where the key light is the sun/sky and we don’t really need to create anything fancy for it, all we need to do is use the natural light in our favor.
In this example I am using DAZ’ own default HDRI map to illuminate the environment. The best part about working on a 3D environment is that we can totally control where we want that point of light to be, so in here I rotate the dome in order to get that sun spot exactly where I want.
Dome rotation 95º
Dome rotation 270º
Notice that where the key light isn’t reaching, it is casting a very rough dark shadow on her face?
This is where the filler light comes in, so that it can counter those shadows giving it a softer brightness.
Note that the filler light must not be brighter than the key light, or else it will become the key light itself and totally wash away those shadows, and we need some of those shadows so that our image doesn’t look flat and boring.
You can position the light source at an angle not too far, but not too close to the subject. Make is smaller or bigger. Experimenting, trial and error is the best way to find the sweet spot for your scene.
In this case, we are done. We don’t need a back light since the key light is also doing that job for us by lighting the environment itself through the HDRI.
Here is this raw render, no post-work done.
Example 2 – Indoors:
When it comes to lighting indoors it gets a little more complicated depending on the size of the place. However, we can still apply the same concept and make it work.
Usually the assets already come pre-lit out of the box, which helps a lot, but sometimes that’s not the case. In this example, I am using the
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DAZ asset, which does not include a good lighting set of it’s own, so we are gonna have to get creative.
LIGHTING THE ENVIRONMENT
The first thing you should do is light up the room you are in, and for that you need to identify where your light source(s) should be coming from, maybe it is from a window, or maybe it’s as simple as a ceiling light. It’s up to you.
You can do a practice right now, look around you and see where the light in your room is coming from, that will help you identify it within your 3D scene.
Sometimes one light source will suffice, but at times you may need one or two extras.
Never use one giant light source, or make the entire ceiling an emissive surface, else your environment will look terribly flat with no shadows and very bright.
In my case, I needed two ceiling lights for this one, there is also a window where there is some light coming through, but I purposely blocked the window light by putting a fence outside.
Great! Now that we have our room lit up, it’s time to put our characters in and add a key and filler lights to the scene.
Here is how this shot looks through the camera.
See how I put the Key light at an angle?
This is to avoid the subject looking flat, giving it a nice soft depth.
Which side to put the light is up to you to decide. Keep in mind that if you put it against the camera the shadow part of the face will be the one facing the camera giving your scene a more dramatic aspect, while if you do the contrary the effect will be the opposite.
Speaking of dramatic, here is an example of lowering the environment light and adding a Back light in order to shift the mood of the scene only by using lights.
PS. I also lowered the camera’s f/stop in order to blur the background even more and increased the bloom for that mood shift.
For this shot I lowered the ceiling lights Luminance, and totally removed the Fill light so that the rough shadows on her face would come up. In addition, I lit up the lamp in the back in order to add a mood light in the distance.
Once you have your lights in place, you can control them however you want to achieve the mood you are aiming for.
