Setting Up a Big Scene
whispers65
Posts: 952
So far I've only rendered smaller scenes. Now I want to try and do bigger scenes like a big pool party or something. I do better indoors with dimmer lighting but haven't traditionally done good outdoors. Everything always seems flat.
Any suggestions for lighting the great outdoors and still get a more 3d affect?
Also, how do I go about rendering the water?
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Lighting is a tricky thing to master, and there are absolutely reams of documents on the best way to light a given scene. In truth though, what you really need is to know what you want out of it. Flat lighting is usually due to only have a single light source, or using solely ambient lighting. For more dimension, even something like a 3-point lighting system can make a huge difference.
The idea is to have one 'main' light, an extra light to one side to add filler, usually with a lower intensity, and one lighting the subject from behind. Changing the intensity of the various lights can give different effects, and a stronger backlight can give a nice sharp contrast depending on the image.
For pool water, you can simply create a large cube primitive, put it in the pool, scale it to size, and then use a glass shader on it. Give it a slight blueish hue (Something like R: 230 G: 230 B: 255 works fairly well) and render. If you need ripples, you can add displacement maps to your taste, though you'll want to increase the number of segments in your primitive or you won't get the desired effect.
Thanks. I've never done water at all so it will be interesting. I'll work on it again after work and see how far I get.
Oh also one thing I didn't mention, is what about the sky? I used to use something like light dome pro 2 but don't think that works with 4.5. It's just been a while since I'm done any kind of renders so trying to get my head back into the game and make some progress. Creating scenes and such is really relaxing and helps beat the stress lol.
Background planes with images applied in the diffuse channel can easily become "fake" sky's. :)
Three point lighting using varying intensity but using distant lights instead of spot lights can produce pretty decent effects. You want one light to be high intensity (this is your "sun light". Another offset on the by 90 degrees on the Y rotation, and about "half" of the X rotation of your sunlight, set to about 30% or maybe even 40% intensity becomes your "bounce" light. A third set so that it shines from the rear of the scene towards the camera becomes your "rim" light. Intensity on this one varies by how much rimming you want.
Additional tips: Increase the shadow softness on the bounce and rim lighting. Bounce should have at least 2x the softness of the primary light. Rim should have twice that. E.g., Sunlight has a shadow softness of 10%. The bounce should be 20% or higher. The Rim light should be 40% or higher. This keeps the shadows cast by these secondary lights from casting undesirable results.
A more advanced option would be to utilize UberEnvironment2 which is a Global Illumination or Image Based Lighting solution. See my signature for a link to a tutorial on learning to use UE2.
Should get you started. :)
I love doing big, complex scenes. It takes a lot of effort (and a pretty nice machine) to do them though so keep that in mind.
Here's on my more popular outdoor scenes: http://adamtls.deviantart.com/art/The-Dragon-Battle-205847981
Thanks for the reply! That will give me a lot to work on and that's a good thing these days.
Ok so I started on the "big" project which is a big pool area and I have 40 people now. :) Now everyone won't be in the same scene of course unless I do something like an overview shot at an angle or something but there's plenty of variety.
I have everyone positioned. I'm going to start working on posing and final placement next. Right now, I just wanted to see if it looked crowded or not and actually it doesn't. This place is plenty big.
I did start the UE2 tutorial. I'm using this project for stress relief. My nephew was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma on Christmas day. He went into the hospital on Christmas eve. He's doing chemo now but having a hard time eating and drinking. It's just been a lot to handle to say the least. I try not to cry as much especially around him.
Anyway, I did put UE2 into the environment just as a test to see and one thing I noticed especially in the shadows is that the skin of the person is darkish and super splotchy. In my test, I had two people in the "sun" and two people in the shadows. At first, all 4 were splotchy. Then I did a few adjustments and the "sun" people cleared up and looked more normal. Now, it's just the shadow people.
Anyway, I haven't made it through the tutorial yet. I just wanted to see how the UE2 affected the lighting. Also, it takes a lot longer to render a person then the scenery around them. Usually I adjust, render, adjust, render, etc but this is taking a while so have to plan ahead better. :)
Thanks!
Splotchy UE2 renders are almost always caused by not setting up the quality parameters on UE2. Be default it loads in a "draft" type mode that is pretty low quality.
Fwiw, my longest render took almost 6 full days. :)
Six days? I can't imagine. I wonder though and I haven't checked into if I could tie my two computers together for rendering somehow. Maybe I'm dreaming but seems to me I remembered something about that. I have 2 i7 machines. One is a laptop and one is a desktop.
The longest a render has taken me is 24 hours for a promo render in DS. about 28 hours in Poser
Even 24 hours is a lot for me. I think my longest one may have been 2 hours.
Well that let's me about. Way out of my budget for now. I need to work on moving expenses. Lately I've spent too much on characters and accessories lol.