Back lighting a building
scottidog2
Posts: 319
I have a building in the middle of a lake.
I want it to look like its being lit by a large moon from behind. (Back lit).
Only need the light showing and not the moon as i will add it in Post-production.
Can anyone tell me the best way to go about this?
Thanks
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if the camera is facing North, and the castle is centered in your render window, set 2 distant lights at NNE and NNW (in otherwords at 10 and 2 o'clock. Point them at the castle.
Turn Ambient light to zero
Thank you holly. Will try that.
I don't understand...
Why do you need two lights? There's one moon lighting the scene, plus whatever reflected moonlight bounces off the water onto the building. That's it.
And be careful suggesting no Ambient Light. Some folks here get kind of testy when you suggest that. They think it's awesome.
Now to the OP's question:
It depends on what effect you're looking for. In the real world, when something is backlit that means that the side facing the camera has no light illuminating it. Which means it's black. Is that what you want? Or do you want the building illuminated by reflected moonlight bouncing off the water? Or maybe the sky is hazy and it causes some bounce light to partially illuminate the building, and maybe some rays of light as the moonlight streaks thru the haze. Or maybe there are some lights around the building to illuminate it.
You need to explain what you want to achieve before anyone can help you achieve it.
This is what I'm working on. Scene is lit by the starlight image (Placed in Background). Full indirect lighting.
I would like the moonlight to highlight the edges of all the structures so they are more defined.
Ahh, okay...that's a very nice image.
However, in real life there would not be that much illumination from solely a backlit moon and some starlight. I would suggest you figure out what your actual light sources are and try to model those, and if you want, enhance them to increase the effect.
I always suggest starting very simple.
First, you have a backlit moonlight that, by itself as a direct source, would not light anything that faces the camera. You also have some light bulbs that will provide some nice dramatic lighting. But if you want to light your figures you'll need to figure out what the actual light source would be to cause that. Otherwise your image looks too well lit and evenly lit and you lose the drama associated with such a wonderful and dramatic scene.
Maybe add some dappled moonlight playing off the ripples in the water, or some other light to isolate and separate the main characters in the scene. Or maybe place a lamp in the canopy of the boat to light them.
I suppose you could assume there's a second moon above (over the camera's right shoulder) giving that fairly bright light and shadows on your buildings, because it does give a nice highlight. But beware of too much light, or what could be an incredibly dramatic and breathtaking image might become bland.
But really, you have the makings of an absolutely gorgeous image, so I'd suggest you put some work into it.
BTW, one of the key areas that separates okay images from incredible images is composition, and particularly the rules around providing a central subject to your images. If you have everything well lit, which many hobbyists tend to want to do, you are losing an opportunity to provide drama and impact. Your background is gorgeous, but you want it to frame the central subjects.
By the way, I'm just thrilled with your background. The lighting on those rocks is just perfect and gives a sense of drama and realism. But the foreground, IMO, detracts from the image by not matching the drama since it is so well lit.
What I would do is keep the background pretty much intact, and just work with the foreground (boat and characters) to make the light levels more dramatic and focused.
Hey, Londonmarlo, do me a favor....
Could you just do a render exactly like the one you posted but with the boat and characters invisible? No other changes. Do a nice high quality render and post it here...
Seriously, I think that's gotta be the best render I've seen in this forum in a very long time.
Dude, you’ve got me very excited over a render…
Anyway, don’t get me wrong, the characters and the boat are excellent, and give a great subject and focus, and are very erotic. So don’t change that. And SAVE THAT SCENE FILE before you tweak anything !!!! It’s almost perfect, so don’t lose it. And then just tweak the lighting on the foreground and this will be a top notch image.
And at some point it would be great if you told us how you did the lighting. I can’t get over the lighting on the long phallic-looking rock at top left center. Great moonlight colors, and those rocks are wonderful.
duplicate deleted...
Thanks Joe for your constructive criticism. Have had Carrara crash more than 20 times already so its a slow change this, adjust that followed by a save. The final image will not have V4.2. Its been a very long learning curve creating the water and stuff.
For some reason Carrara (8.1 and 8.5) crashes when I turn on "light through Transparency" so am rendering with it off.
Its the Citadel that is causing the problem.
Planning to do the final Render as a multi pass so I can make further adjustments in Post.
The background was created using real photos taken by NASA.
Very pretty! :cheese:
In general when I want to exaggerate the edges so they *pop* against a dark background, I use a falloff shader (like the one in SHADER OPS at DCG) to add a thin rim of glow to the edges. The angle that turns away from the camera (approaching 180° degrees perpendicular to the camera eye) has a touch of the color of moonlight....
Sometimes this doesn't work, because the models will have sharp facets. It can work against you.... For instance, your castle might have some sharp edges that betray a low poly count... Since falloff is geometry-based it can make flat surfaces and sharp corners look very fake (like a modern stealth fighter...). In that case some levels of smoothing might help, or there is another plugin (SHADERS PLUS) that can add rounded bevels to a low poly model in the shader tree.... Jeremy Brin (? I think I read it in one of his lighting books) talks about how bevels (or the lack of) can give a sense of scale, since very small objects can have a sharp facet edge, but very large objects like buildings will not have such a perfectly creased edge.... The way a falloff shader would play on those edges will help reveal the architecture of the castle...
The castle in your image is too small for me to see if this helps you or not for this partiular image... I just mean to give general advice of what I would try in a similar situation.... I sometimes find it easier to do a shader trick instead of fussing with lights....
Thanks holly, all useful advice indeed. Am doing a larger render. Its taking around 12 hours so will post it when its finished. I prefer to do it with lighting as its easier for me to wrap my head around.
But I do want to buy some plug-ins for Carrara once 8.5 is officially released.
Taken onboard all the great advice given by holly and JoeMamma2000 and changed a few elements. Still a few things left to do.
By the way this is a straight up Carrara Render without any post whatsoever.
Looks inviting! A real fantasy locale!
I concur! This scene is coming along very nicely indeed.