Lighting Night Scenes

SeductiveGeisha_5dc2c13145

So lately I've been wanting to do some night scenes but their very difficult and I've had a few hit and misses with them in the past but then it occurred to me to ask other Studio users how they go about it, so I'm curious how do you light your night scenes if and when you do them please feel free to post images, I'm certainly willing to take any and all advice.

sfaa69

I rely on dim, blue-tinged light and a lot of imagination.

Szark

Daz Studio??

In Daz Studio we have UBer Environment 2. ( This excellent thread thisis good for learning about UE2 ), which has a night-time preset. Added to that I use a Distant light coloured a mid/light blue with really soft shadows. Most night time scenes we see in movies and on TV are all dramatically lit so many night time scene have more to do with artistic license than reality.

Fuseling

In order to make a scene feel like it is night, it's pretty common visual shorthand to use blue tinted lighting, or lighting that is cooler colors. This doesn't have to be really dramatically blue, just a slight tint can give it that feel.

You can also try adding a specular only light turned down to about 50 percent in the opposite direction from your main light. This lets you have deeper shadows but still picks out some of the details on your geometry.

Another trick that makes an image feel like it is night is (rather than using less lighting) to use lighting with more dramatic contrasts than you would for a daylight render, so the shadows and objects away from the main figure or main focal area of the image are in deeper shadow. This can be achieved by putting a dimmer light in the background with softer shadows (uberenvironment lights work well for this) and using a spot with a tight angle on whatever you want to be the main focus of your scene.

Fuseling

This is an example of several of the techniques I talked about; I used a tight spotlight with a very slight blue tint, with a dimmer more strongly blue tinted light coming from the opposite direction. I also used an uberenvironment light for my diffuse lighting, but turned way down so the brighter spotlight makes my foreground figure stand out.

agent unawares

Apart from what's already been said, remember the key thing in nighttime shots is to desaturate the colors somewhat. In real life, the cone cells of your eyes, which pick up color, don't work well in dim light. That means the rod cells that see in shades of gray wind up sending most of the image to your brain. If the colors are bright, no matter how the rest of the scene is lit, it kills the immersion.