How do you set up lights in a scene to bring out shadows and enhance the picture.

Mjvol

Hello Daz folks, I was wondering what I could have done with lights to help this picture. I watched the video on lights and it was the basic's and I watched it about 5xs. My goal was to make it a suspenseful scene and have it dark so the human would be searching around with limited lights and the creature was coming up behind him without him noticing to strike with reaper tool. So what I did was put a distant light to the left up high looking towards the creature and then I put in a density light over top of the creature and defuse and lowered the intensity on it. Then put in two spot lights, one behind the creature and one over by the human to the right and up high and defused and lowered. The reason for so many light was to be able to see the characters and what they were doing, also to make shadows and catch the suspense of it all.  Any pointers what I could of done different. Its not bad render but also not great either.  Anyway thanks for any in put, here is the picture below.

larsmidnatt

You could afford to add some more lights, or increase the intensity of the ones you have. Be sure to do low resolution test renders until you get the right settings to speed up your iterations. There were times I had dozens of lights in a scene! Literally! Even a simple pinup render could have 10 lights. So you can still have a suspenseful scene with more than a few lights.

Light in 3DL is not like real life. 3 lights may seem like a lot, but not in all digital tools. I would try more lights, and changing the intensity of the exisiting lights.

I think you have the right ideas about where the brightest lights should be.

mjc1016

A simple, low level ambient light...like the UberEnvironment (or the AoA Ambient light set: http://www.daz3d.com/advanced-ambient-light) set to Ambient (No ray tracing) and at 2 to 10% intensity will do a lot to 'fill' in with light and not brighten the scene too much (keeping in under 5% intensity is probably enough for that scene).

larsmidnatt

mjc1016 said:

A simple, low level ambient light...like the UberEnvironment (or the AoA Ambient light set: http://www.daz3d.com/advanced-ambient-light) set to Ambient (No ray tracing) and at 2 to 10% intensity will do a lot to 'fill' in with light and not brighten the scene too much (keeping in under 5% intensity is probably enough for that scene).

I was thinking that too.

Mjvol

larsmidnatt said:

You could afford to add some more lights, or increase the intensity of the ones you have. Be sure to do low resolution test renders until you get the right settings to speed up your iterations. There were times I had dozens of lights in a scene! Literally! Even a simple pinup render could have 10 lights. So you can still have a suspenseful scene with more than a few lights.

Light in 3DL is not like real life. 3 lights may seem like a lot, but not in all digital tools. I would try more lights, and changing the intensity of the exisiting lights.

I think you have the right ideas about where the brightest lights should be.

Wow, dozens lights that is interesting, so basically keep playing with it until I get comfortable with the lights effect. |And play with the intensities and so forth. Sure takes a long time though. Patients is a virtue I guess, something that I know I could use. That pic there took me a few hours playing with the lights I guess should have taken a break and came back to it, I am still not happy with that one.Thanks for your input well appreciated.

Mjvol

 

larsmidnatt

with time it becomes a lot quicker, at first it may seem overwhelming. But MJC idea is a good one, adding just an ambient light. Those also take some practice, but are very useful.