How do you light Indoor scenes with ambient light in IRAY?
nokoteb99
Posts: 931
Spotlights are ok, but there's just times in the real world where there are no spotlights on and yet you can see.
So how do you do ambient lighting with iray? I want to light rooms and indoor scenes and spotlights are too harsh and don't light everything uniformly , only a spot.
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Helllo. So yeah i've been trying to light indoor scenes but using spotlights...i put a spotlight inside, initialially i thought 60000 would be ok but the light is very DIM. Then i tried even 200,000 and even 500,000 lumens and still very dim. What is there to do? Why don't spots work well.
Notice i leave the intensity slider alone . leave it at 100% .
Here's a picture. 2 spotlights , one in the ceiling facing down with spreadangle wide, One facing the wall. lumens are high. still very dim. the 2 spots are at 100,000 lumens and 60,000 lumens
Ramping up the instensity of spots isn't the way to go for interiors. Instead, look in Render Settings> Tone Mapping and use Exposure Value. You can change shutter speed, aperture and film speed, or if you know nothing about photography, use the EV setting. The lower it is, the brighter your scene will be. Also, check to make sure you're using Environment> Scene Only, not Dome Only.
The EV is set at a default for bright outdoor scenes, so interiors will never look good. Tone Mapping needs to be set for indoors work. Otherwise, you'll end up with ludicrous light values that have nothing to do with reality.
an idea might be a few large planes as low texture emitters with cutout opacity
Finite Dome and set it to the inside dimensions of the room or if the ceiling is a separate surface use the Emissive setting with the ceiling .jpg plugged into the color setting. Adjust the Tone Mapping and/or Lumens to get the light you want.
What are the dimemsions of the room? You might still be trying to illuminate a warehouse with a candle!
Thanks so much for letting me know about Exposure value. It works.
Now i have a problem. What if i want to add spotlights on top of that? i tried and the whole screen becomes black only the spot light is seeen.
I want to have ambient + Spotlights too. not always but sometimes like if i have a lamp in a room with low ambient light..
I don't know the dimensions, how would i know? it's just a dojo this time. I bought the dojo interior from DAZ. But now thanks to maclean, i know how to get some ambient lightng. However, if i add a spotlight everything turns black and only the spotlight works, the EV thing goes out the window
Merged related threads.
I don't have that model, are there no windows?
Even small windows will help to get some more light into the building.
Have you got the Architectural Sampler switched on?
That's specifically designed for these situations.
Here's an example of what i mean . I want ambient + spot light. I can create the ambient with the Exporsure value. Iin picture 1 set to 15 with no light source.
Great.
Now i want to add a spot light on top of that ,i add it in the second picture and the ambient lighting created in the step above is gone. Now only the spotlight is working, the surrounding is all black.
Anyway to have my Exposure setting along with a spotlight? Or do spotlights always just make everything around the light black?
anyways i want to achieve ambient light + spotlight.
Exposure controls how bright the lighting in scene is, it doesn't add light if there isn't any. I suspect your "ambient" light is the camera headlamp, which gets turned off when a real light is added. If you like the results you could shine a spotlight from the camera position, or just take both renders and layer them with the top one in Screen mode.
Why not just use the environment as your "ambient light". This is perhaps the simplest way to go.
HOw exactly do i do that?
Your could buy the product from KindredArts called iRay Ghost Lights or you can add two things to your scene:
1. Use Sun-Sky iray settings or an HRDI that you like. in fact, by default when you render in iRay DAZ Studio supplies you with a default HRDI for ambient light. This helps quite a bit I've found if your indoor scene has windows or a sky light, which many do.
2. The second thing you can do is,
a. if the ceiling in your scene is not visible in the render you select the ceiling, make a geoshell from the ceiling,
b. convert the ceiling geoshell to iRay if it isn't already (with the UberiRay Preset),
c. on the ceiling geoshell set the emissive color to white,
d. on the geoshell, the light temperature is defaulted to 5000K I think but that is typical for lighting by the sun in broad daylight or indoor lighting in the far east - for the west you might for indoor lighting change the color temperature to 2700K.
e. on the geoshell, change the power measurement to W (watts) so you have a clue as to the strength of the light strength you are created
f. on the geoshell, change the number of watts to 100 or 125. There may be light bulbs higher than 100 watts but it's been a very long time since I've saw even a 125 W bulb
g. on the geoshell, change the Cutout opacity on the geoshell to an infitesimal number like, 0.0000000000001 or something like that.
h. Now save your scene and render. It will take a while but eventually you'll go from a noisy dark picture to a picture that looks like it is lit by indoor lights - that is that. There is no way to d an instant render and indoor scenes take longer because they typically have weaker and multiple light sources while outdoors essentially there is only the sun in daytime overwhelming all other light sources.
You mean the environment that comes already as default. Yeah that works for outdoor scenes and i use it. But doesn't work indoor.
Is this the model? http://www.daz3d.com/martial-arts-dojo-interior
It's got lots and lots of windows! Just make sure they are transparent and the environment should shine through.
Yeah i did it. and it works for ambient light but i want to add more lights and when i do everything turns black
But i want to know for any general closed room how to light it up with AMbient light + Spotlights(orother kind)
Finite Box (I said Dome last time which was wrong) set to the inside dimensions of the room or make the ceiling Emissive using the ceiling .jpg in the color slot.
I read your comment but i don't understand it. How do i set the Finate Box to the inside dimensions of the room?
HOw do i make the ceiling(roof) emmisivev using ceiling.jpg in the color slot?
You see i'm not that smart
When you select the Finite Box you get X,Y,Z dimension boxes where you set the dimensions. They are all set at 100 meters so setting them all at 2 gives a box of 2 cubic meters which should fit inside most rooms. You can then resize it until it fits the room size by changing the X,Y,Z dimensions.
To select the Ceiling find it in the scene tab; select it; go to the surfaces tab and select it then set Emissive to on. Set the lighting to something that gives the light you want.
You will also need to adjust the Tone Mapping to fit the amount of light or it will either be too bright or dark.
Thanks for the info. you said "You can then resize it until it fits the room size" Is this something i can visibly see? Cause i don't see any box so how would i know if it fits in the room?
For the Ceiling, do i have to first select it and double click Iray Uber Base?
There is a button that says Visualize Dome which makes the dome visible by coloring it. By selecting the building; clicking on the zoom box ( the square with the dot ) and having the AUX Viewport open and set to Iray, it will take your view outside the building and as you resize the Finite Box it will start to appear through the walls then you can reduce it until it is inside.
Yes, you will have to have the ceiling set to Iray shader to get the Emissive option.
Yes, sorry. The bit about the Geoshell I told you isn't need you can do the same thing directly on the ceiling geometry as FishTales has explained.
If your interior doesn't have a ceiling/roof, just put a 500 x 1000 pixel medium gray image as the Iray Environment Map. That will provide uniform ambient light. You can adjust the intensity of the environment light to balance whatever actual interior lighting you're using, such as a spotlight.
If your interior has a ceiling, it will block the light provided by Iray Environment Map. In these cases, see if you can hide or remove the creiling. If that's not provided you'll need a diffuse lighting source that you can place inside the interior, such as that provided by the Ghost set previously suggested.
You are better off using the default tone map settings and adjusting your lighting, rather than the other way around. The defaults (which are actually for an overcast outside day) are fine for starting. Adjust the luminance of your lights to bring them up or down as needed.
You can change that environment to any image that fits the technical requirements of HDRI lighting.
If you can't remove the ceiling, you can also use an Iray Section Plane to eliminate the ceiling.