Lighting Interior of a Giant Box
somefatcheese
Posts: 9
Hello,
I was wondering if anybody had any thoughts on the best way to go about lighting a giant hallway that's sealed off on all 4 sides. The demisions of the box are 2,000 x 2,000 x 35,000. If there's anyway to not have to use lights at all and get even flat lighting with everything lit that'd be perfect. I'm new to the program so there might be some setting that can do this?
Since the distant lights get blocked I started trying to create point lights (set to 1,000,000 intensity each) spaced every 5,000 on the x-axis. But it creates uneven pools of light. (ie shadows between the point lights).
I suppose I could just space them much closer to each other, but i was hoping someone might have a better idea!
Thanks,
Jon
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Comments
Which renderer?
Nvidia Iray
I would suggest creating a plane of the same length and width, placed at the same approxomate height of the ceiling with an emmissive shader. Then tweak the emmissive settings till, your hall is lit appropriately. Probably the same Lumens as the Intensity of your Point lights. Depending on your graphics card, it will take longer to render, but should get you the look you want.
edit: if you want to see the ceiling texture, set the Cutout Opacity, to something like .0001 so it'll be invisible to the camera but still emit the same light.
This thread may help:
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/71755/when-trying-to-light-an-interior-in-iray/p1/
There's also the Architectural Lighting Rig for iray that might save a lot of set up time.
http://www.daz3d.com/architectural-lighting-rig-for-iray
These are really good resources. I just tried creating emmisve pannels with extrmely low cutout opacity, and while it did the trick the render times are EXTRMELEY long. I'm doing this for an animation peice so its not really sustanaible unfortunatly. I have a geforce970 graphics cards and intel i6700k porcessor.
Is there anyway just not to have to deal with lighting at all? Just like have everything lit. No shadows, no intenisty changes ect?
Thanks for all the help so far, I'm learning a bunch about how powerful this program is and its cool!
Use 3Delight...
If you don't want to use lights and have the box itself be the lighting, just add a white ambient in the surface tab. Start with a low value and work your way up.
Try different geometry forms on your spotlights other than point. Try cylinder or rectangle and change their scale to suit the effect you're looking for. They should render faster than trying to do the same thing with emissive shapes. You'll probably want to increase the spread angle on the light(s) to something larger than the default 60 degrees, probably something like 120 or more. You'll need to increase the light output lumens significantly as well if increasing the light geometry and/or spread angle.
Something that probably should have been asked earlier...
What units are the dimensions of the box in?
Inches. It was created using primitive planes with jpegs on them.
1) So went ahead and added white ambient to the surface tab of evey plane.
2) Changed the render to 3Delight.
In the still renders it looked good! So i created a little 21sec animation of flying down the hall; its rendering out right now. But i think this might work. Thoughts on this workflow? I'm guessing i'm giving up a lot of detail by using the 3Delight?
Thanks again for all this help. Yall rock!
Actually you aren't. Unless you intend your artstyle to be hyper realistic you don't lose any definition by using 3DL. I have set up for both and I still use 3DL for most things. Its a good engine in its own right it just doesnt use real world physics based lighting like iradium does. In most cases the dffierence is in the look you want to achieve, just like with any other art form.
3DL can do many of the things Iray can, just requires more skill and experience to learn how. It can also do some things more easily than Iray, and a bunch of things Iray just can't.
Iray is awesome, don't get me wrong, but so is 3DL, and there isn't a simple one better than the other.
I often find Iray renders are actually 'fuzzier' and less distinct than 3DL, assuming both are properly lit (lighting can mess either up). So I usually use Sharpen tool on Iray renders, and Guassian blur tool on 3DL renders. ;)
If you want fairly flat lighting you could try using the Headlight. This is a light fitted to the camera so it tends to give a flat looking light effect. To make sure it is enabled go to Render Settings and look for Autoheadlamp under General Settings. I think the default is "When no scene lights" which means it will only come on if you don't add any lights. I don't think that emissive surfaces count as lights to switch off the headlamp, but just one distant spot or point light will switch it off.
If you go with Iray.
You could try just removing the wall not facing the camera like a shoebox diorama or a stage, then set the environment light to a flat light grey color for the flat lighting.
If you really need the scene to be enclosed you could also try setting up a large emmisive plain behind and parented to the camera. So the plain faces whatever the camera points to.
Cool, so the final ticket has been using 3delight with creating ambient on all the surfaces. Rendered out a still image series and it looks good! Thanks so much everyone.
Thats really interesting with parenting a large emmisve to the camera.
Also i'll have to start experipemting with the different render engines. So much to learn!