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What's the best way to light dark skin in an inside scene?

jenniferhugheyjenniferhughey Posts: 404
in The Commons

I used the usual 3 point light set and it just doesn't seem to show off the darker skin really well, especially inside. Any tips?

Comments

  • xyer0xyer0 Posts: 6,334

    I pump up the Environment Intensity (under Render Settings) to ridiculous levels (25-40) so that light blooms through the windows, or I remove every wall that is not in view (plus the ceiling if possible). If the model is one piece, then I use the Geometry Editor (Tools) to cut away whatever isn't showing.

  • exstarsisexstarsis Posts: 2,128

    I find this set does a good job. You can probably get some ideas from it if you don't want to buy it.

    https://www.daz3d.com/aurous-iray-lights

  • Oso3DOso3D Posts: 15,085

    My suggestion is to light it with more blues and other colors, make sure the skin is fairly glossy, and make sure there is a fairly even low level of light, then adjust in post.

    Blue even ambient light will provide a sense of darkness that you can dial down, while blue/green/peach (or similar) can help highlight the skin.

    There are articles you can look up on photographing dark skin that may help.

  • xyer0xyer0 Posts: 6,334
    dreamfarmer said:

    I find this set does a good job. You can probably get some ideas from it if you don't want to buy it.

    https://www.daz3d.com/aurous-iray-lights

    Oooh! Thanks! I forgot about these lights, sitting right here on my hard drive.

  • jenniferhugheyjenniferhughey Posts: 404
    xyer0 said:

    I pump up the Environment Intensity (under Render Settings) to ridiculous levels (25-40) so that light blooms through the windows, or I remove every wall that is not in view (plus the ceiling if possible). If the model is one piece, then I use the Geometry Editor (Tools) to cut away whatever isn't showing.

    I wondered how to get rid of walls or celings that are grouped like that, thanks!

  • jenniferhugheyjenniferhughey Posts: 404
    dreamfarmer said:

    I find this set does a good job. You can probably get some ideas from it if you don't want to buy it.

    https://www.daz3d.com/aurous-iray-lights

    I love sveva's lights, I have a few packs, maybe I just need to go thru all the presets in them and see if they work first, thanks!

  • jenniferhugheyjenniferhughey Posts: 404
    timmins.william said:

    My suggestion is to light it with more blues and other colors, make sure the skin is fairly glossy, and make sure there is a fairly even low level of light, then adjust in post.

    Blue even ambient light will provide a sense of darkness that you can dial down, while blue/green/peach (or similar) can help highlight the skin.

    There are articles you can look up on photographing dark skin that may help.

    Thahelps a lot, thanks!

  • xyer0xyer0 Posts: 6,334
    jenniferhughey said:
    xyer0 said:

    I pump up the Environment Intensity (under Render Settings) to ridiculous levels (25-40) so that light blooms through the windows, or I remove every wall that is not in view (plus the ceiling if possible). If the model is one piece, then I use the Geometry Editor (Tools) to cut away whatever isn't showing.

    I wondered how to get rid of walls or celings that are grouped like that, thanks!

    Di nada. Don't forget to assign the cut away piece as a new surface, or it will have to be redone every time you load the scene.

  • false1false1 Posts: 43
    timmins.william said:

    My suggestion is to light it with more blues and other colors, make sure the skin is fairly glossy, and make sure there is a fairly even low level of light, then adjust in post.

    Blue even ambient light will provide a sense of darkness that you can dial down, while blue/green/peach (or similar) can help highlight the skin.

    There are articles you can look up on photographing dark skin that may help.

    What he said.

  • LlynaraLlynara Posts: 4,772
    edited October 2017

    Peach and golden lights work beautifully on darker skins. I used Fabiana's AlterZen set here, along with some color and tone adjustments in Photoshop. I also love her Alter Glow set. it comes with "Glow Helpers" that are these emissive balls that parent to the head, right in front of the face, with really good presets. There are other emissives in that set too that are great for soft lighting. I use Sveva's Lumiere Pro set a lot too. It looks great on almost everyone. (All of the items mentioned are at Rendo.)

    Post edited by Llynara on
  • jenniferhugheyjenniferhughey Posts: 404
    Llynara said:

    Peach and golden lights work beautifully on darker skins. I used Fabiana's AlterZen set here, along with some color and tone adjustments in Photoshop. I also love her Alter Glow set. it comes with "Glow Helpers" that are these emissive balls that parent to the head, right in front of the face, with really good presets. There are other emissives in that set too that are great for soft lighting. I use Sveva's Lumiere Pro set a lot too. It looks great on almost everyone. (All of the items mentioned are at Rendo.)

    Beautiful lighting on her, really shows her skin off. I have a bunch of Sveva's sets already but if this one is different or better, I'd ante up. The emissives are really cool, have them on my list now! Thanks!

  • LyonessLyoness Posts: 1,632

    the key is to light the scene and the figure separately.

    3 point lighting will work great on the figure, you just need to brighten it....  and then make sure that the surrounding scene has it's own lighting.
    This is how I do my girls.

  • LinwellyLinwelly Posts: 6,055
    edited October 2017

    I agree with Lyoness, it rarely woks with the light you would use jsut to set a room in scene

    Your question inspired my to test a bit around. It certainly depends as well what you want to present.

    In this first one I used the Alsan court changed all the lights to emissive surfaces so that I have a reasonable illumination of the place but none too bright. For the dancer I used two simple planes placed basically front and back, with the front one in a light orange tint (candle colour and light emissive temperature on 2900, luminance 3000kcd/m2) the one from the back is a slightly muted blue tint and emissive Temperature on 5500, luminance 5000 Kcd/m2) So backlight stronger than front

     

    for the other one I had some environmental lights as well and used a window to place an emissive plane outside using daylight settings for the emission

     

    The character in both settings is Jazmine, no changes to the skin

    Aslan_dancer_close.png
    707 x 1000 - 1M
    Post edited by Linwelly on
  • deleted userdeleted user Posts: 1,204
    edited October 2017

    Ummm.... so now for the crazy persons suggestion.... lol!

    I do not know how well you know your 3Delight shaders but for myself. When it comes to dark skins, or black people I use the AoA SSS for my renders... May seem odd. May seem like a bad idea but... You judge for yourself.

     

    Genesis 1

    Genesis 2 Male

    Genesis 2 Male

    Post edited by deleted user on
  • The DiigitalsThe Diigitals Posts: 380

    I make the walls that are behind the camera or out of shot emissives, just enough to fill the shadows, then pump up the environment so that light spills in from windows..

  • LinwellyLinwelly Posts: 6,055
    Angel - Wings said:

    Ummm.... so now for the crazy persons suggestion.... lol!

    I do not know how well you know your 3Delight shaders but for myself. When it comes to dark skins, or black people I use the AoA SSS for my renders... May seem odd. May seem like a bad idea but... You judge for yourself.

     

    Genesis 1

    Genesis 2 Male

    Genesis 2 Male

    3delight generally handles dark skin far better than Iray as far as I experienced. The OP didn't say which renderer, so I assumed they meant  Iray.

  • somefunoksomefunok Posts: 65
    Linwelly said:

    for the other one I had some environmental lights as well and used a window to place an emissive plane outside using daylight settings for the emission

     

    The character in both settings is Jazmine, no changes to the skin

    I really like the look of this image.

    Is there a particular reason for using emissive planes for the lighting?  Could you please expand on the settings you used for the emissive plane outside the window and the other lighting you used?

  • xyer0xyer0 Posts: 6,334
    Lyoness said:

    the key is to light the scene and the figure separately.

    Thank you. Such a simple solution.

  • gederixgederix Posts: 390

    Another factor can be the colors used in the subsurface shading. My experience has been that the defaults for lighter skin do not work well for darker skin, tend to make it unnaturally darker, like the skin is absorbing too much light or something, quite noticable when you have 'white' and 'black' skin types next to each other in a scene and the white person looks fine but the black person seems to be sitting in shadow. My fix has been to shift the scattering color from pink to something more tonally similar to the diffuse skin color, but I do not use iray or 3delight so not sure how that would translate, or even if this would apply for iray. Just a thought.

     

  • LinwellyLinwelly Posts: 6,055
    edited October 2017
    somefunok said:
    Linwelly said:

    for the other one I had some environmental lights as well and used a window to place an emissive plane outside using daylight settings for the emission

     

    The character in both settings is Jazmine, no changes to the skin

    I really like the look of this image.

    Is there a particular reason for using emissive planes for the lighting?  Could you please expand on the settings you used for the emissive plane outside the window and the other lighting you used?

    You're lucky I still got the scene file saved :D

    So I had a sun sky only as environmenal light with 19:00 SS time and the lights as they come with the shaded sanctuary for the inside general light ( that has a brown emissive colour and t k value of 10000 (this does not really make sense but it doesn't even matter that much the luminance is 100 cd/cm2 plus from the wall scones white light at 2900k on 5000 cd/cm2 luminance, this matter more for the interior backgroundlight.

    Now the plane outside the window had a bluegrey emissive colour with 4500K at 3000 kcd/m2 Luminance

    Why planes, for one they are easy to make and transport at the right place plus the units make more sense to me that the spotlight where you need to pump up the Flux value to get some visible results  but the main reason is the way the the light emission is emulated compared to a spot. Which is in Iray similar to a spotlight with a electric light bulb on the one hand and a pane of LED on the other hand

    With a spot the light is emitted from one small source and spreads out from there, it will cause hard shadows as if you use a torch (or from a clear sun). From a panel the light gets emitted from every spot on the plane and they all go parallel so the shadows will be soft, this is what happens in a real window as well that a lot of the chaotic rays are sorted out and only those generally going in the right angle to the window can get in.

    Have one of my unbeatable drawings as additional info :D

    Light-explained.png
    640 x 400 - 7K
    Post edited by Linwelly on
  • jenniferhugheyjenniferhughey Posts: 404
    Lyoness said:

    the key is to light the scene and the figure separately.

    3 point lighting will work great on the figure, you just need to brighten it....  and then make sure that the surrounding scene has it's own lighting.
    This is how I do my girls.

    Your pics always look really good, I'll keep that in mind!

  • jenniferhugheyjenniferhughey Posts: 404
    Linwelly said:
    In this first one I used the Alsan court changed all the lights to emissive surfaces so that I have a reasonable illumination of the place but none too bright. For the dancer I used two simple planes placed basically front and back, with the front one in a light orange tint (candle colour and light emissive temperature on 2900, luminance 3000kcd/m2) the one from the back is a slightly muted blue tint and emissive Temperature on 5500, luminance 5000 Kcd/m2) So backlight stronger than front

     

     

    for the other one I had some environmental lights as well and used a window to place an emissive plane outside using daylight settings for the emission

     

    The character in both settings is Jazmine, no changes to the skin

    wow, those look great, thank you for sharing!!

  • jenniferhugheyjenniferhughey Posts: 404
    gederix said:

    Another factor can be the colors used in the subsurface shading. My experience has been that the defaults for lighter skin do not work well for darker skin, tend to make it unnaturally darker, like the skin is absorbing too much light or something, quite noticable when you have 'white' and 'black' skin types next to each other in a scene and the white person looks fine but the black person seems to be sitting in shadow. My fix has been to shift the scattering color from pink to something more tonally similar to the diffuse skin color, but I do not use iray or 3delight so not sure how that would translate, or even if this would apply for iray. Just a thought.

     

    interesting, I'm just now getting around to playing with the scattering and such, so I will try that!

     

  • jenniferhugheyjenniferhughey Posts: 404
    Linwelly said:
     

    So I had a sun sky only as environmenal light with 19:00 SS time and the lights as they come with the shaded sanctuary for the inside general light ( that has a brown emissive colour and t k value of 10000 (this does not really make sense but it doesn't even matter that much the luminance is 100 cd/cm2 plus from the wall scones white light at 2900k on 5000 cd/cm2 luminance, this matter more for the interior backgroundlight.

    Now the plane outside the window had a bluegrey emissive colour with 4500K at 3000 kcd/m2 Luminance

    Why planes, for one they are easy to make and transport at the right place plus the units make more sense to me that the spotlight where you need to pump up the Flux value to get some visible results  but the main reason is the way the the light emission is emulated compared to a spot. Which is in Iray similar to a spotlight with a electric light bulb on the one hand and a pane of LED on the other hand

    With a spot the light is emitted from one small source and spreads out from there, it will cause hard shadows as if you use a torch (or from a clear sun). From a panel the light gets emitted from every spot on the plane and they all go parallel so the shadows will be soft, this is what happens in a real window as well that a lot of the chaotic rays are sorted out and only those generally going in the right angle to the window can get in.

    Have one of my unbeatable drawings as additional info :D

    That's awesome, thanks!

  • jenniferhugheyjenniferhughey Posts: 404
    Linwelly said:
    Angel - Wings said:

    Ummm.... so now for the crazy persons suggestion.... lol!

    I do not know how well you know your 3Delight shaders but for myself. When it comes to dark skins, or black people I use the AoA SSS for my renders... May seem odd. May seem like a bad idea but... You judge for yourself.

    3delight generally handles dark skin far better than Iray as far as I experienced. The OP didn't say which renderer, so I assumed they meant  Iray.

    yes, sorry, Iray. But wow, those look great.

  • fastbike1fastbike1 Posts: 4,078

    @linwelly

    You can add geometry to a photometric spotlght so that it behaves like a photographic softbox. You may wish to revise your advice to be more representative of iray lighting possibilities..

  • LinwellyLinwelly Posts: 6,055
    fastbike1 said:

    @linwelly

    You can add geometry to a photometric spotlght so that it behaves like a photographic softbox. You may wish to revise your advice to be more representative of iray lighting possibilities..

    @fastbike1

    I have heard (or read) about that but I never tried for myself and wouldn't even know how to. Add to that, my photography knowledge is not really great. So maybe you can add your knowlege? Does the softbox change the way the rays are distributed? does it use a reasonable unit system for measuring the amount of light?

    Thanks for helping :D

     

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