How to light a crowded scene in a small area?
intrinsicanomaly_262dc77de2
Posts: 132
I am doing a scene in a subway car and struggling with the lighting. I don't want heavy shadows anywhere I feel like everything in the scene should be evenly lit just as it would be when you're on the subway.
What type of lights and settings should I be using the accomplish this? I think I had heard somewhere there is some way I can even turn the whole subway car itself into a light? Which would cause every surface to be emitting light so if that's possible I imagine it would work well. But I can't find anything about that now so maybe I imagined it. Anyway all solutions welcome, thank you!
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The easiest way would be to cut away the wall behind the camera and flood hdri lighting in. You can use an iray section plane node found in the create menu, place it behind the camera. you can even put some on the sides where the camera can't see to let in even more hdri beams.
This is a great video made by a forum regular here that showcases section planes well.
Which subway car model are you using? Most subways in the real world have lighting at the ceiling shining down. Emulate that. Use extreme low opacity light emitters at the ceiling should give you a nice balanced light. Use create primitive plane in dazstudio.
I am using this car here: https://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?ViewProduct=114507
The car is a single piece so it is not possible to cut away a wall as suggested.
I see the option to 'create plane' however I don't see anywhere in the settings for the plane object which have anything to do with light so I'm not sure what you're suggesting when you say 'use extreme low opacity light emitters' with the plane.
Sometimes I use geometry editor and lasso me a chunk of wall, and then create a surface from the selected group and name it "hide", then hide it.
It works for me because then I cam always re-assign them back to the original piece later.
sounds like it could get you a hole in a wall :)
I did make an assumption, that you are trying to make this scene work in Daz Studio, and using the iray rendering option. So the following is for that option. I checked the link and that product is for Poser 7+, so possibly you need info for rendering in Poser or DazStudio 3Delight.
In regards to Iray rendering, You can apply any shader to the primitive plane, including a light emitting shader for iray. That is done in the "surfaces" pane. Simply select the plane and apply the uber iray base. You also can reduce the amount that plane in visible in the scene, while still retaining the light emitting properties, using the Opacity dial in the surfaces pane. You want to set the opacity to a extremely low number like .0001 effectively making the plane invisible but sti9ll emitting light. So create the plane, adjust the x and z value to it runs the length of the subway, move it vertically so it just skims the ceiling. You'll have to trial the intensity of the lumination until it meets your desire look.
This video will help show the basics to create a plane emitter.
Yes I know the metro was designed for poser however you are correct I am using it in Daz and Iray. So I have created the plane, created the size, set it to the ceiling and turned up the opacity, then I have selected it and I see there is an 'uber base' and also an 'uber area light base'. I have tried applying both of these, and turned off all the other lights I was trying to use before. But it does not appear that any light is coming from the plane and I can't find any settings on the plane which pertain to light emissions which I could make changes to...
Sorry, I had not seen the video you posted before. So I have found and figured out how to make the plane emit light. This seems like it coudl be a good solution, however there is a problem still. If I set the light to .0001 as you recommend, it stops emitting light. However if I set it to the lowest setting I can find where it still makes light, although it is transparent, it is not invisible and it still makes the ceiling look strange : /
If you want a ready made solution with lots of options I can really recommend this product. I end up using it in 99% of my indoor images. Check out the promo images, they pretty much cover how to use it and the beauty is they do not show in renders.
https://www.daz3d.com/iray-ghost-light-kit
They do emit light you just have to turn the Luminance up higher, the Iray Ghos lights seem to have the same problem something changed somewhere to how the ghost light works.
Turning the luminance up on the planes does eventually cause them to emit light even when they are invisible, however it behaves very strangely and unpredictably.
Ghost Lights: YES. YES YES YES. THANK YOU. These are _exactly_ what I needed and they are amazing thank you so much.
My only issue is that they are not the same quality of light it seems as for example the native mesh lighting, my characters seem a bit 'cartoony'. Any suggesstions on the settings?
Another thing, these lights show up only in renders and the scene in my viewport is completely black. Is there any way I can light up the scene in the viewport so that I can work, but which will _not_ show up in renders?
Why not create a primitive the right size and shape as the lights in the car, place them in the right spots and make them emissive?
I use a headlamp blocker but if I remember correctly CNTRL-L (in Windows) activates the native DS lights. Just turn them off before rendering. Otherwise you can go to the settings in your camera in Parameters. The bottom one is Headlamp. Change the mode to On, again turn it off before render.
They were meant as additional lights. Try sizing them and placing them in the ceiling where the lights in the train would be. Make sure the arrow is pointing down. Run the IGLK Ghost Setup and then in the presets use the halogen bulb then in intensity use 1000K. Adjust from there.
Edit - I ran a test with a Subway car. I enclosed it in a cube so no light is coming from outside the train car. I turned off the lights that came with the train and set up a Ghost Light as shown in picture 01. Applied the IGLK Ghost Setup, then IGLK LED Neutral and then IGLK 1000K. Rendered and got picture 02. Grainy because I didn't run it for long but you get the idea. Duplicate for more lightiing.
No, ctrl L turns off the preview of the scene lights, using a headlamp-like ilumination. It has no effect on the render, it just toggles whether DS tries to show the scene lights (the default) or uses a pseudo-headlamp in the Viewport while working.
Totally necessary if you use emissive lights like Ghost Lights for ambient lighting. Usually CTRL-L is the first thing I do when I open a scene. DAZ lights (such as spotlights) do show in the Viewport but are often not enough to see what I am doing.
Ctrl L is love, ctrl L is life lol
This. I really have no idea why this is even an option. Has anyone ever wanted to work in the dark?