Indoor lighting
Crios
Posts: 3,057
I recently switched to using only Iray, and I'm running into a problem. When I use only the environment light with the base HDRI, even for indoor scenes, the light is too strong and the characters are overexposed. On the other hand, if I use spotlights, I have to increase the brightness excessively and I can never seem to adjust it properly. Are there any specific lighting settings for indoor scenes?
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Try this and see if it helps.
Render Settings > General > Auto Headlamp to Never
Render Settings > Tone Mapping > Burn Highlight set to 0.25.
If that doesn't help try to post an image.
Every scene, shot, angle, and environment is different, so it's hard to say. What a scene needs for lighting is also different based on what you're attempting to do.
A few tricks I use:
1) If there's an angle where the light's coming in too harsh but looks good otherwise, put a semitransparent plane just off camera there to filter the light a bit (plane with opacity set somewhere between .1 and 1 based on the brightness). You can also alter the color a hair by changing the plane's color settings. I do this a lot if I need something quick.
2) Autoheadlamp to off. Always.
3) Depending on the scene, upping crush blacks can help.
4) Lower the HDRI intensity and fake the rest of the light with something more controllable (spotlight, emissive plane, etc.), changing the emission and color based on your HDRI to match.
5) Make or use lighting rigs you can find here.
Thank you for your help
I'm surprised nobody called for the easy thing. Just adjust the exposure in tone mapping, either up or down depending how much light you need. That's also what a real camera does, a photographer always sets the right exposure for the scene, before shotting anything. As for burn highlights and crash blacks, that's mostly for the contrast and highlights one wants in the shot, not for the overall light. Of course that doesn't mean that lights are always fine, as suggested a proper light rig does make the difference especially in indoor scenes. But the light rig is more to express a particular mood, as high key or low key, the light temperature etc. depending what the scene wants to communicate emotionally.