Interior Lighting
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This easy to follow tutorial is intended for beginner
Anim8or users, showing a basic lighting set-up for an interior scene. While
beginners are tempted to ignore the importance of a proper lighting,
professional photographers say "lighting is everything"!
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I set up a simple scene, without anything fancy. The room is a cube with a deleted face (to allow viewing with the camera). There is a rectangular window cut on the right side where the day light enters. Some simple pieces of furniture fill the space of the room. Notice on the left the distant placing of the camera, combined with a reduced field of view, to avoid an ugly perspective distortion. |
| Having the objects that make up the scene and the camera in the
position, let's add the lights! Our first choice is an infinite light
which simulates the sunlight. We want the light to enter only through the
window, so we have to set the light to cast shadows and the room to
cast and receive shadows. The image on the right shows the settings for
the infinite light. Let's make a test render (see below): |
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Well, it's rather disappointing... It seems more like moon light. The
explanation is simple: an infinite (directional) light having the
transverse area that of the window will light up only a small area which
it intersects, leaving the rest of the room in darkness. To simulate the reality, just an infinite light is not enough! Trough the window enter not only the sun rays, but also a large amount of diffuse light coming from the outside environment. |
| We are going to bring in the diffuse light from the exterior adding a
new light, now a local light, to illuminate the whole room. We shall place
it right in the center of the window (see above the image with the scene
setup). This light has to have a lower intensity compared to the infinite
light source, as the diffuse environmental light is week against the sun
light. See on the right the parameters of this light source. Notice the large outer radius of the light compared to the inner radius! That's because we don't want to have a pronounced attenuation of the light along the room, that would look unnatural. See on the next page a test render with the additional light! |
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