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Crazy John's Basic 3 point light rig:
Here is a very basic 3 point light set-up. It's lights all are focused on the sphere in this super simple scene. This is *only* to show possible Light locations... these positions will change from scene to scene depending on what you are trying to achieve.
Pay no attention to the Light types shown... they are for example purposed only... for those many possible positions.
While I do go into some explanation in my screen grab... here is some additional info.
Key Light:
Normally this is placed to one side or the other of the object or character you want to highlight. Ohh... and slightly above also. That is traditionally. You might want it to be coming from above or below for the effect of the main light. Still I would keep it slightly offset and not shining directly down on your main char's/obj's head/top. In my silly scene I have added a Point At modifier to have it point at the the sphere.
Fill Light:
Provides a very little amount of light for those too dark shadows. In the scene shown I have it lowered to 5%... it depends on how dark the shadows are and how much light to give them... I'll usually crank it down to 15% and go down or up a bit from there. Like the Key light I have it pointing at the sphere. I have it set to only shine on the sphere.
Just now I read in the Carrara 7 manual to position the Fill 45 degrees away for the Key Light. That might just be a good place to start with but not always where you nor I will end up.
Back Light:
I'll add one in order to create some difference at or around the edge of a character or object that I want to highlight. Unlike the Key and Fill lights I have added a Target Helper to have it point at. Why you might ask... When you use Point At it points at the Axis which is seldom what you want depending on where the Axis is located of course. This also shines only on the sphere... take that off in modifiers and see what happens.
Consider this... you load in any Figure it's Axis is at the bottom... not an ideal place, normally or ever, to point a light or a camera at. I will normally use more than 1 Target helper so I'll be able to adjust each light simply by moving the helper and not fidget with rotating the camera when wanting to make slight adjustments... I will also be able to move the Light or Camera and it will still point at the Helper. Nolo... I'm not that lazy... even before creating Target Helpers I'll take the time to aim each light or camera to point at manually towards where I want it to aim
Note: Lights, Cameras and Target Helpers can be resized without effecting any settings.
More about my scene file... I got a bit carried away messing with Light colour for all of them... so their colours are not "written in stone"... they, the colours, are to my liking, not always the best, for the render. I encourage you to play around with them or change em back to white.
Also you might want to take a look at Camera 1 backup... it will show you the view for the screen grab. If you render this camera note that the Back Light will not be correct... I zoomed the camera in and may have tilted the scene a bit then made adjustments to the position of that Back Light and target helper.
Hope this helps someone. Ohh... be sure to grab the zip file... it contains a .car file of the scene shown below.
Please let me know if anything is wrong or I have any spelling/grammer errors... I'll correct anything.
greetings I use oloneo hdr , works a treat for finetuning a render whether it's a HDR one or not.
that's good :)
I don't think that 45 degrees is correct. It should be 90 degrees - if it was 45 and your key light was 45 degrees to the left/right as many references suggest then the fill light would be pointing straight on from the camera, which you don't want. I think what it meant was 45 degrees in the other direction - if you consider the camera at 0, then the key is at 45 and the fill is at -45. As you said though, that's just a generic starting point and unless you are trying to reproduce a studio headshot you'll mostly move them elsewhere.
For the strength of the fill light, I usually start it out at a around 1/3 the strength of the key light then adjust up or down as needed during test renders (generally down if I am using indirect light too, as I don't want to lose all my shadows and flatten out the subject). Also note that you usually want your fill light to have very soft shadows, so you shouldconsider turning on soft shadows for it, use a shape light or use a glowing object casting light for it if you can.
Also, just a slight terminology correction: a back light refers to a light directly behind the subject aimed straight at the camera to achieve that cool backlighting apperance; usually there will not be many other lights since the point is to get a cool silhouette. A light coming from mostly behind and aimed at the subject so that it lights up the edges of the character is a rim light.
When setting up a rim light it really helps to use my previous advice about turning off all the other lights so you can see what it is doing while you set it up.
a couple of thoughts.
Light's in 3D programs are "tools" to allow you to reproduce "real world" lighting conditions,. or create unreal lighting.
just as with modeling, texturing, animating, it helps to understand the subject your modeling, or it's surface qualities, or the range of mechanical motion.
Light is tricky... that's a vast understatement . :)
Every day is slightly different,. and every scene lighting is slightly different. that's why Lights in a studio are all movable, and can be repositioned according to the subject or the mood of the shot.
There are some very useful techniques or methods which are used in "Photo studio" and cinema lighting
The BigMac and iphone video is a good example of a Diffused bounce light.
In Carrara,. you can use "Anything Glows lights" to make an object into something which emits light,.
if your subject is an alien on a planet with three sun's,. then you'll need to think beyond the realms of a three light rig.
Light can create a Mood,. Blue/green light can create creepy, cold, lonely, etc,. Yellow/red light can create pleasant, warm, sociable, etc.
these "opposites" can work well together.
There's no simple (one size fits all) lighting. although you can create a set of lights which work well,. it means that every subject is lit the same way. (like a passport photo booth).
anyway,. here's a quick scene, "latenight cowboy",. lit using anything glows lights,. no bulbs/spots/distant lights etc... just some objects emitting light.
the B/W version was done for fun, using Alienskin's ExposureX2.
Thank you head wax, My main hope was to only show very basic, possible, light positions for 3 point lighting so those new to 3D and Carrara know what it means when other folks talk about it.
MDO, Kewl info!... TY, I just had to go look again both at my scene, in which Fill is at 90 degrees, and the Carrara manual... sure enough pic shows it a 45 which is not correct for me in any circumstance I've run across. Manual's pic below it also shows that the Fill is above the Key lights Z position... while I have mine set at the same height, Zed, which is still not normally correct but happened to work not to bad for the silly sphere.
Thanks for pointing out what Back and Rim lights are I'd forgotten the term Rim, too long I've used Back instead. I'd originally manually set it up pointing at the camera then changed it to point slightly off when pointing at target... must start naming properly... else I'm no better than the manual's pic. :)
3DAGE, Thanks for your words of wisdom also! You both have summed up/and more of what I was trying to say. Great point about there being no "one size fits all".
I took some time to try out Anything Glows and have found out something... seems that if you have Restrict Lighting to/Only that no light is emitted... I've included a few pics of my adventure. Now I have a few Questions.
realistic sky clouds can cast shadows
I don't see any control to lessen or do away with Realist Cloud's shadows... Voumetric Cloud's have controls for shadow intensity.
John - the "All Objects Except / Only" options on lights require that something is included in the list below it. Let's say you have a scene with a cube, a sphere and a pyramid. If you select All Objects Except and add the cube to the list then the sphere and pyramid will be lit by that light but not the cube. Conversely if you use Only with the cube on the list, only the cube will be lit and nothing else in the scene.
Using the glow channel in the shader only works if you render with Full GI on. So expect longer render times, but the results are (in my opinion) generally better than using conventional lights. You will need to increase the glow quite a lot - I usually use Color multipled by Value (1-10000%) with the value set probably over 1000, and use the color channel to control the color of the light.
I'd better edit it to be clearer... I was trying to point out that Anything Glows only works when All Objects Except is on... when I ticked Only it no longer worked and would not emit any light... I didn't have add objects for restricting light either way. I got the impression that it might be a bug... or may have been me since it was my first real experiment with Anything Glows.
Thanks for the tips on the Glow channel and GI.
The All Objects Except and Only all work that way - if you don't have anything in the list, All Obhects Except (nothing) will illuminate everything, and Only (nothing) won't light anything - logical really!
Hi John :)
Phil is right,. you need to add some objects,. if you set it to Only light those objects,.
See pic
Yes,. the size and shape can make a difference,. Anything glows,. can work based on the objects vertices,. so, the more verts the more light points
Thanks for straightening me out... I must have never tried selecting Only whithout adding an object or more in the box. Hope I didn't offend..
Andy, Of course Phil is correct... I've just tested it out more and now understand to not use the Only box unless I add somethng in the box. Thanks for letting me know that size, shape and verts matter
I didn't even think of being offended!
Great! I can sleep easy tonight. :)
Andy, I keep forgetting to mention that your "latenight cowboy" looks super... I'm impressed.
I've fallen and can't get up! Ha
The reason for my absence....well last wed I fell and broke my hip (trash can - 1, Me - 0) and am currently in rehab learning to walk again. ???????? Patiently waiting until I can return!
On no! Hope you feel better soon.
.
that's great news, you will be able to spend more time with Carrara !
but seriously, that's sounds like crap, good luck with the rehab,
dont be long Carrara needs you.
Get healthy as soon as you can, John! Carrara will miss you.
Ouch! Look after yourself there, chap!
On the positive side, Carrara counts as rehab . . . doesn't it?
Issues with walk cycles are not lighting related!
But seriously, ouch! Hope you recover quickly. Any sort of rehab is never fun.
Jon, my wishes for a speedy recovery, and a question for the forum:
How do I make shadows darker? I've read where people have asked about making them softer, but never harder and darker.
I have ambient on zero, no GI, and using spotlights. Shadows already at 100%. They look dark grey. I need then near-black (dramatic lighting).
Any suggestions?
You could try rendering a Shadow Pass using Carrara's Multipass Rendering and manipulate that in your favorite 2D software.
Sorry to hear about your accident John,.
get well soon.
Unified brain ,. with those settings you shold have black shadows,.
try rendering an image,. open that in an image editor,. and use the "info" panel with the eyedropper (colour picker tool) to see the actual values in the image
see pic.
Thanks DesertDude, but my desire was to do it in Carrara. For sure, it would be relativey easy to fix in PSE.
Thanks 3DAGE, that was what I really needed to hear. If, under those circumstances, it is supposed to be black, then it was likely operator (my) error. And sure enough, when I went back over everything in the setup, there was a light in there influencing the shadow. Now it is working great.
Sometimes I just need a voice of authority.
Ouch! Get well soon, John!
John, hope you're doing better and the rehab is helping.
Thanks Ted, Andrew, Vyusur, Tim, Mark, UB, Andy, Phil and BunyYip02. Been home since Saturday noon and catching up on some threads. I don't know that Carrara needs me but first few days I sure missed being able to use it. Met a few folks with the same warped sense of humor I have so enjoyed joking with them. My Niece stopped by and typed in some of what I said to let everyone know why I'd gone missing... adding her own twist on it.
Carrara should count as rehab... too bad I can't just simply model a new left leg... now have a rod and some screws in femer bone... trying to get it working again without pain... gets better every week... Read all the details as well as an idea for a project to model I came up with in WGD Crazy Artwerks.
I messed around a bit this morning with a distant light, a plane and object... I found that turning Gamma Correction off or lowering it below 2.2 or 1.8, I used 1.1 to experiment, will create a very dark shadow. Problem with that is Shaders will need adjusting. Tried setting shadows to 200 but defaults back to 100%... and checking the Negative box produces an even brighter shadow... drat.
Oh, physical therapy! Ouch. But it is so important to get full range of motion right away. Get better soon.