Preface to Tutorial #2 - Lighting a Scene

So browsing reddit, I noticed a perfect example of something you need to see. In order to understand how to light a scene, you need to see how scenes are lit properly. Which is a perfect set-up for my next tutorial.

After the jump you'll see the video that I'm talking about, hopefully as long as it's still up...


This YouTube video of a steady cam shot on a professional set, with professional lighting.
So watch it once to get the awesomeness out. Then watch it again, paying attention to the overhead lights, and the in-scene lights. Also notice the windows, and the sun light from the outside world.

If you're doing indoor lighting with cycles, you'll be able to use these same techniques to build a well lit scene. I'll call lights emitters from here-in, to get you more accustomed to understanding them as such.

Some things to note from the video:

• Color and Temperature of the overhead emitters.
• Size of the emitters providing soft lighting.
• Sun Lamp providing hard lighting from the windows.
• In-scene emitters are strong, adjust levels with the overhead emitters.

What you see in this video shows good lighting, and how to effectively light a scene, while not overusing your in-scene emitters.

At the end of the video you'll also see the last thing the camera goes for a closeup of, it looked like a man sitting in a chair, the lights dim, and there is a spot lamp on the character. Just pay attention to it for now, also notice where is the main light on him coming from, front of him, back, or his side?

HOMEWORK: Try setting up a simple scene, with the colors you see, and the same emitter technique (overhead, and some in-scene emitters) add a sun lamp if you wish with from a window. (If you use a sun lamp, be sure to close off the roof of your indoors scene, because the sunlamp will be everywhere.) Render your samples with cycles, and post your pictures in the comments.

For extra credit, find some more examples of showing behind the scenes lighting and post the link in the comments.

If you find you have too much light in a scene, you can adjust the exposure settings in your scene properties page to get a better light to color ratio. That is if you have too many emitters to adjust at once, exposure will adjust all your emitter uniformly.

I'm off to continue setting up the tutorial. Till next time.
-AG