Quickie! (Patreon)

Hey Folks! Just messing around whilst i gear up for the next sequence and mull over a longer story project. I'm constantly playing around with different render/lighting methods to try and improve things and possibly even speed up the process. This one turned out quite nice so thought I'd share; lol, i appreciate it may not look all that different to other renders but this represents several days pushing dials and experimenting!!

For any fellow renderers out there, my main beef has been trying to move away from HDR environment lighting for internal scenes and moving to mesh/spot/point lighting. I know HDRIs give really crisp and high quality results and don't have half the draw backs of mesh lighting but i find the images tend to look a little flat and 2d; I also find it hard to get consistent lighting when  i move the camera to different angles i.e. from directly above or low down looking up; i also like to keep the backgrounds in the stadium in the dark so requires loads of workarounds to get the HDR lighting to do this. 

This image is lit purely with point lights arranged consistent with the actual arena lighting and I find the eye doesn't as quickly find the inconsistencies with the light sources; as the light is directed at the character from all directions, it 'pops' a little more than HRIs where everything is front on (i did try placing point lights behind the character with HDR lighting as described in some of the lighting products but wasn't getting consistent results especially is the character is on the ground where the point light impacts the scenery too much)

in short HDR in my opinion are far and above superior when you're making a one-off image 

In this image, I've still left the environment on setting the time to dusk; the good thing about using mesh lighting is i can still use the environment light for errr..the environment! 

Mesh lighting does have its drawbacks, more so than HDRs though. There isn't much 'bounce' so areas in shadow tend to look a little too dark (check her knees and groin area). I find also theres more awkward unrealistic shadowing. The one cheat I've used is a Mesh light attached to or around the camera to give a bit of flash effect; I've used one of the HDR Mesh lighting kits available on Daz and highly recommended. 

Well that's all my rambling done. I'll see you on the weekend for next upload!