Lighting Makes Or Breaks Renders (Patreon)

If you've ever looked at a render, thought something just didn't feel right about it, but couldn't quite articulate why, it was probably lighting. Things like clipping, poke through, awkward expressions, and awkward poses are easier to notice. But lighting is that subtle thing that we know when it just isn't right. Like those lovely computer screens that apparently are brighter than the noon-day sun in some renders.

Lighting is difficult. Properly lighting a scene is something that photographers, filmmakers, and artists work hard to perfect. Things like making renders too bright and washing out details ruin otherwise good renders. Likewise, we've all seen those incredibly dark renders where you can't make out anything, completely ruining a scene.

I've watched dozens of tutorials on lighting itself, not just for 3D rendering or specifically Daz. And let me tell you, getting good lighting is a journey. Let's start with the bar from Last Call game - possibly one of the hardest environments I've had in terms of lighting. Here's what it looks like out of the box when you purchase it from the Daz store.

Notice how bright that bar area is, but how dark the rest of the environment is? That was not going to work for me, as half the renders in the bar, if not more, take place at one of the tables. Now, here's one of my early renders from that same bar environment.

You'll notice, even in this shot, that the light is more balanced. Some issues though. The lighting is almost too even. Sure, there are some dark areas, but not like you'd expect. This worked well, but ultimately didn't achieve the result I wanted.

It took me several months to get back to it, but I worked on the bar quite a bit in November and December. I came up with this:

It's better. But, in trying to bring more light to the bar, I took the hard path. Added a ton of extra lights, didn't use what was there, and had the tables much darker. Basically, in an attempt to make things a bit more uneven with lighting, I went a bit too far. Not to mention that the lighting at the bar itself doesn't carry to the stools, so there was too much of a contrast.

So, a few weeks after this, with renders times increased and the lighting still needing to be compensated for with spotlights on my characters, I did some more work. Here's the result:

Overall, I'm pretty happy with this. The bar now has some darker areas, but nothing dungeon like. The tables and the bar get most of the light, but not at the expense of everywhere else. I now barely have to use spotlights for characters at the bar or tables. Just a faint spotlight to get a nice reflection in the eyes and make sure I emphasize what I want to in the scene. 

In the render above, the big rule I'm breaking is making your primary character the brightest. Bright light automatically attracts our eyes (as do human faces). With the table light over the background character, that isn't possible here, and I didn't want to artificially add light where it was darker just to do that. Good news is that once the primary focus of the scene, Kaylan, is at the bar in the render after this, that is already nice and bright, so she stands out much better.

If you're working on your own 3D renders, spend all the time you can manage to better understand lighting. I have no photography or film background, so I've been absorbing, thanks to YouTube, some fantastic tutorials on how film sets are actually lit. That has helped me immensely when lighting my scenes. And as with any hobby, you'll only get better by doing and trying.

P.S. After I wrote this entire thing, I, yet again, adjusted the bar lighting. It is looking better now in terms of brightness around the tables, and it renders faster too.

- IT Roy