lightinjg / rendering tips needed

[andromeda_girl]

i'd appreciate any advice on where i can go for excellent rendering and lighting help.
primarily, for photoreal renders.

just not into 3D enough to have this down, kinda new to it.

books?
online tutorials?

thanks,
~A,
.

[WizCraker]

1 (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1584500387/002-1673063-1126417?v=glance)
2 (http://www.3drender.com/light/)
and of course here 3 (http://members.shaw.ca/lightwavetutorials/lighting.htm)

[thekho]

I bought it last year and for me, this is the best lighting book is Digital Lighting & Rendering by Jeremy Birn. This book is not lightwave but it showing a lot of different programs (3d max, XSI, Maya etcs) each others for examples of the lightings. This book has really helped me a lots.

If you want to learn only lightwave. Go check it out http://www.newtek.com/products/lightwave/tutorials/animation/lighting-002/index.html and http://www.newtek.com/products/lightwave/tutorials/animation/lighting/index.html both are really very good lighting tutorials for Lightwave.

[Adrian@Stufish]

If you want photo-real lighting then read up on lighting for photographers !
Although the desire for 'a button which does the lighting for me' tends to lead to HDRI and all things radiosity, it is unfortunately true that in real life photographers, cinimatographers and even TV camerapeople spend a lot time getting rid of 'real' ambient light in order to take decent pictures which don't have to be processed into usability.
Lighting in LW is very similar to real world lighting, it's only the subtleties of re-reflected light that don't work the same - and that is a detail you can work your own way round later.
In the real world people move their lights around and alter the colours and brightness of the lights untill it looks how they want it to look, in LW you can do the same. Just don't try to use Full resolution and maximum AA on your lighting tests - think polaroid!

[andromeda_girl]

perhaps i'm a doofus, and perhaps i'm more-so for not pointing out i had worked prior to becioming a digital compositor, as a professional photographer for 7 years.

i know plenty regarding lighting, realworld conditions, studio conditions, all of it. what tends to frustrate me is getting my lighting quality in LW to match what i really need / want to see. it's just me and the program here, not me and knowing lighting itself.

is there any way to get (and PLEASE, please, please forgive me for saying this!!!) -a 'cone of influence' to show up in layout just like you get in 3DS MAX? I hate that program but always thought the lights were a tad easier to use because i had a visual representation of a light's fall off, etc.

surely LW has this option????? this alone will be a great- no, a spectacular help for me.

~A.

[andromeda_girl]

oh yeah, i appreciate everyone's help here, i think that last tutorial is a gooder, as are the book ideas!
~A.

[Adrian@Stufish]

You should have no problems. (I'm an ex stage set & lighting designer myself, with many years up a talloscope/ladder/grid in my distant murky past)
The cone is always there for a 'spot' light - which is probably what you are using . But you may have to adjust relative size of the 'cone' lines shown by balancing between grid size and zoom in your plan and elevation views - if you use 2 fingers on [ and ] for the grid size and the same 2 fingers on , (coma) and . (stop) for the zoom (e.g. 2 taps on '[' followed by 2 taps on ',' you will hold the framing ov the view while adjusting the seen size of the light icon and its cone.
If you select 'inverse distance' in the light properties for falloff you will then see a circle around the light denoting the distance set - which is the distance at which the relative brightness set applies (so to speak) you can also of course set a viewport to 'light' view and look 'through' the light while you rig&focus.
No ladders, no blue spots in the eyes. 'Swoderfull.
(linear falloff is occasionaly usefull if you want to 'stop' the light going to far but it's prameters are completely different - the circle appears at the distance where the light is zero brightness, the value set is reached at half that distance. So if you try to switch between linear and inverse distance the light values jump around all over the place. Remember you can always 'target' a light or ideed a group of lights (motion options for the light) onto a null object parented to your subject - so if you re-arrange your composition the lights follow. (Cheating !)

[andromeda_girl]

ok-
so if i understand you correctly, to see the light's falloff etc it's a matter of setting my gridsize to the right size?
if this is correct, it sounds like an awfully odd way to go about seeing an important item of reference!

i expected a damn button for having it visible or not.

hmmm.

well, we chall see if i can pull this off.
i've never seen these reference lines in lw, so this should prove intgeresting.
looking through the light's view always had limited appeal for me, i prefer being able to see how far and wide my light's reach is going, that sort of simple stuff.


~A.

[Adrian@Stufish]

The 'oddness' is realy part of the control over scale of your working area - a major point of advantage of LW over the real world.
If you imagine being able to position a light in your studio that was as bright as the sun and the same distance away ?
So what you are doing is simply telling LW what scale you want to work at, - if you like, how big your studio is, it doesn't take long, and it means that you can set lights to light a matchbox, a room, a building, a country or a world - all using the same toolkit.

[Adrian@Stufish]

P.S.
seeing your lighting from the observers point of view without using test renders is a matter of maximising the use of your graphics card's 'openGL' capacities.
There is a limit to how many light sources opengl can handle - although you can set a number (in the general options panel I think).
LW will not normally show you (through the camera without a render) the effect more than the number of lights set/ or the maximum your card can support. So put your important lights in first.

[andromeda_girl]

you'd be blown away at what my box can handle bub.

Dual Opteron 64 bit 240's
2 GB RAM presently, (room for 12 GB)
128 MB FX 5200 geforce IV card (presently)
Video Toaster III (will be the next toy to go in)
240 GB drive space
120GB firewire external storage
4 x 36 GB ultra 320 SCSI RAID (will be the next toy to go in)
Windows XP Pro (presently 32 bit vers.)

this thing is a monster, very fast, very powerful.
made for film rez compositing.

benchmark testing the radiosity LW scene with maxing out all settings (camera and rendering, plus adding a few animated lensflares) to max res, it took 42 seconds for a 640 x 480 render.
...that was before the video card went in.

[js33]

Sounds like a nice system.
However the video card will have no effect on render times.
It only effects the speed of the OpenGL.
How about posting some render times of the benchmark scenes?

Cheers,
JS

[andromeda_girl]

i could do that sure, that last one i mentioned was essentially IT for me.

as for video card relevancy, yeah i understand that, i did however find the machine was able to play back scenes in open GL amazingly fast (not rendering, just hitting play) and adding more lights and lens flares and open gl fog did little to slow it down.
90 FPS i think was where it played it.

~A.

[pblacklock]

how about posting the scene so i can see what my old p4 1.8 gig clunker can do compare to your :eek: rocket powered cpu!

thanks,
Paul

heck it might just give me an excuse to upgrade now.

[WizCraker]

http://www.hurleyworks.com/ has some Free LScripts on Lighting as well some other goodies.