INDOOR ILLUMINATION

yuri1810

Hello, I met this little issue when I try to light up an indoor scene, like in a room, rendering with IRAY.

Basically, if I want to light up the scene from above of the room or to simulate a lamp light on the ceiling, I have to hide the ceiling itself otherwise I get a dark scene, as if the ceiling overshadow objects and characters underlying. When I hide the ceiling, I get a good illumination and that's ok if I render a scene without showing the ceiling, but what if I want to frame a scene from the bottom to the top, showing the ceiling? I hope to have explained my problem clearly, thanks!

frank0314

You could put a spot light up against the ceiling pointing down and adjust the spread angle. You can even use a point light but it can be annoying trying to get it at the proper height so it don't shine on the ceiling. Light won't penetrate through geometry

yuri1810

frank0314 said:

You could put a spot light up against the ceiling pointing down and adjust the spread angle. You can even use a point light but it can be annoying trying to get it at the proper height so it don't shine on the ceiling. Light won't penetrate through geometry

Thanks, I will try! But normally I like to use DistantLight, so how could I get a good illumination using it without hide the ceiling?

Tobor

If you're needing to only show a part of the ceiling, make yourself a false ceiling (Create-New Primitive, Plane), and give it a texture -- for example, the Concrete shader in the Daz Iray/nVidia MDX Example looks a little like an acoustic ceiling. Resize the plane to be no more than what you need, and place it over the walls and in the camera view.

If you need to create a ground shot looking straight up, you'll need to light from the floor, not from the ceiling.

IceDragonArt

You can't use a distant light for an interior room with a ceiling because in Iray it works just like the real world.  If there is a roof, the sun does not shine through the roof to light the room.  so you have to work around that

mjc1016

Ice Dragon Art said:

You can't use a distant light for an interior room with a ceiling because in Iray it works just like the real world.  If there is a roof, the sun does not shine through the roof to light the room.  so you have to work around that

Skylights....

Find (there are some basics on Archive.org)/borrow from the library/buyKindle/whatever an intro to photography book...or a little more in depth an intro to photgraphic lighting.   Iray lighting is much more like that than anything else...plus the camera is manual, no auto anything.

colinmac2

I've found it simpler to delete the ceilings, if possible.  

Petercat

If your scene has ceiling lights, you can make them emissive (DZfire's Real Lights) to light the scene as in real life. Or you could create a primitive sphere or plane, place it where you want the light to come from, and make it emissive. The larger the primitive, the softer the shadows. I often use a 3' sphere next to the camera during test renders. This is a quick one where I made existing ceiling lights emissive: