lighting a scene / model

[Shelton]

I am starting a new project. I have modeled an easel and wanted to place a light at the top. I have model a glass canopy on the light and have placed a light / bulb in the canopy.

 

I have a couple of questions.

 

I want the canopy to glow from the light / bulb. How do I do this?

 

I want the bulb to mimic a real bulb and shine downward as a result of the canopy. Can you help me on this?

 

Here is a render of the start of lighting the scene. thanks

 

Steve

[c-wheeler]

How about turning glow on in the surface properties? I am not sure what effect you are after but this might suffice.

 

I suggest you change the bulb type to Klieg. Then call it something like easil light( or whatever suits)

Add the new light into the cho window by dragging and dropping it.

In the cho window simply go into a side view(shortcut 4 or 6) and position it by selecting the light model(left click)then drag it into the right position.

press "r" or select rotate and rotate the light by grabbing the handles so that it points in the the desired direction.

Do the same in the front window(shortcut 2).

 

I suggest turning off all other light in the scene(In the cho project workspace click on "shortcut to Keylight, active,OFF" then repeat for all lights except the easil one. Dont forget to turn them back on afterwards) until you are happy with the effect. Then turn them back on afterwards.

 

I hope this helps.

Chris

[Shelton]

What is the best practice? Light the model while or light the model in Chor window....

 

Thanks for the help. Glow feature was what I was thinking of but could not get my thoughts together last night.

[c-wheeler]

In this case I would add the light to the choreography, I find it easier to use and play with there.

[MattWBradbury]

I see the exact problem you were having with your first image, so I did a quick test to see what I would need. Here's what I came up with:

 

 

Here's the layout of the lights

 

 

Since the lights are so large, and I was using multipass, the lights moved around a lot and created an even more accurate shadow for a tube light.

 

 

The lights had very long falloff distances, and very low intensities. This created more diffuse shadows; I kept getting a very bright top and a dark bottom. For the glowing light, I selected all of the parts of the fixture model that would be touched by light, and I set it to a group with glow on it. I also set the glow value in the Choreography to 500% to get more glow. I think it turned out rather well. I could do a little more tweaking with the glow to get it less bright, but I will leave that up to you.

[Shelton]

Excellent that is the look I am going for. Here is the newest render I made before I read your post.

 

Steve

 

I will give a try in a few minutes

 

Matt

 

how many lights do you have set up?

[MattWBradbury]

I used ten lights for my array. You could probably use fewer and get acceptable results.