Ok, I have been working on creating new scenes for my LFS renders. My goal is to create a better lighting setup so I can take the level of my renders up a bit. I have been experimenting and googling, reading and what not intensively the last week or so but I just can't seem to come up with a good setup. To be honest I have been on the verge of pulling my hair out.

I'm looking for a nice studio setup along the lines of this:



A render I did earlier coming somewhat close to what I want in terms of the floor and background lighting (but not the shadows on and below the car):



So basically I want to have the cars in a spotlight, with a dark background which gradually transfers to a light floor.

The setup I have used in different variations is in the thumbnails pictured below. The lights above the car are just two weak lights to create some lighting on just the tyres. The omnis on the right are also weak lights only for the wheels.

So I have set the environment to a dark color, with a coloured spotlight (depends on which colour I want) aimed at the floor with a high intensity so it creates the bright spot on the ground. Which works out pretty much the way I want it to be. I have exluded the car from being lit by this spotlight otherwise I would get an extremely bright car. It also doesn't cast shadows off the car. The problem however is that because of this light, the shadows created by the GI and other weaker lights get "neutralized" so to speak (don't know how to define this better), and for shadows I am completely dependant on the spotlight for the shadows, which I don't want for flexibility reasons. It also requires me to completely rearrange the lighting if I change the angle I want the car to be in. No matter what I do, tweaking the shadows and the lights, it just doesn't work the way I want it to. So I think I am approaching this completely wrong (experts don't laugh if my setup looks silly ). I have tried several other ideas but I really am out of ideas right now.

I want the lighting setup to be as simple and effective as possible.

So this goes out to any of you who can help me improve my setup or propose any other ideas.
I hope I have explained myself clearly, don't hesitate to ask.

I'll probably update this post later to explain more/better.

Hi There Joen!

Im not a 3ds pro but im gonna tell u what i see. First, maybe im wrong but are u using Vray or Brazil to render? Looks more like Vray but......assuming you are using Brazil (easier to achieve car renders [don't know if it is better]) looks like the first one have a big plane (white) with self illumination over the car (That's what makes the white reflection on half the car) + Skylight (white) + Indirect illumination turned on and (Maybe) Enviroment Map. and thats it......Plus some PS (Diffuse Shine [don't know the right translation])

I hope it helps you but please, don't take mine like THE final word, im just learning like you (more modelling then rendering). Tutorials and experimenatation are the right way

Here you can find some useful help: http://www.cg-cars.com

Grettings ! // Sorry for my ugly english.....:*/

Thanks for your reply. I'm using Brazil at the moment. I'm also getting to know vRay, because I want to switch to it eventually. But first I want to sort this lighting setup out, I don't think I will have much trouble switching over.

The setup you described is more or less the same as I have been using before I started remaking my scenes. The reflection pane method works fine basically but the aim of my new scene is to take it a bit further and to give it more depth, mainly the spotlight I described. Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't think that method would accomplish that.

I've looked for tutorials but I haven't found one that shows me the results I want, is not overly complicated or doesn't give me the same problems I have now. I find out how to do thing mostly by experimenting but that has proven to be a dead end in this case. The lighting on the car itself is not the biggest problem, I think I can improve on that, it's the environment that is not working out.

I know cgcars, that's where I got the first picture from

How about just making a nice background image in photoshop and using that as the ground plane? You won't need to use lights to get the effect on the floor you want. I read somewhere on cgcars that guys use textures to achieve a studio look, usually grey gradients etc. Haven't really looked into it much to offer more help, I usually stick with the reflective floor in my renders hehe

Quote from Davo :

I usually stick with the reflective floor in my renders hehe

That famous reflective floor....

You might wanna check out http://www.evermotion.org/vbul ... &highlight=honda+vray

Could you attach those pics here, you have to be a member to see attachments there.

Quote from Davo :

How about just making a nice background image in photoshop and using that as the ground plane? You won't need to use lights to get the effect on the floor you want. I read somewhere on cgcars that guys use textures to achieve a studio look, usually grey gradients etc. Haven't really looked into it much to offer more help, I usually stick with the reflective floor in my renders hehe

Yes, that would be an option too I guess. But since I really want to learn more about lighting I prefer to try using the lights. But I will look into it to see how it will come out.

Quote from ramtech :

You might wanna check out http://www.evermotion.org/vbul ... &highlight=honda+vray

Thanks for the link, I'll check that out. It appears I registered there before but I've been waiting for my pasword reminder email for about 15 minutes now

Quote from Davo :

Could you attach those pics here, you have to be a member to see attachments there.

I cant, cause they are gonna ban me from the other forum..
If you're interested in 3D stuff, you can register there, there's a shitload of free stuff

i just looked at that guy goose1982, found his renders in the user gallery at evermotion, i didn't see that honda, but i did see the rest of his renders, which... tbh they are not very advanced, all hes using is a GI, and an evermotion HDRI and thats about it really
[edit - it may have been a dosch HDRI, i can't remember which it is]

for your BF1, all you need to do is set up a GI to get that shadow, no need for that reflective ground, its never (rarely.. i will say that) used because its hard to keep clean in the real world, because it leaves behind tire tracks and all sorts of junk and just a pain in the ass really

and if you do plan on moving to Vray, now would be a good time, if you keep that spotlight, keep no GI, and put a vray light in the scene where the spotlight is (still keeping the spotlight to get the hard shadows) you can use the vray light to get the soft shadows you want

also, just FYI the first render you showed that you're trying to get to is photoshoped a fair ammount, (which gives it that glow effect), basically just standard post production "not that real" stuff

thats.. the advice i have if it helps any

XCNuse: the Honda scene uses no GI, just 3 VRayLights. Btw, he had the scene posted (without the car) in Evermotion, but i cant find it anymore.. damn

edit: Yep, he removed it from his site. Im sure if you send him an email you'll be able to get it from him.
http://www.evermotion.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=51709 <-- here's 2 more screenshots of the scene

(im not a member there)

well.. 1 vray light uses a "GI" in the sense it produces the same effects, so ... the only effect 3 would have is just lighting from different angles

Quote from XCNuse :

....also, just FYI the first render you showed that you're trying to get to is photoshoped a fair ammount, (which gives it that glow effect....

The glow effects can be acheived with Glare Lum in Mental Ray without going to post production or Photoshop. Other Rendering package may have simular feature too.

Quote from XCNuse :

i just looked at that guy goose1982, found his renders in the user gallery at evermotion, i didn't see that honda, but i did see the rest of his renders, which... tbh they are not very advanced, all hes using is a GI, and an evermotion HDRI and thats about it really
[edit - it may have been a dosch HDRI, i can't remember which it is]

for your BF1, all you need to do is set up a GI to get that shadow, no need for that reflective ground, its never (rarely.. i will say that) used because its hard to keep clean in the real world, because it leaves behind tire tracks and all sorts of junk and just a pain in the ass really

and if you do plan on moving to Vray, now would be a good time, if you keep that spotlight, keep no GI, and put a vray light in the scene where the spotlight is (still keeping the spotlight to get the hard shadows) you can use the vray light to get the soft shadows you want

also, just FYI the first render you showed that you're trying to get to is photoshoped a fair ammount, (which gives it that glow effect), basically just standard post production "not that real" stuff

thats.. the advice i have if it helps any

Thanks for the advice, I think I'm going to look into vRay more sometime this weekend and try your suggestion.
Yeah, I suspected that first pic to have post production done to it. But it's mainly about the environment and not the car. Because I have been working on the lighting/shading on the car some more and I got that to improve quite a bit.

I would like to check out that thread on evermotion too, but I can't seem to get registered there

Ok, a quick question about vRay. When starting a render with brazil you have to option to select "buckets mode" which enables you to render only a certain part of the scene. This has proven invaluabe to me to see the effects of changing lighting for instance on a certain material without having to do a complete render again. I can't seem to find anything similar in the vRay settings. I only see settings to change the bucket size. Is this possible though?

EDIT: oh, and another thing. How do I enable a ground plane in vRay (like the CSG settings in Brazil)? Or is it necessary to draw a plane yourself?

you make the plane yourself also, vray has a bucket mode, but its suggested not to be used, its not really a bucket mode persay; but, in the irridance map settings, see where it says Mode, and by default it says "Single frame", after a render, all you have to do is click save right next to that, and then change single frame to "from file", and just make sure the file path is in the line below it, and it can shatter render speeds now, if you want this to be used for multiple angles (it only saves what is seen from the camera) then you can follow this tutorial: http://www.spot3d.com/vray/help/150R1/tutorials_imap1.htm @samyip, yes but i assure you that is a try of post production, glare lume has a different effect, as you can see, the car has an even glow effect all the way around, with glare lume, it has a harder effect at closer parts to the light etc. somethigns really messed up with the forum at the second... wow this came out messy

i'll look into that, thanks

I'm having a problem again
See the picture, the tyre sidewalls are completely messed up. When I render this with Brazil they look fine. At first I thought it had to do with the fact that I smoothed my tyres and wheels, but I downloaded a pre-made BF1 scene to check if it was something I did. but that had the same problem.
I tried it with a standard material and a vRay material. i just have the diffuse map set to use the alpha channel, no different than I always do. It shows up normal in the viewport too.
Anyone have a clue?

yep, this happened every time i loaded up the BF1, theres 2 sidewalls for some reason causing that cutting like that, hence the weird spots and the cutouts, i can't remember what i did if there wasn't, but just try and delete a set of sidewalls and there should be some remaining underneath

Excellent, that works
Thanks again

Stumbled upon this studio setup tutorial when exploring vray rendering.

http://www.aversis.be/extra_tu ... /vray_studio_lighting.htm

Quote from Davo :

Stumbled upon this studio setup tutorial when exploring vray rendering.

http://www.aversis.be/extra_tu ... /vray_studio_lighting.htm

Funny, I stumbled upon this one this morning in the depths of my bookmarks. I remember bookmarking it a long time ago because I had a feeling I was going to switch to vRay someday. I had forgotten about it. Thanks though

Have you switched to vray? I just started trying it out and omg, the renders look better and are much quicker also. Still plenty to learn of materials but I find it's actually easier to adjust properties and get somewhere yourself compared to brazil where I had no clue what the settings did. I'm going to slowly work in vray and try to convert my brazil lfs scenes to vray. It rocks!

Quote from Davo :

Have you switched to vray? I just started trying it out and omg, the renders look better and are much quicker also. Still plenty to learn of materials but I find it's actually easier to adjust properties and get somewhere yourself compared to brazil where I had no clue what the settings did. I'm going to slowly work in vray and try to convert my brazil lfs scenes to vray. It rocks!

I'm in the process of doing so I'm not too sure on it being quicker though But maybe it's my settings I have to check out. I do think the renders come out sharper than in Brazil. I've got a long way to learn the materials, but my scenes didn't depend heavily on Brazil materials anyway, so I can use most of them unchanged since they are standard or finalrender materials. I actually think vRay is more confusing than Brazil as far as materials go, but that's probably a matter of getting used to it.
I still miss my select buckets tool though

A 1600x1200 render in brazil took about 25minutes, in vray it took less than 3minutes hehe without reflective flooring though, still to work that out. It wasn't aliased or anything like that, brazil really did a bad job if anti aliasing wasn't turned on.

Yeh I really miss the buckets mode too, but for test renders I've learnt to just turn the quality down and it takes about 30 seconds to do a 640x480 test render of the whole scene which is plenty.