Light-setup

Light setup

The lighting of the scene is very simple. I used only a physical sky to illuminate my scene accordingly to my wishes. Of course, I used the Physical camera feature of Vray.

One of the reasons I started the project is the lovely mood I can always experience in sunny summer evenings when the sunlight enters in the room. So, in the initial WIP images, the physical sky was setup to be an evening sky. I managed quite well to get the same sunlight perspective and even the mood. Here are two images, early WIPs:

Because the sunlight colours were too yellow, at that time, I figured it would be best to use light deflectors to tint the lighting. I remodelled roughly the outside world of the room, as such that the light reflects similarly to the reality. The colours were picked similarly to the real counterparts. For quite some time, I used the light deflectors, because I thought it is a good thing.

As the scene grew more and more, the interior got darker and darker. The bright sun spots remained really bright, but the shadows were getting too dark, thus I was having too much contrast. In the initial stages I solved this issue by using an HDR image to generate more GI. Then, I informed myself about the LWF technique. I implemented it throughout my entire scene. Then, I dropped the light deflectors and the HDR as well. After doing many render tests, I also decided upon a definitive colour mapping setup. In the end, the light setup changed quite dramatically. This finally solved the issue of having too much contrast.

Then, as the project evolved, I realised I could have different light setups for each render perspective. I've made a comprehensive list of renders with different light setups for all the proposed final render perspectives, including a neon based light setup done with area lights. After pondering which one I like the most, from the list of renders I did, I went further with the project by picking the final light setup for each perspective. My concept behind the way I picked is to have a lot of "lights and shadows play", intricate lighting. It was very hard to pick between all the renders, because there were so many lovely moods I could have used.

I did clay renders on very high GI quality for the final render perspectives with the chosen light setups, for those interested in seeing how the lighting really is: