#lighting tutorial

[chaotic-fever-dream]

A little lighting tutorial for you my lovelies

the color of the highlight comes from the color of the light source,

the color of the ambient occlusion comes from the color of the object itself but darker,

the color of the cast shadow come from the color of the background but darker,

the color of the ambient light comes from the color of the nearest object,

the color of the subsurface scattering comes from the object itself but much more vivid

[ayyunah]

did this for my best friend @krowmachine so yeah this is how I render!!

[nsves]

blender lighting tutorial + tips.

requested by @thecrimsonsimmer + recommended viewing: youtube video one, two, three, and four. this post will be dealing with newer versions of blender (2.8+) and cycles since that's what i'm more familiar with + commonly used for rendering. this is coming from me as an artist with some dabbling in photography and things i've learned in college!

references and setting the mood

are you basing your render on an existing photo? study the light source and what direction it's coming from: that's what's going to tell you your set up for a similar effect. if you're not basing it on an existing piece, a good start is knowing How you want to set your subject (your sim) up - do you want them to be in the spotlight? are they in a specific environment that has neon lights? are you going for moody or something fresh, bright? definitely look up colors and their meaning (color theory, movie screencaps, etc.) to create a stronger image!

using resources to start the set up

it's always a good thing to mix your tools with different communities, such as the art community! many have lighting tools to figure out how to color their subject, such as this free-to-use head figure that depicts where the lighting source should be placed.

there's also the photography community and teaching people how to set up their lights for certain setups. video three and four linked in the beginning are from photography viewpoints.

spot? area? point? sun?

let's think of the lighting types as objects - a spot is like a plain lightbulb, area is a reflective sheet, spot is a flashlight, and the sun... well is the sun!

a spot is similar to an area light, but triangular/a cone. think of a helicopter search light, it's focused on a small area with the most light concentration. these can be used for lamps with lampshades, car headlights, or a lighthouse.

an area light is great for lighting up technology. a phone screen, tv screen, tablet, anything that's an LED screen emitting from a surface. the light is not as concentrated as a spot and is meant to cover more flatly (hence the rectangular source)

a point is best used for small pops of colors such as candlelight, lamppost, lightning bug tail, etc. a small source that has nothing covering it.

a sun covers the entire area and can be used as the overall mood setter. it can create filter over the entire render by just shifting the color like you would see in a movie. you'll be given a line with a sun light that gives the direction of where the sun is coming from. basically a spot light just on a much larger scale LOL.

power + coloring

this screenshot is mostly what you'll only use to start off with. watts is the unit of measurement and the higher you go, the brighter the light will be. examples with a white colored point light 10W-20W: general portrait lighting 30W-50W: bright source, close flashlight for example 60W+: blinding

coloring is just like the system for in game lights for ts4. shift it to whatever you want it to be (click the white bar, that's the color preview) and mess around with the vibrancy. the darker, more intense color, the less it's going to appear on the sim.

closeness and intensity

similar to what's shown in the head lighting tool shown earlier, the closer the light is, the more that specific area is lit up. go too close and your sim could be completely washed out. it helps to change the size of the light (change with the radius slider) to better imitate what you're wanting. the larger the radius, the more diffused and softer the light source will be. close + small = very clear of the light source shape, can obviously tell where it is in relation to the subject far away + large = soft lighting, more of a hazy lighting of the color you choose.

to quickly adjust the light, press "G" and hold down your middle mouse button to adjust which axis you'd like to edit along. green is the x-axis, blue is the y-axis, and red is the z-axis. you can also press "G" and type the letter of the axis you want to use. drag the mouse to change the placement on that specific axis to however you want. if you want to freely edit the placement, just press "G" to move it out of the axis bounds.

world lighting

take this step as setting your canvas color before you start painting. in order for the values to look their best, change the world color to the same hue of the color you are mostly using. for example, this is set in a red-toned environment:

this is essentially changing the cast shadow onto the sim. the default is gray and will muddy up your undertones if not changed properly. for this instance, if you were to still use the same red point light in a gray world color it'd look like this:

of course, this will be based on if you have an environment image or not that can affect your lighting overall. this post is based on the fact there is no environment image and what not! if you need a visual demonstration on how to mess with the world lighting, check out this short video.

i hope that helped anyone beginning to render or wanting to light up your own scenes! i'm no rendering expert, but here's some of the helpful tricks i've learned and collected over the years<3 if you have any other questions feel free to send an ask!

[actualori]

Your art is so cool! How did you do the texture/glow on that last one? What pen do you use for lineart?

thank you <3

(i use procreate to draw) i use tinderbox for lineart (slightly modified)

and i’m not very good at explaining my art processes so hopefully this makes somewhat sense-

i started with taking the moon and putting another layer above it, blurring it, setting it to add, and lowering the opacity a lot

(lil thing to try and make it make more sense)

then i went to the subjects (bdubs and the clouds) and added the same yellow to wherever the moonlight will hit (the back and edges of bdubs and the parts of the clouds facing the moon)

for bdubs: i used the syrup pen (also slightly modified) and just drew on him with different brush opacities (100, 75, 50, 25) with lower opacities for spots farther from the moonlight. i set the layer to add at about 50% opacity and clipped it to the colour layer. then i duplicated the highlights layer, uncoupled it, blurred it, and lowered the opacity even more to add a little extra glow

then for the shadows i made a new layer set to multiply at 40% opacity and did the same thing i did for the highlights (syrup pen, different opacities) but with a blue and for where the moonlight won’t hit

for the clouds: i used the same yellow and just scribbled where the moonlight would hit the clouds on an add layer and used the blend/smudge tool to blend it out with the wedge tail brush. then i duplicated it, blurred it, and lowered the opacity. for the shadows i did the same thing but with the blue on a multiply layer

for some extra depth i made a new multiply layer on top of everything and made a little vignette with the blue

hopefully that makes sense! if you have any more questions i can answer them

[fever-red-camellias]

(Reformatting the last post...)

Art tutorial for you...

OK SO SUBSURFACE SCATTERING

Real Life Examples:

OK BUT WHAT IS IT??!?

- Refers to a phenomenon in which light enters a translucent or semi-transparent material and scatters beneath the surface before being absorbed or exiting the material.

- Causes the soft, glowing effect seen in human skin, wax, marble, etc in harsh lighting

- In the art world, SSS is crucial to creating a realistic and believable rendering of translucent and semi-transparent

Some Science...

So...

And.....

ANYWAYS yeah putting this here to explain part of the last post.

[frutigermortisqueen]

Frutiger Aero orb I made with help from this! I’m so proud!

[interstellarchaosss]

Basic(?) lighting tutorial. We're not professionals and we're self-taught so this is might not be the most accurate but this is how we personally do it.

04.07.23 - Vil

[smkittykat]

hey I made a little mini tutorial on how I do these dramatic lighting pieces since some people were asking

[jaeharuart]

The past six months of experimentation and study for me to find a way to add good lighting quickly and uniformly has lead me to this so here's this one. There's many many ways to do and handle lighting in your pieces but this method with these particular settings are one of my favorite ones that I was able to stumble upon. I would still like to make a video covering a secondary method that I found works best for hotspots and colored lighting but yeah, I'm still not in a place where I have the free time to focus on a video recording and editing since my ginger boy is still healing. I was able to chip away at this slowly while he slept next to me though : 3

I'm going to do a bit a rambling now so if you're not interested you can stop reading at this point. This method actually failed for me many times during these last six months. Finding a setup that uniformly worked across light tones without burning them out to white and dark tones without burning them out to black was a challenge in itself. It wasn't until a million attempts later and adjustments that I got it to work. Having any lighting added to the base would mess it up. Using the mask to erase the shadow without adding light would be too dull. Having the contrast too high on the light mask would burn out and oversaturate the form shadow areas that were in light. There was a lot that I had to tweak and reapproach from different angles to finally find the best match for. And failing so much so often before getting there was very frustrating and discouraging lol. Anyway, that's all. I'm happy that the struggle with this is over and that I did fix what needed to be fixed so it could be a good method to work with for others and myself. : ) If you'd like to help support my art Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/JaeHaruArt/about If you'd like to follow me elsewhere LinkTree: https://linktr.ee/jaeharuart

[trentonhoshikocinematography]

Lighting diagram of "The Girl By The Window" by Edvard Munch. Discussing how filmmakers could use this image to inspire lighting looks for their projects OR simply learn more about shaping lighting by analyzing paintings.

[drawingden]

How to Paint Light by jonhuangart

[kodasea]

Rendering step-by-step (2022)

[blabberoo]

You've done this before...

Countless of times...

Why now?

Bonus :)

[awanqi]

Hi guys, exciting new stuff has been added to my Patreon!

A color and light tutorial (with a speedpaint, art breakdown/analyses, step-by-step tutorials, and more) has been dropped. I've included previews of some of the many assets included in the tutorial. Check it out today!

[bazpango]

Canon Yotsuba, the creators told me

[slushy-sash]

a short/mini digital painting tutorial by yours truly 🫡

a lot of people really like how i painted kaveh in that short hkvh comic so i thought i'd share a quick painting tutorial! I hope this can be helpful to yall ^_^