Simple Lighting Workflows in Cinema 4D and Redshift. Full Scene Lighting Breakdown.

[Music] in today's lesson we're going to be  talking about the lighting setup of this scene   this is going to be a full breakdown of not only  the technical details but most importantly the   lighting theory that went into making this scene  so let's jump in and see what it's all about all   right let's talk lighting so today we are going to  go over the lighting breakdown of this shot right   here um I'm going to walk you through just kind  of the thought process kind of um how everything's   built where the lights are put and why the lights  are put um and what's really cool is that on this   scene um this scene was used to create all  these other scenes that you're seeing here in   motion so basically what I did is I took the same  lighting setup that we're about to go over and I   just applied it to other scenes and just started  moving them around and move the camera around um   with slight alterations so um yeah that's what  we're going to do we're going to go over it um   we're going to talk about uh where the lights are  placed why the lights are placed just kind of some   of the pitfalls I ran into um and the challenges  so let's jump in and let's do it all right so the   first thing with this scene always always always  is find your composition so um without going to   too much detail what I did is I ended up landing  on this composition which I thought was kind of   nice as kind of an uplifting angle um of this  synthesizer kind of coming into scream um I have   a pretty long lens on here I don't even know what  I'm using 150 um I usually prefer longer lenses I   think they and make things look nicer um rather  than wider lenses um so yeah so basically that's   all that's happening here I just have it tilted  to a slight angle and you'll see that the camera   is just pointing like that okay so that's the  composition always get your composition first   um because when you're lighting um it's going  to look different based on your composition so   if this moves your lighting is going to move um  the next thing I did is um I set up the tech now   this is not going to be a texturing exercise but  just know that textures are so crucial to your   lighting right um if something shiny versus Matte  finished it's going to look totally different so   um there are some challenges in this setup if we  bring back open the picture viewer here uh the   main challenges are that we have things are very  reflective they're flat anything that's flat is   always a challenge to light um and we also have  two extremes we have uh extreme light to extreme   dark so we have white to Black um so there is  that so these these textures are definitely a   challenge to work with and more a challenge to  work with um but we got through them so just   know that the the textures you have greatly  affect your lighting tremendously affect them   and how you treat your lighting okay okay so  now that we know the basics of the scene set   up um let's talk about the lighting which is the  reason why we're all here right so um looking at   this image um I can give you a little background  of kind of what I was thinking and and the thought   process of uh yeah how I wanted this to feel so  I knew that I wanted a strong directional light   that was coming from the top because I felt like  this was kind of uplifting it was kind of moving   from bottom to top and I wanted to feel like it  was motivated by something like it was moving   towards the light uh it was actually going towards  that light so you could think of this as the key   light is actually this strong directional light  that's coming from to from the top so let's go   ahead and let's make that key light all right  so the first thing that we are going to do is   let me just get this back here I'm going to just  go to grayscale mode here just so we can see our   lighting if you're not familiar um you can just  hit this button here and it'll light everything   in grayscale and let's go to uh red shift object  area light okay it's going to be super bright um   but that's okay for now let's go ahead and let's  go to our area light and let's name this our key light okay and I'm going to click this little  button here I'm going to say add Target tag   and null and basically all this is going to do  is just help us uh move a little bit quicker so   just going to add a Target and a null um let's  go ahead and Center this this key light Target   so I just hit zero it's a shortcut I have on mine  um so now it's just zeroed out at the coordinates   okay now if you remember um we want this light to  be kind of up top and we want it to be kind of at   the same same angle as this is happening right as  the light is actually positioned now you can tell   this is incredibly large light and it's also  incredibly bright so let's fix that first of   all let's go ahead and bring down the intensity  quite a bit maybe somewhere in here all right and   if you don't know um also the size of your light  affects the intensity so let's go ahead and bring   down the size of the light and let's have this be  much much smaller so if we come over here we go   to our key light you see as we scale it down the  size of it is actually going to go down so let's   just bring it down down down cuz again I want it  to be something that is um kind of concentrated it   should be like a little bit of a concentrated  light let's do something like this maybe and   I kind of want it to be a little bit behind so  it's a little dramatic right so what we're going   for here is we're going for a little bit of um  fall off that's happening right we want our main   light to be coming through here okay next thing we  can do is we can come over here to our attributes   panel and let's go ahead and let's just bring  down the spread now if you're not familiar with   spread basically all it's going to do is basically  how tight um kind of like your fallof is on the   light so like if I do this it's going to just be  completely sharp but if we go somewhere maybe in   here or something then it's it's going to be kind  of soft but also pinpointed um I still think this   light is a little big so let's go ahead and keep  bringing it down down down and then let's also   move our Target to be somewhere in here cuz  what I'm trying to do is basically I'm just   trying to get it to hit this area right here okay  so we're just trying to get to hit this area all right and again I'm going try to get this as  close as possible to the original within reason   all right so you can see now what's happening  is we're getting this kind of similar to what   we had we have this nice dramatic light that's  happening um and it's um yeah it's creating some   interest right it's creating some drama and  some interest um so we're going to say that   this is good for now let's hit save so we've  got our key light and our key light is kind   of directing our eye um but now that I'm looking  at this I still don't like I don't like how how   long these Shadows were if we go back to how it  was these Shadows for me are personally too long   so let's just move it up just a little bit and  I'm also going to bring up the spread I think   just a little bit so it's like this and then  perhaps we should even still no let's not do   that let's just bring down the intensity let's  go ahead and bring down the intensity just   a bit something like that we might go back and  change it but the the point is that we want it to be just kind of kissing it all right we're going  to leave that there we're going to say that's our   key light for now we can always go back and  adjust okay so um looking at this so this is   essentially what we were trying to create next  let's go ahead and let's adjust the temperature   of this light cuz this temperature for me is  a little warm and I actually wanted a cooler   temperature um so let's go and let's go and set  this to color and temperature and I'll show you   why in just a minute and let's just the more  you move it to the right basically the higher   the temperature the cooler so let's put it like  somewhere in here maybe I don't know maybe a   little something like that maybe so now it's much  cooler all right so we got that so now it's it's   just cooler now why did we do color because the  next thing we're going to do is we are actually   going to add a light texture and the light texture  is going to help us quite a bit all right so what   I have is I actually have this gradient light  and what this gradient light is going to do   you see it's going to give it extra fall off so  that's really nice so that's that's nice because   we have that extra fallof and it it just creates  all it is is it's it's just putting in this like   gradient falloff that's being applied to This  Light um so now that I'm seeing this I see that   we need to do two things we need to make it  a little bit brighter and maybe just a little bit bigger okay I might even go a little bit  wider on this something like that all right   and again we're just kind of you know this is  all something that is it just takes time this   stuff you know you kind of just have to it's  all details that's pretty much what it is so   I'm going to say I'm happy with that the point  of this is that don't throw out the option of   putting light textures on here because if you'll  see if I take this off again it's just like the   fallof just isn't as nice so all it's doing is  it's looking at the black and white values and   creating a fallof base on that cool all right so  I would say that our key light for now is pretty   good so the next thing I want to do is I want to  actually create a rim light all right so what I'm   going to do is I'm going to pause this really  quick um I'm just going to copy these two and   I'm going to relabel them Rim light okay so we  got these in here let's turn off the key light   and now we essentially are going to have the same  thing but what I'd like to do is I would like to   actually bring this light kind of to the bottom  so let's go ahead and bring this to the bottom   because I think it's important to actually um  carve this out right it shouldn't just be all   black or just like one I mean it can be but like  for this situation I actually don't want that   I'm actually going to switch off of my gray here  so we can actually kind of see what's happening   because this is where your Reflections and your  spec and everything kind of come in handy and   I probably should have had that on for the key  light too but we'll go back and check it just to   make sure so the goal goal here is just to create  some interest or to actually have a point of focus   for the bottom right so we actually have just a  little bit of stuff happening on the bottom CU   if we're thinking of this as a product render we  actually want to be able to well see the product   okay so I'm actually going to crank this up a  bit and then let's let's put the temperature   even lower cuz I feel like it's kind of nice  to have something at the bottom like that um   our spread maybe we'll just widen out just a tiny  bit maybe and again the spread is going to be how   like much fallof you have on your shadows okay  and then let's just make it smaller too let's   make this a little bit smaller and that way it's  not so intense okay so now we've got something   here and let's turn on our key light and just  kind of see what we got so we're starting to   get some interest right right so we have we're  get catching a nice highlight here we're getting   nice highlights here um it's starting to kind of  shape up okay so we're starting to kind of paint   a picture all right so looking at you know this  versus where we are okay all right so next um   moving along what I would do is I would actually  um create another Rim light and here's here's my   theory on this so basically I wanted a rim light  that would kind of carve out this section here   and create just a tiny bit of interest and again  I might we might just go back and adjust this in   a minute um but I also want a light that's going  to kind of kiss this part down here so I'm going   to create another Rim light and this one's going  to be the left side okay so that automatically did   it let's turn off everything here and let's go  to our top view let's go to our Rim light oops   wrong one um let's go to the actual light and  let's move this light kind of like it's coming   from from below right so it's like kind of just  creating interest and the other goal is to kind of   Kiss these Keys here right so like we want to just  kiss these keys so that just creates a tiny bit of Interest let's go ahead oops and let's make  this perhaps just a little bit bigger get   some interest let's turn on our other Rim  light you see our other rim lights helping   paint this and then we're also getting  these nice details here all right let's   turn back on our key yeah it's starting to  get pretty good um now for this rimlight I   actually don't want it quite as blue  I want a little bit more of a natural color so that's pretty cool all right so um we're  starting to get somewhere um so you're seeing that   we're again we're starting to paint the picture  but it's still pretty dark all right and if we're   thinking of this as a product well there's one  thing in my opinion that's kind of a problem and   that is you can't see what the product is so if  you see over here we actually have a logo here   so what I did is I actually created a second  light that kind of helped this logo pop out   and I think we should probably take our key light  maybe and I think our key light should maybe just   come over just a little bit so we also help this  logo but this logo needs more help so let's just   duplicate our key light and we're going to call  this logo light okay and now we're just going   to we're just going to solo this and we know  that we want this target to just [Music] be on   this side panel okay so let's just put that  on the side panel and I can't remember what   I did here let's just see what it looks like  it's probably going to be too bright it's not   too bad actually so now you can see that just by  adding this light you know we've kind of helped   this out a bit you know um and perhaps um yeah  perhaps something like this and then let's take   the spread maybe even down a little further that  way it let's just solo this again okay so I want this be just like that so now it's just kissing  it you can see it's just kissing that um this is   what I don't remember why I did but let's just  see what it looks like all together all right   so if we put this all together I think what I'm  going to do because now this is kind of getting   too hot I'm going to go to this logo light and I'm  going to have it only affect that side panel so   basically it's only going to affect this side  that's not exclude let's put this to include   okay so now it's just affecting that side um  and it's starting to get somewhere all right   so this is nice you know we're we're starting to  get something um we're starting to get somewhere   obviously our shadows are pretty dark here and  we're missing a little bit of you know if I   compare we're missing um some of these you can  see how light these Shadows are and we're also   missing some Reflections here so let's talk next  steps so next that we have what I would consider   our core setup so we have key light logo light and  two rim lights um the next thing that we need to   consider is we need to consider a fill light so  let's go ahead and let's go a and create a uh a   dome light okay now dome light is going to blow  it way out it's going to be super bright that's   fine all right so then let's go ahead and let's  add an hdri to this now I've already selected an   hdri um that I felt like it works okay so this is  just an HD I thought it had some nice um highs and   lows um but the one thing I don't like is that  there's this brown in here so how we fix that   is let's go ahead and let's just change the color  of this so we can come to our color and I'm just   going to copy what I had before but essentially  what I'm doing is I'm just making it like kind   of blue um that way that that kind of brownish  tone isn't in there um and then let's go ahead   for this and what I want to do is I want to create  two separate um dome lights now the first St light   is going to be just for the lighting so I want to  actually take off the reflection that way we're   only seeing we're only seeing this right we're  only seeing what's happening with this okay um   it's just creating a fill so this is the first  thing I want to do because if we start adding   Reflections it might not be quite what we want  um so that's great so let's just call this fill light all right but you're going to see what  happens here a couple things happen um first   of all um we have created uh something that is too  bright in my opinion so let's go ahead and first   of all let's turn off the background because this  is we want a dark environment in the background   but what I don't like is we used to have this nice  falloff that was happening here into the darkness   but now we've lost that so how do we how do we fix  that so let's go ahead and let's just block the   light right so like if something's in the way just  block it so let's go um and let's create a plane I'm going to turn this off while I'm doing this  just so my computer doesn't get angry and this is   essentially going to block the dome light that is  happening on this side right because we want this   like nice fallof to happen so what I have is I  just have a pure black texture here just pure   black nothing else and we're going to just apply  that to this plane okay and let's see what how   close we got so it's not too bad it's s already  kind of working um and then you just kind of move   it around to where it's like blocking as much as  you want it to block and you can see it just got   in front of the camera so let's go ahead and do  a render tag red shift object and let's turn off   the primary Ray visibility so now this is really  good because now we're still getting our fall off   but we are still getting the benefits of some of  the fill light okay so that's feeling pretty good   to me um so again what we're doing is we're just  we're just creating you don't I mean sometimes you   want to be pure black and this is where comping  comes in if we if we end up wanting to make this   go pure black we can do that in comp um so now  what we've done we essentially we add a fill light   right add a fill light and that adds just a little  bit of fill but then we want to just take a little   bit away so we're going to say that's pretty  nice um next let's go and let's go ahead and   create let's go ahead and duplicate this I'm going  to pause this I always whenever I'm duplicating   lights or anything like that I always start turn  I try to always turn off my um my preview because   a lot of times it can get not happy so let's go  and this is going to be a reflection so once again   I'm going to turn off everything everything and  let's just see what it looks like it's going to   just be a fill light but this time again I'm  going to turn this off I'm going to say zero   to the to everything but the reflections so go  to your details so now this is only going to be   putting out reflection so this will be quite dark  okay now I'm going to cheat here I've found uh a   position that I like for this and also intensity  so basically let's go ahead and turn up the   intensity to like around here so now you see we're  starting to get some extra Reflections that are   happening here and they're feeling kind of nice  we'll just do an even three um and I'm going to   cheat with my uh rotation values here so I had six  186 and 82 and again this is one of those things   where it just like takes time you just kind of  have to like move it around and see how it feels   and you know that's where kind of the art comes in  and also the pain in the ass part comes in um all   right so the only other thing I did on this is I  went to project and I just excluded the side panel   because um if we go if we see our coordinates  and I believe this was at 82 you see it's kind   of hitting this pretty hard so I'm just going to  my uh project I'm just going to exclude this main   case and let's exclude side right right so now  you see that if I just turn this down to this   this is what it's doing it's just adding some nice  Reflections on these knobs kind of down here but   it's not hitting it over the head right that's  kind of the thing you don't want to be too in   your face you want it it's all just a balance  and that's really what makes it challenging   um and you'll see if we go to here this is our  lighting setup with gray again you know everything   changes B based on your textures and your colors  just everything's different um yeah so let's go   ahead and start adding all the pieces back in  let's add our fillite you see what our fillite   is doing there so we're starting to get pretty  close back to where we were it's getting there   I mean it's not going to be exactly the same but  you know we're going to get as close as we can um   cool all right um trying and think what comes next  so next we're pretty close but the only thing that   I'm seeing here that's quite different is these  keys are pretty black and right here we kind of   have this nice kind of blue that's happening right  we have this nice blue that's happening on these   keys so let's go ahead and let's create a bounce  card so what I did here we're going to call this   light blocker and then let's duplicate this and  let's call this bounce card bounce bounce bounce   all right so for the bounce card what I did is  basically I just created a ramp it goes from   dark to kind of the same tone that we have for our  fill light you can see I think it's the exact same   color um and I'm just applying that to the bounce  card right so let's just go ahead and replace this   and then primary visibilities off okay so let's  let's just turn this on and see what happens I'm   going to turn off all the lights so you can see  what happens here all right this one bounce card   is producing all this light all right this is  something I think a lot of people forget about   is that bounce cards are awesome and can do a lot  of work for you um if you're smart about it I mean   one bounce card can produce a lot of light um but  for this I just want to use this for Reflections   that's all I'm interested in I'm just interested  in using this for the reflections so that's what   we're going to do so let's go up to our tag  here and let's just turn off visible to GI and   now that's just going to enable us to just have  the reflection for this right it's just going to   create Reflections and that's really because we've  spent so much time on the lighting that's really   all I want to use this for all right so let's come  over here and this is where it just becomes kind   of a push and pool see what works well I think  that's pretty good um we'll say that's good for   now so now you see this piece right here it's kind  of mimicking this it's not going to be exact but   we're doing our best all right let's turn every  piece on so let's go ahead and turn our fill light   on Reflections key light okay key light's the most  important always our logo light which is going   to carve this out just a bit so you say hey I  recognize that Rim light is going to be down here   give it just a little bit of detail little bit of  highlights and then an additional Rim light that's   also just kind of kind of add some fill and some  interest down here on the keys now is it exact no   is it close yes and this is the basic setup of  what I did to create this now one thing that I   also did that is um not in here is pretty simple  I just have um if you ever want to create like a   gradient background you do a thousand different  ways but sometimes it's nice just to like parent   it underneath the camera and that way wherever  your camera moves it'll move with it right this   is just a again it's like a gradient that goes to  like a just kind of silvery kind of color um and   it looks like I probably worked a little bit more  to kind of match the colors just a tiny bit better   but again this is where comp can come through  right like you can I you can um for instance   this is still a little bright but in comp man you  can just bring this down if you want if you render   out all your pasts separate or you can just put  like a a simple uh black object that's just taken   back although I probably wouldn't recommend that  but if you're in a pinch so that's pretty much   it and then from here what I did is I took this  scene and essentially I just kind of like I moved   the camera around um and I just found different  angles uh as you can see here and I just did the   same animation I turned the lights on and off I  moved them just a tiny bit so I had a little bit   of interest and then all of a sudden from one  lighting step you're able to create multiple   scenes and then before you know it you're done  um so that was the lighting setup for this and   again I want to stress that that textures are so  important in this right like If This Were Pure   White If This Were pure black Etc how reflective  it is that is something that I skipped in this   lesson because um it's a whole another lesson  but I spent a lot of time trying to get the   textures just right um which I don't show you the  headache of that but it is true it does take time   to get these things right and to play nice so  that is going to do it for today's lesson um I   hope this was helpful I hope it gave you a little  insight I hope you learned something and if you   enjoy the lighting lessons let me know and I will  try to do more all right I'll see you on the next one

Channel: You And Me Academy

Views: 3,765

Keywords: c4d, cinema 4d, cinema 4d, redshift, render, bumpmap, bump map, node, nodes, otoy, tutorial, 3d, cg, cgi, vfx, visual effect, visual fx, learn, education, free tutorial, free, how to, normal maps, normalmap, motion design, motion graphics, material, materials, shader, shaders, create, recreate, c4d to redshift, beginner, beginners, tips, tricks, quick, quick tip, quick tips, redshift tutorials, redshift tutorial, c4d tutorial, c4d tutorials, cinema 4d tutorials, cinema 4d tutorial

Id: BlEM9iOzqMI

Length: 26min 36sec (1596 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 26 2024