The Key to Realistic Renders in Blender

lighting is probably the single most important skill you can obtain in 3D so why do most people not spend time on it lighting can change the mood and helps tell a story by guiding the viewer's eye in reality it's the difference between an expensive camera producing cheap looking footage and highquality video it's the difference between a project where all detail is lost to the void to a clearly readable render that impresses anyone it's the one single tool that you can use as a 3D artist to really grab someone's attention through a screen light and color play a major part in our lives and have been doing so ever since we developed ice as a species a very basic example of this is that our brains are wired to think of light as good and dark as bad it's no coincidence that the dark scares quite a few of us these are Primal instincts that came from thousands of years of evil Evolution and relying on our eyesight as a major survival tool light gives us context by providing form to objects and helps us subconsciously make a lot of decisions these aspects allow us as 3D artists to use light as a tool in our projects there's actually a lot I could tell about light and color theory in general and how it affects us but that's not for this video although understanding this can be beneficial to your projects so let me know if you'd be interested in a video about this subject by commenting the like button Emoji anyways since life plays such a major role in our lives it has been used to convey stories for ages think of campfire horror stories with dimly lit faces to make things spookier depictions of gods as shining beacons of light even before we actually had color and light to paint with it's obvious that light is deeply wired into our psyche so let's get back to the first question I asked you if lighting is so important to tell a story visually why is it so overlooked in my opinion there's two main reasons for that that for one it isn't easy to do so people rather just forget about it and secondly people settle on using only realistic light like for example a single sun lamp for an outdoor scene now this sort of makes sense in your head right but if you work on an actual video production however there will usually be someone called a gaffer and their sole responsibility is to create aesthetic lighting to fit the shot that is being filmed in my previous job as an art director I worked with quite a few Gaffers and one of the things that always stuck with me is that even in outdoor daytime scenes with clear skies Gaffers will use additional lights and reflectors to both add redirect or remove light from a shot this is to achieve a certain look or feel no matter the natural conditions the subject is in and it goes to show their intentional use of light to tell a story luckily we as 3D Wizards don't need any knowledge of wire placement gear safety or electricity but we do need a technical and artistical sense of lighthouse however the placement strength color and amount of lights are all under your control and should be considered for every shot in your project as 3D artists we have to treat our project similarly to the Gaffers with intentional lighting even in outdoor indoor or night shots in blender we can do this through five types of Lights Point Sun spot area and emissive each of these lights can be used independently and combined of course to create Lighting in your scenes with blender 4.0 we've gotten a new tool called light linking which allows you to link lights to objects making it so a lamp can for example affect the cube in the scene but not the underlying floor it's a crazy useful tool that can be found under the object properties and only works in Cycles by selecting a light going to the object properties and then shading tab we can create a new light linking group and simply drag in any object we want to be effective but we can now simply enable or disable objects with the check marks here similarly you can also add a a shadow linking group to the light and exclude certain objects from casting Shadows so using this new tool we can take light and use it to our advantage we can use it to send our viewers eye in a certain direction an amazing feature that is unique to 3D workflows and something I promise any G would be incredibly jealous of having said that what are ways to easily use light to clue in your audience to tell the story well here's a few make sure the most important part of your render is lit up even if it's a dark silhouette make sure there's light behind it to emphasize that silhouette for example try the light from the point of view of your fer half lights make sense from where you're looking as the audience and not be randomly placed and from weird angles or use soft lights which are big siiz lamps to emphasize soft emotional and positive things but besides being able to tell a story with light there's actually another probably even bigger effect that it has on us I don't really know what it is yet my daddy us always right about his life but he had stories he sailed around Antarctica he was a war reporter he had lovers so how did that shot make you feel personally I got a warm and fuzzy feeling from [Music] it but what about this one to me empty and apathetic [Music] or maybe this one scary and ominous there's been many studies into color and how colors have an effect on us as humans and guess what light lets us perceive color which is why black is just an absence of color or light if you will and similarly to how light and dark are good and evil we have lots of predispositions when it comes to color too and and again we can use these to set the mood literally as I said before there's a lot of effects that color have on us but the most simple ones are warm and cool tones or Red and Blue by adding in more warm light to a render we can give a feeling of being in a warm environment or it being a warm season like summer for example we can even push this further by cranking up the redness of the lights and making them brighter to give the feeling that stuff is on fire or incredibly hot besides just the lights you can then take the image and process it even further Inc compositing making it warmer overall with some U and saturation nodes or we can do the exact opposite by making the lights very white or bluish in tint and by removing any hints of warm tones to give a very cold feeling to our render these types of warm and cool lighting schemes are often used in Hollywood Blockbusters to give an entire movie a certain Vibe let me give you some examples and explain throughout the movie her there's only warm soft tones to emphasize the warm and happy feel feelings of joy and love with constant vibrant reminders of red to really hint towards love as we generally see red as the color of love in the movie Blade Runner 2049 we get a lot of neutral tones to show the dystopic nature of the world it feels very Bland and boring but it's combined with very vibrant Neons and weird colors to highlight the alienis and artificialness of the world around the protagonist and finally in the movie Sin City we get a view of an almost comic style World which is dark and gritty by having everything be in black and white two tones on the end of the spectrum with the use of strong highlights to keep focus on the story's main elements and the use of an occasional color to make something pop from the screen and really grab your attention now when working on the mood of your projecting blender you can use both lights and materials to help tell your story and with the release of blender 4.0 we've got an access to better color management through agx compared to filmic which is what we had for the last couple of years agx gives a lot more true to life colors especially in the highlights as agx makes bright areas go towards White just like an actual camera does where filmic sort of took it into these weird neones colors anyways agx handles that a lot better it also handles saturation a lot better so making well lit and vibrant renders should be easier than ever before there's a lot of color theory that you can use for your projects but as I said that's not for this video for now I'll boil it down to you using one of these four color scheme options monochromatic which is best suited for harmonious undivided shots using a single Bas U extended with darker and lighter variations of that same color complimentary best suited for opposition and tense shots using two opposing or complimenting color tones which breeds life and drama into something this is probably the most common color scheme and the one you're either consciously or subconsciously already using analogous best suited for feelings of sympathy like-mindedness and reality use colors that are next to each other on the color wheel these colors tend to occur in nature and therefore create a realistic harmonious feeling in your shot triatic best suited for balanced but vibrant shots which feel evenly matched these are three colors that are evenly spaced around the color wheel and used at the same time triatic color schemes can look somewhat cartoonish but give a nicely balanced feel to your shots so when you're working on your project try to take the time and ask yourself the following questions to decide which colors work for you what is the mood this image or animation should have what story am I trying to tell which color will pop in my render and which color wouldn't be noticeable and can I emphasize certain things with more color or light by thinking about these questions you'll get a better understanding of the goal of your artwork and how it is perceived by your audience a happier more lively image will probably benefit from warmer tones and a sadder more Alien image may be better off with cooler and weird tones this process will almost always always result in a better more readable and defined image or animation but sometimes you don't need to really tell a story or set the mood sometimes you just need to display something as best as possible Now product lighting is one of those cases Tech products have harder lighting luxury items like perfume use softer tones and lights and cars either get extremely artificial or very natural light obviously there's still a bit of a vibe to give when it comes to product but it's not the main purpose for a lot of them product lighting is very different as it's all about highlighting the features of the product it is there to breathe life and a sense of realness to them it can pull Focus to where you need it to be and it can emphasize the shape and materials a product has it can also build tension but this is hard to achieve in a still render though and it's more suited for animations whereas you usually don't want to use too many different lights in normal renders with exceptions of course in product lighting you can basically add as many as you want to get the desired look even better because in 3D we're able to add in these lights even if it's just IM missive planes in front of our camera and just disable their visibility to the camera in the ray visibility setting we can also use light linking to make sure the lights don't interfere or light up areas we don't want to and finally we can easily direct them to our Target automatically by adding a track two constraint this will ensure that your light always points to your desired Target and will make rotating it for the perfect look super easy all things that in real life would be very difficult and time consuming to do which are extremely easy in 3D as with using lights to tell a story or to set the mood though getting the right look comes down to a matter of experience and practice and above all copying what's already been done by professional companies think of amazing product renders by Apple bang and olivon or any other top design brand for some great examp examples by a professional company I recommend you check out x3. co.uk we have amazing projects which you can use as inspiration one of the main things that product renders tend to have issues with though is the CG look of lights and blender this is a natural side effect of the shapes of the lights resulting in harsh and sometimes weird Reflections and although sharper lights aren't an issue for product lighting the very sharp Reflections they produce do feel unnatural luckily there's several ways we can get around this the first is only applicable in some scenarios and is really easy to implement just select your light and in the object properties go down to visibility and disable the glossy Ray visibility this will remove the reflection alog together which fixes the issue but at the same time creates a new one as this looks kind of weird on more reflective surfaces since you would still expect to see a reflection from a lab in the real world therefore the second option is to just not use blenders lights at all but instead only opt to use planes with an emissive material if I add in a plane and place it similarly to the AAL light and give it some emissive strength the result will be pretty much the same but here's the trick if we instead of using a full plane use a gradient texture to control the Alp of the plane we can make sure we get a nice fade instead of just a single white plane with harsh edges with only a few notes set up like in this screenshot I'm showing you right now you can get full control over the fallof strength color and more it's a great fix to the hard Edge problem however it's still not the most realistic as actual studio lights tend to look very different in reality so the final option for this issue is to use an add-on like NIS light pack which consists of up to 50 distinct light Shapers made from photos of actual Studio lamps these lights will add realistic Reflections and light shapes that further Elevate the realism of your product renders and they're all Shader based with multiple options too meaning you still keep full control over their looking can feel color and blurriness it's a nice step up from the second option that I personally enjoy using for better results if you're interested you can find a link to the add-on in the description down below so now you know how to use lights to tell a story set the mood or light a product shot but you still need to know all the other ways you can up your lighting game in blender so check out this video next to learn more about lights and blender and what makes it so incredibly [Music] powerful yeah

Channel: Kaizen

Views: 77,668

Keywords: Lighting in Blender, Lighting, Blender Lighting, Blender Cinematography, 3D Lighting, Light Linking, Shadow Linking, AgX, AgX in Blender, Product Lighting, Blender Product Lighting, Master Lighting, Blender Pro Lighting

Id: 6Yphs45g4t0

Length: 14min 30sec (870 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 05 2024