Lighting tips and tricks?

[nvseal]

As the title suggest, I'm looking for general lighting tips and tricks. If anyone has any info about lighting and creating clear, bright images please post it -- cause I'm ignorant   .

[old_blaggard]

I often personally find that the default atmospheric haze in TG2 is a bit thick - try decreasing it to 2.5 or 3.  Other than that, though, you can always adjust the gamma within TG2, fool around with the enviro light (for softer shadows, increase its power), or post-process what you can't seem to figure out within TG2.

[neon22]

I had some trouble making bright images at one stage.
Turned out it was because there were clouds in the way of my sun. :-)
So I tweaked the angle and height of the sun, or maybe tweak the position of the clouds with a transfrom shader.

[ProjectX]

I usually lower contrast and gamma if i'm making a realistic, yet colourful image.

Usual settings: Contrast - 0.0, Gamma: 1.5 - 1.8

If I don't care about a realistic look to it for whatever reason I usually up the contrast to between .3 and .5

With both of these settings I increase the sun's power to taste (usually up to about 5)

[PG]

I know this is an old topic but I was wondering if there were any more settings that people use for realistic scenes. Perhaps with some quick renders of the effects they produce. I tried reducing the contrast and gamma and they really do make the difference. Particularly in darker scenes like space scenes. I really want some realistic lighting for large lake scenes, alpine scenes (which the TG2 default does pretty well but I suspect adjusting the bluesky values would make it crisper), and also population scenes such as this
http://www.planetside.co.uk/gallery/f/tg2/7-canyon19B.jpg.html
Any help with light sources for these sorts of things would be awesome too.

[RogueNZ]

Speak up FrankB!

[FrankB]

Speak up FrankB!

<giggles> what do you want to know exactly? How I achieved the lighting in a particular image? I'm happy to tell.
Otherwise, lighting to me keeps being a very individual topic for each scene. There's no magic one-size-fits-all atmosphere and lighting nodes, render effects or surface secret -  at least, not as far as I can tell.
I'm trying to find the right mix during development of the scene, during the hundreds of test renders. Many a times, I must rely on postwork to make the image look more clear and dynamic, because it doesn't come out of TG2 the way I think it should, but that's ok.
So if you want to refer to any of my images in particular, I would be glad to tell what the settings were. Besides, I think you're not asking the right person - I'm just a hobbyist TG fan, but here on this forum are many individuals who make their living from things like these. Great artists and friendly people, just go ask them directly whenever you see an image posted with admirable lighting - I'm sure they won't hesitate to let you know ;-)

Cheers,
Frank

[bigben]

Don't forget that the light has to bounce off something....  surface colours also play a part  ... as do cloud colours. Try a cloud colour that is the same hue as the blue sky but with a very low saturation.  I also apply the blue sky colour to the envirolight colour for surfaces.

For good shadow detail I use relatively low GI detail: 1 or 2, but higher GI sample quality 4+... the higher sample quality will give you more detail while keeping the shadows relatively dark. Don't be afraid of dark shadows.

[RogueNZ]

Thanks Frank! Id noticed you've been active lately and was tempted to get something out of you...

My only suggestion is to increase the exposure of the camera, which often results in brighter and crisper renders with very good contrast. I find it does anyway

[PG]

Yeah it's mainly scenes where I want a cooler look that I struggle with, such as for scenes with fields and lots of bright grass and flowers like this one
http://www.planetside.co.uk/gallery/f/tg2/luc_bianco_sousbois.jpg.html