Learn how to showcase the subject with dramatic studio lighting.
Tutorial resources
These downloadable resources will be used to complete this tutorial:
Transcript
00:04
To light the product shot in a
00:05
dramatic fashion suitable for advertising or marketing.
00:09
We'll use a traditional triangle or three point lighting setup
00:13
that consists of a key light
00:15
which is the dominant or primary source of illumination
00:18
that casts visible shadows,
00:21
one or more fill lights to fill in those shadows
00:24
and one or more rim or back lights
00:27
to illuminate the edges of the subject
00:30
and differentiate its silhouette from the background
00:34
to begin.
00:34
Let's turn off the skydome that we created
00:36
earlier for the purposes of material look development.
00:40
Select that skydome
00:42
go over to the modified panel
00:45
in the general roll out at the top under light properties,
00:48
there's a switch to turn the light on or off.
00:50
So let's turn off illumination.
00:53
Now let's do an interactive production rendering of our camera view.
00:56
In order to prevent the Arnold render view
00:59
from automatically switching to the active viewport,
01:03
we're going to lock the render view.
01:05
So give focus to the camera view,
01:07
open up the render, set up dialogue
01:10
in the view to render area next to the pull down list,
01:14
click the padlock icon
01:16
and now the Arnold render view won't automatically switch view ports,
01:20
close the render, set up dialogue
01:22
with focus on this physical camera view,
01:25
initiate an Arnold's interactive rendering.
01:28
Go ahead and click interactive production rendering
01:31
and we'll see that at first all we get is a green square.
01:35
That's the em missive material that I've assigned to the power light on the radio.
01:40
Let's now create a spotlight which is appropriate for key lighting.
01:44
Go to the crate panel
01:45
to lights
01:47
from the pull down list, choose Arnold
01:50
and click the button labeled Arnold light.
01:53
But before we create the light,
01:54
let's take a hard look at the settings here in the create panel.
01:58
Notice that the light is disabled
02:01
and it's of the type skydome.
02:03
A newly created Arnold light will inherit all of its starting parameters
02:08
from the most recently selected Arnold light.
02:12
Now this can create some confusion. So be on the lookout for that.
02:15
The mere fact that we selected the sky dome
02:18
and disabled, it
02:20
means that the next light we're going to create
02:22
will be a disabled sky dome.
02:25
And of course, that's not what we want. So let's turn the light on
02:29
and we'll change the type over to spot
02:32
which is suitable for key light.
02:35
Now we can create that light in the top viewport,
02:38
click in the lower right of the top viewport
02:41
and drag towards the subject,
02:43
release the mouse
02:44
and then right click to exit like creation
02:47
and we see something in our Arnold render view here
02:50
let's go back to the modify panel
02:52
and let's scroll down a little
02:54
bit in the color intensity section.
02:57
Very importantly, there's a switch labeled, normalize energy
03:01
that's going to preserve the total amount of illumination
03:03
regardless of the size or area of the light.
03:07
So up here, we have the radius
03:09
that's controlling the size of the light.
03:11
But as long as normalized energy is on,
03:14
then this radius amount will only affect the softness
03:17
and will not affect the total amount of illumination.
03:20
Let's turn normalize energy off.
03:23
And then as we adjust the radius,
03:24
we'll see we're increasing or decreasing the amount of light.
03:27
We're also seeing a reflection
03:29
of the radius of that light here in the glass.
03:32
Let's set the radius to 10 centimeters.
03:36
We've also inherited the exposure value from that sky dome.
03:40
So let's increase the exposure down here to a value of seven.
03:44
And we can position that light, we'll grab the move tool,
03:47
it'll need to be moved up off the ground plane.
03:50
So select that light and move it up in the left view.
03:54
And we can also move the
03:55
target up a little bit.
03:57
I've got some values that I know are going to work. So we can plug those in.
04:01
I'll select the light
04:02
and we'll give it an X position value
04:05
of 27
04:07
press tab and give it a Y position of negative 30
04:10
press tab and give it a Z position of 43 centimeters
04:14
and that looks pretty good for the light position.
04:17
We can also move that target more precisely.
04:20
We'll set the targets X position to zero
04:22
the Y position to negative three
04:25
and the Z position to seven centimeters
04:29
that looks pretty good for the light position.
04:31
Let's go back to its parameters,
04:33
select it. And in the modified panel,
04:36
we'll see we have cone angle and pumba
04:38
angle,
04:39
cone angle as the name indicates
04:41
is the
04:42
angle of the cone or the area that is illuminated.
04:46
And lower values will give us a tighter beam.
04:50
So for example, we can set that to 10 degrees,
04:54
then the
04:55
Pumba
04:55
angle is the softness of the edge.
04:57
So if we reduce that pan number
04:59
angle to zero degrees,
05:01
then we get a very hard edge there.
05:04
Well, actually the values that we had by default were working,
05:06
so we can set those back.
05:08
We can set the cone angle to 60 degrees
05:11
and the P number angle to five degrees.
05:14
One more little tweak that we might want to do is to change up the lens radius
05:18
that controls the focus or colation. A
05:21
higher lens radius value will cause the rays of light to be more parallel.
05:26
So if we increase that lens radius,
05:28
we'll start to see a change over here.
05:31
The effect that is achieved is one of higher contrast
05:35
with a high lens radius.
05:37
The rays of light are more parallel
05:39
which leads to less diffuse scattering.
05:42
And sharper specular highlights.
05:45
Let's set the lens radius to a value of 10 centimeters.
05:49
All right. So that's pretty good for our key light.
05:52
Let's rename it here.
05:54
We'll call it key spot.
05:56
We'll also need a fill light
05:57
so we can duplicate the light that we have
05:60
with the move tool still active. We can go over to our top viewport right click.
06:04
So we don't lose our selection.
06:06
Hold down the shift key and drag to create another light.
06:10
Don't be alarmed if you see a performance hit.
06:12
When the Arnold re interview is running
06:15
in the clone options dialogue.
06:17
It'll be a copy.
06:18
Let's rename it.
06:20
We'll call it fill disk
06:22
and click. OK?
06:25
So this new light is going to be of the type disc. So let's change that type
06:29
to dis
06:31
and so we can isolate its effects from the key light,
06:34
select that key light
06:36
and just temporarily turn it off.
06:38
So back to our fill light,
06:40
we've got the type disc
06:42
with a radius of 10 centimeters
06:44
and a spread of one
06:46
radius is the size spread is the focus.
06:50
It's very similar to the lens radius of the spotlight.
06:55
Let's bring the radius up to 30 centimeters
06:59
because normalized energy is turned off,
07:01
that's going to increase the overall amount of illumination.
07:05
Let's bring the spread down.
07:06
If we reduce this down to a value of zero, then we get very hard edged illumination.
07:11
Let's set this spread to 0.4.
07:15
OK. Let's fine tune the position of that fill light.
07:18
We'll set the X position value
07:21
to negative 36
07:24
the Y position to negative 30
07:26
and the Z position to 40 centimeters above the ground plane.
07:30
We'll also want to adjust the exposure.
07:32
We inherited an exposure of seven from that spotlight.
07:36
Let's bring this way down.
07:38
If we bring it down to a value of zero,
07:40
it's looking pretty dim,
07:43
but that actually might be a good value.
07:44
Let's re enable our key light and see what we get.
07:48
Turn the key light on
07:51
recent like the feel like
07:53
and we can turn it on and off to see
07:56
what we're getting there.
07:57
And in fact, the exposure of zero
07:60
may actually be too much. I'm getting a little bit too much light there.
08:03
I'll bring it down to negative one.
08:06
Ok. Now we've got our key and fill lights
08:09
two components of the triangle lighting set up.
00:04
To light the product shot in a
00:05
dramatic fashion suitable for advertising or marketing.
00:09
We'll use a traditional triangle or three point lighting setup
00:13
that consists of a key light
00:15
which is the dominant or primary source of illumination
00:18
that casts visible shadows,
00:21
one or more fill lights to fill in those shadows
00:24
and one or more rim or back lights
00:27
to illuminate the edges of the subject
00:30
and differentiate its silhouette from the background
00:34
to begin.
00:34
Let's turn off the skydome that we created
00:36
earlier for the purposes of material look development.
00:40
Select that skydome
00:42
go over to the modified panel
00:45
in the general roll out at the top under light properties,
00:48
there's a switch to turn the light on or off.
00:50
So let's turn off illumination.
00:53
Now let's do an interactive production rendering of our camera view.
00:56
In order to prevent the Arnold render view
00:59
from automatically switching to the active viewport,
01:03
we're going to lock the render view.
01:05
So give focus to the camera view,
01:07
open up the render, set up dialogue
01:10
in the view to render area next to the pull down list,
01:14
click the padlock icon
01:16
and now the Arnold render view won't automatically switch view ports,
01:20
close the render, set up dialogue
01:22
with focus on this physical camera view,
01:25
initiate an Arnold's interactive rendering.
01:28
Go ahead and click interactive production rendering
01:31
and we'll see that at first all we get is a green square.
01:35
That's the em missive material that I've assigned to the power light on the radio.
01:40
Let's now create a spotlight which is appropriate for key lighting.
01:44
Go to the crate panel
01:45
to lights
01:47
from the pull down list, choose Arnold
01:50
and click the button labeled Arnold light.
01:53
But before we create the light,
01:54
let's take a hard look at the settings here in the create panel.
01:58
Notice that the light is disabled
02:01
and it's of the type skydome.
02:03
A newly created Arnold light will inherit all of its starting parameters
02:08
from the most recently selected Arnold light.
02:12
Now this can create some confusion. So be on the lookout for that.
02:15
The mere fact that we selected the sky dome
02:18
and disabled, it
02:20
means that the next light we're going to create
02:22
will be a disabled sky dome.
02:25
And of course, that's not what we want. So let's turn the light on
02:29
and we'll change the type over to spot
02:32
which is suitable for key light.
02:35
Now we can create that light in the top viewport,
02:38
click in the lower right of the top viewport
02:41
and drag towards the subject,
02:43
release the mouse
02:44
and then right click to exit like creation
02:47
and we see something in our Arnold render view here
02:50
let's go back to the modify panel
02:52
and let's scroll down a little
02:54
bit in the color intensity section.
02:57
Very importantly, there's a switch labeled, normalize energy
03:01
that's going to preserve the total amount of illumination
03:03
regardless of the size or area of the light.
03:07
So up here, we have the radius
03:09
that's controlling the size of the light.
03:11
But as long as normalized energy is on,
03:14
then this radius amount will only affect the softness
03:17
and will not affect the total amount of illumination.
03:20
Let's turn normalize energy off.
03:23
And then as we adjust the radius,
03:24
we'll see we're increasing or decreasing the amount of light.
03:27
We're also seeing a reflection
03:29
of the radius of that light here in the glass.
03:32
Let's set the radius to 10 centimeters.
03:36
We've also inherited the exposure value from that sky dome.
03:40
So let's increase the exposure down here to a value of seven.
03:44
And we can position that light, we'll grab the move tool,
03:47
it'll need to be moved up off the ground plane.
03:50
So select that light and move it up in the left view.
03:54
And we can also move the
03:55
target up a little bit.
03:57
I've got some values that I know are going to work. So we can plug those in.
04:01
I'll select the light
04:02
and we'll give it an X position value
04:05
of 27
04:07
press tab and give it a Y position of negative 30
04:10
press tab and give it a Z position of 43 centimeters
04:14
and that looks pretty good for the light position.
04:17
We can also move that target more precisely.
04:20
We'll set the targets X position to zero
04:22
the Y position to negative three
04:25
and the Z position to seven centimeters
04:29
that looks pretty good for the light position.
04:31
Let's go back to its parameters,
04:33
select it. And in the modified panel,
04:36
we'll see we have cone angle and pumba
04:38
angle,
04:39
cone angle as the name indicates
04:41
is the
04:42
angle of the cone or the area that is illuminated.
04:46
And lower values will give us a tighter beam.
04:50
So for example, we can set that to 10 degrees,
04:54
then the
04:55
Pumba
04:55
angle is the softness of the edge.
04:57
So if we reduce that pan number
04:59
angle to zero degrees,
05:01
then we get a very hard edge there.
05:04
Well, actually the values that we had by default were working,
05:06
so we can set those back.
05:08
We can set the cone angle to 60 degrees
05:11
and the P number angle to five degrees.
05:14
One more little tweak that we might want to do is to change up the lens radius
05:18
that controls the focus or colation. A
05:21
higher lens radius value will cause the rays of light to be more parallel.
05:26
So if we increase that lens radius,
05:28
we'll start to see a change over here.
05:31
The effect that is achieved is one of higher contrast
05:35
with a high lens radius.
05:37
The rays of light are more parallel
05:39
which leads to less diffuse scattering.
05:42
And sharper specular highlights.
05:45
Let's set the lens radius to a value of 10 centimeters.
05:49
All right. So that's pretty good for our key light.
05:52
Let's rename it here.
05:54
We'll call it key spot.
05:56
We'll also need a fill light
05:57
so we can duplicate the light that we have
05:60
with the move tool still active. We can go over to our top viewport right click.
06:04
So we don't lose our selection.
06:06
Hold down the shift key and drag to create another light.
06:10
Don't be alarmed if you see a performance hit.
06:12
When the Arnold re interview is running
06:15
in the clone options dialogue.
06:17
It'll be a copy.
06:18
Let's rename it.
06:20
We'll call it fill disk
06:22
and click. OK?
06:25
So this new light is going to be of the type disc. So let's change that type
06:29
to dis
06:31
and so we can isolate its effects from the key light,
06:34
select that key light
06:36
and just temporarily turn it off.
06:38
So back to our fill light,
06:40
we've got the type disc
06:42
with a radius of 10 centimeters
06:44
and a spread of one
06:46
radius is the size spread is the focus.
06:50
It's very similar to the lens radius of the spotlight.
06:55
Let's bring the radius up to 30 centimeters
06:59
because normalized energy is turned off,
07:01
that's going to increase the overall amount of illumination.
07:05
Let's bring the spread down.
07:06
If we reduce this down to a value of zero, then we get very hard edged illumination.
07:11
Let's set this spread to 0.4.
07:15
OK. Let's fine tune the position of that fill light.
07:18
We'll set the X position value
07:21
to negative 36
07:24
the Y position to negative 30
07:26
and the Z position to 40 centimeters above the ground plane.
07:30
We'll also want to adjust the exposure.
07:32
We inherited an exposure of seven from that spotlight.
07:36
Let's bring this way down.
07:38
If we bring it down to a value of zero,
07:40
it's looking pretty dim,
07:43
but that actually might be a good value.
07:44
Let's re enable our key light and see what we get.
07:48
Turn the key light on
07:51
recent like the feel like
07:53
and we can turn it on and off to see
07:56
what we're getting there.
07:57
And in fact, the exposure of zero
07:60
may actually be too much. I'm getting a little bit too much light there.
08:03
I'll bring it down to negative one.
08:06
Ok. Now we've got our key and fill lights
08:09
two components of the triangle lighting set up.
