[Music]
hello my name is boyan and i'm a 3d
artist here at chaos today i'm going to
demonstrate how you can use different
lighting tools to improve your exterior
scene
we'll go over the main ways we can
create natural lighting using the v-ray
sun and sky we will explore lighting
scenarios and techniques that can
improve our workflow after that i will
show you how we can improve our lighting
by mixing hdris and the v-ray sun
finally we will create a night scene by
adding some artificial light and
finishing our renderer with the help of
v-ray light mix
before we start exploring our scene we
need to set our render settings at the
beginning of each project we have to
choose the render engine we are going to
use vray gpu or cpu depending on our
hardware an important part of getting a
faster result is the denoiser for
production renders we will use the v-ray
denoiser as it provides greater quality
the noising because we will test many
different lighting scenarios we can
choose nvidia's ai or intel open image
denoiser it will give us much faster
initial feedback so iterating is easier
we will also add viriletmix which will
help us with its powerful
post-processing capabilities in the
parameters menu we can choose to group
our lights in different ways
for this project we'll use the instant
slides
with very light mix we can easily change
light parameters without the need of
re-rendering our image
after we have set our render settings
let's open the vr frame buffer and start
the interactive rendering
as you can see our scene is rather dark
right now that's because we have no
light sources
the first way we are going to light up
our scene is with the v-ray sun and sky
let's create a daytime scenario
the very sun behaves just like a real
sun it changes its intensity and light
color based on its position in the world
space if the position of the sun is at
midday it will have maximum intensity
and cast a bright yellow color
before we start exploring different
lighting scenarios let's use the
material override option for some of our
objects
this option will allow us to focus on
the lighting without being distracted by
the materials in our scene
in the override material setting we can
preserve different types of maps
this gives us more control over the
amount of detail we keep on our
materials we want to preserve some of
the detail in our vegetation so let's
keep the opacity
when we're working with highly
reflective objects it's always a good
idea to exclude them as they change the
most based on our environment and
lighting
finally let's add a standard viewing
material to the material override slot
this is the material that will be
overridden on all of our objects now
let's explore the various sun and sky
parameters the first parameter we're
going to look at is the sun intensity
this option multiplies the amount of
light the sun is casting
it can be very useful if we're not
getting enough sunlight in our scene but
we want to keep the position of the sun
sometimes when we increase the intensity
multiplier our image can get overexposed
in that case very has an automated
solution called auto exposure
the auto exposure parameter
automatically calculates the correct
exposure for your scene this automated
solution will save you time and it's an
easy way to speed up your workflow
now when we change the intensity of the
sun the exposure stays the same
shadows are important part of any
composition and can help draw attention
to certain areas right now the shadows
in our scene are very sharp and stick
out if you want to soften them we can
use the size multiplier
another way we can use the size
multiplier to aesthetically improve our
scene is if we want the sun to be part
of our shot
to see that let's change the cameras so
we have a better view of the horizon
now if we increase the size the disk in
our image grows as well
next let's add some warmth to our sun
color by changing the filter color we
get a layer on top of our original sun
color we can also change the color modes
of the sun to better fit our artistic
approach
before we explore the sky parameters
let's create the sunset scenario
by lowering the sun to the horizon we
can start seeing the beautiful sunset
gradient
the first thing we can change is the
type of sky models
for this tutorial we are going to use
the prg clear sky version which has an
enhanced sunrise and sunset gradient
to even further improve our sky we can
use the ground albedo
the ground albedo acts as a horizon line
to the lowest point of the very sun and
sky system when we change the color of
the ground orbital we always need to
keep the color of the sky in mind
so that when we start blending them it
will continue to look natural
the blending between the sky and the
albedo color is done by the blend angle
and the horizon offset parameters by
increasing the horizon offset the
horizon line goes lower relative to our
ocean
this can be helpful if we don't want the
horizon line to be part of our shot
right now our sky looks kind of dull to
improve it we will do some changes in
the light mix properties
i like to use very light mix in the
developing stage because it gives me
easy access to all of the light sources
changes in the intensity or color can be
done while rendering this gives me more
control and speeds up my workflow even
more
when we have very bright sources or
reflections like the sun it's always
beneficial if we turn on the lens
effects this adds a nice bloom effect
where the light is very intense
giving us a more realistic feeling
another way of creating a daytime scene
is by adding an hdri to a dome light
thanks to the kiosk cosmos browser
adding an hdri to our scene is easier
than ever
all we need to do is search for hdri and
pick one by dragging and dropping the
hdri in our scene it automatically
creates a dome light with it
for now we will turn off the sun so we
can see the effect of our dome lights
thanks to the auto exposure our scene is
perfectly exposed and there is no need
to adjust camera exposures or intensity
multipliers in the dome light
under the dome light option we can see
lock texture to icon this allows us to
rotate our dome and see the results
while rendering
before we continue exploring the daytime
scenario let's turn back our materials
this time we'll add the hdri as our
background and use the virison to get an
even better result
having the sun in our scene will give us
more possibilities to work with
right now i really like how our scene
looks but we're missing some reflections
in our glass material
as we talked about earlier highly
reflective materials are those affected
the most by our lighting
in this case we have a lot of clouds and
vegetation which gives us an opportunity
to show them in the reflections of our
glass material
as you can see the glass is more
reflective now and gives us a sense of
the environment around the house
next we'll create a nighttime scene
using artificial lights
for night scene we'll turn off the outer
exposure and add back the v-ray sky to
our background
the first thing we're going to do is
create a night sky
this will give us the right exposure to
work with the artificial lighting
let's position the sun around the
horizon and turn it off this will allow
us to keep the beautiful gradient
without the light coming from the sun
now let's change the groundobi the color
to something more fitting for a night
scene
in the light mix properties we'll change
the environment so that we get the
darker tone night sky
remember that the color can act as a
multiplier based on the brightness of
the color
when we're creating any scene the most
important thing we have to think about
is what is our main focal point
we can use objects that point or lead us
to a specific part of the image or we
can use lights to signalize where the
focal point is
in this situation our hero object is
going to be the house
that means the house has to be
complemented by all of the lights
the rest of the objects in our scene
need to be lit to the point where they
don't conflict with our hero object
let's start with the ies lamps this is a
type of lamp which describes light's
distribution from a light source using
real-world measured data
we're going to use them to light up the
parameters of our house
i've already set up some ies lamps near
the walls of the building
now let's import different type of
profiles to see the difference
for this house i think wider profiles
will look better so we will stick with
these ones
if the light isn't the right intensity
we can always change that from the light
mix properties because we'll use light
mix to adjust our light sources we'll
add white color for all of our lamps
next let's add the lights inside the
house and create a cozy atmosphere we
can use plain lights when we want to
accent a specific area but if we want to
light up a bigger area the sphere light
is a better choice
when we're working on a night scene we
should always make sure that everything
is visible
this means that each part of our image
needs to have some type of detail
to achieve that we're going to add some
additional lights to complement all the
dark spots in our image
after we have added all of our lights
it's time to give them some color
we want the inside of the house to feel
warm compared to the cold lights on the
outside
for the colors of the inside lamps we're
going to use the kevin scale
we'll stay around the 2700 to 3000
kelvin range
the warm tones are mostly used in living
room spaces and bedrooms these lights
feel more inviting
for the outdoor lights we have to keep
in mind the balance of warm and cold
lights as we have warm lights on the
inside our outdoor lights need to be
cooler tones staying around the 3000 to
5000 kelvin range
finally let's add some stars to our
night sky as it's a bit boring right now
i've already set them up i used some
cellular maps to create the stars and
attach them to a rear light material
i have chosen to use the opacity channel
as well so we can still see our night
sky
the very light material is controlled by
the self-illumination properties in the
light mix menu don't forget that the
self-elimination properties also control
the intensity and color of the aerial
perspective
in this tutorial we set out to create
different types of exterior lighting and
thanks to v-ray 5's new functionalities
it was effortless
first we went over the v-ray sun and sky
parameters we used v-ray light mix to
easily tweak our lights without
re-rendering
next we create natural lighting with the
help of dome lights finally we created a
night scene using artificial lights
we hope you found these tips and tricks
useful and you try them out in your
visualization work thank you for being
part of the vray experience
[Music]
you