Hello everyone, it's Jen from Olde Tinkerer Studio
In this tutorial, we will be looking at lighting in Blender 2.8
Specifically, we will be exploring the Sun Light
So, let’s get on with the tutorial
I will briefly talk about the common setting between the lights
and some differences between the Cycles Render engine and Eevee when it comes to lighting
There are two common settings among all the lights
The Type defines the shape of the light
The Color is the tint of the emitted light
If we select the Light in the default scene and open the light tab,
we see that we have four Light options: Point, Sun, Spot, Hemi, and Area
Let’s look at the Sun Light
A sun light provides light of constant intensity emitted in a single direction from infinitely far away
A sun light can be very handy for a uniform clear daylight open-space illumination
The direction can be changed by rotating the Sun light, like any other object,
but because the light is emitted from a location considered infinitely far away,
the location of a Sun light does not affect the rendered result
In Render Mode, if we move the Sun Light up and down along the Z-Axis
we can see how the light falloff does not change the lighting on the Cube
If we move the Sun Light to the top-center of the Cube
we now see that there is no falloff on the top of the Cube and very little on the sides of the Cube
and slightly less falloff on the bottom of the Cube
This will be more evident when we change the color
Let’s look at the options available to us
We have a Preview window that will show us what the light will look like in the scene
We can change the color of the light using the color picker
If we change the color to a bright yellow, [#FFD200]
we can now see that the Cube has a yellow color highlight added to it from the Sun Light
We can change how weak or strong the Sun Light is by changing the Strength option
The Specular option is for Eevee only and we will talk about that in a moment
The Angle is the size of the Sun Light according to its angular diameter
(as opposed to its actual size) as seen from earth
The rest of the options available are different for the Eevee and the Cycles render engines
We will start with the options available in the Eevee render engine
The Specular option is a light intensity multiplier and is used for more artistic control
Anything other than a 1.0 will provide non-photorealistic results
Let’s add a Plane below the Cube and scale it up
Now let’s look at the shadow options
Let’s move the Sun Light to the back of the Cube and angle it toward the Cube
The Bias is applied to the ray tracing to reduce the self-shadowing artifacts
The Cascaded Shadow Map is a special kind of shadow maps are used by Sun lights
because they can shadow large scenes
The Count is the number of cascades to use
The more cascades used, the better precision but a lower update rate
If we lower the Count you can see the shadow becoming softer around the edges
and a bit darker – at 1, the shadow disappears
The Fade is the transition area between two cascades
Higher values mean less overall resolution because cascades need to overlap
If we change the Fade to 0.8, we can see the lower resolution of the shadow
The Max Distance is the distance away from the view origin
(or camera origin if in camera view) to cover by the cascade
If the view far clip distance is lower than Max Distance, the lowest of the two will be used
Only works in perspective view
Distribution puts more resolution towards the near clip plane
Only works in perspective view
If we change the Distribution to 0.1 we can see a dramatic change in the Shadow being cast by the Cube
Contact Shadows fix light leaking caused by bias or shadow map under-sampling
The Distance deals with the ambient occlusion
The Bias is the same as the Bias for the Shadow option
The thickness is used to detect occlusion treating any occlude as thick
Change to the Cycles render engine
Open the light tab
Max Bounces references the maximum number of bounces the light will contribute to the scene
In Cycles, shadows are simply turned on or off
This has been a quick overview of the Sun Light in Blender
The other lights will be inspected in future videos
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Thanks for watching
Have a good day