Need Advice Lighting A Scene - Tunnel - Simply Maya User Community

# 1 27-01-2014 , 06:06 AM

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Join Date: Jan 2014

Posts: 2

Need Advice Lighting A Scene - Tunnel

So I just got back into modeling. Lighting a scene has always caused me trouble. This time though it is really causing me to have a headache because I am trying to light up a tunnel that a character is falling through.

That is what the tube looks like.

user added image

This is what one half of the video looks like, looking up.

user added image

This is the second half of the video pointing down.

user added image

The materials have a bump map so I want that to be shown out as well. I have spent hours trying to get the lighting right. Putting a point light inside the tube brings out the details really nicely but only the surfaces that are not far from the camera. The farther away panels, at such an angle have such a glare that it takes away all the color and you can only see the shine from it. None of the pictures shows this problem but I will post more pictures if it will help at all.

I am also using mental ray. This may be the problem since I am not too familiar with lighting.

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# 2 27-01-2014 , 01:59 PM

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Join Date: Jan 2004

Location: Bolton - UK

Posts: 2,457

Think about any tunnels that you go through the are lights all the way though - your probably best putting lots of lights through out the tunnel at lower values instead of just one or two lights. But I am no lighting master

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# 3 28-01-2014 , 01:52 AM

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Join Date: Feb 2010

Location: Australia

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Im with Tweety

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"A Darkness at Sethanon", a book I aspire to model some of the charcters and scenes

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# 4 28-01-2014 , 03:46 AM

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Join Date: Dec 2006

Location: South FL

Posts: 3,522

It's not just about the lights, exposure is important aswell because to get lights to behave in a believable way, decay is needed most of the time and decay creates a need for higher light intensity, which leads to areas around the light getting burned out by the time you get the light bright enough to be useful.

Exposure controls and brings it into a range that won't burn a hole into your eyes. You can use the exposure control in the Render View's color management or use a Mental Ray exposure shader in the environment slot of the camera. I talked a little about the latter here.

I have no clue what kind of lighting you're aiming for but after getting somewhat familiar with the differences between the six standard Maya lights there are some questions you could ask yourself(you'll probably find some of the light types not so useful).

What is the mood?

When you can answer that, then you can select a light type based on:

What/where is the light coming from?(sun, furnace, laser beam, candle?)

Visualizing what is generating the light goes a long way in helping you research and tune attributes like color, intensity, shadow softness etc.

- Genny
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::|| My CG Blog ||::
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# 5 28-01-2014 , 05:12 AM

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Join Date: Jan 2014

Posts: 2

Thank you guys, the info has been very useful. Next time I will put a little bit more in my question so more questions don't pop up.

I am used to lighting scenes that take place outside or trying to showcase a model I made. Very obvious light sources but when it came to this tunnel, I didn't really think about how the tunnel would have to have light sources in it. I'll read up on your link Gen, thank you all for the help.

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Need Advice Lighting A Scene - Tunnel

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