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Philopp In reply to IndusGuys [2019-01-12 08:14:33 +0000 UTC]

The light is a mesh light. I love mesh lights for Iray

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IndusGuys In reply to Philopp [2019-01-12 12:28:19 +0000 UTC]

do you mean an actual grid on a bought light, or a spot with dimensions added? Thanks

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Philopp In reply to IndusGuys [2019-01-12 14:14:12 +0000 UTC]

Normally I do it this way: I create a plane, for example 1 meter in size, some times also larger or smaller. By change the scale for x or z I can also shape the plane so that it is not a square, depends how I want the light to behave (small lights make very sharp shadows, large ones only create a very very fuzzy one). Then I will position it in a way the camera will not see it (and hopefully also reflections from other objects will not show it, especially the reflection is very tricky), but still so that it gives me the right lighting I am hoping for. Next I will simply put the uber light shader on the plane. One thing that I have to do is to change the emission color into something other than black (which is default), otherwise it doesn't work. In most cases this is good enouph for me. There are also other light shaders but generally they are also based on the uber shader. The next thing is to tune the intensity, color and temperature of the light. The light I used in this render was not very bright and has a red tone. I believe I used white as emission color but set the temperature of the light to 2000 or even 1000, this gives the light a very natural red hue. Usually I rely more on using the temperature than use color to vary the color of the lighting. Color I only use if I want some very unnatural light, like green, or violet.

I alway shut off the camera light because I don't like it. Or use it only for quick render to check the composition.

For outdoor scenes I also use environment light or light that comes with the HDRI scene. Nevertheless I still use mesh lights. For example by the picture Rock Climbing 4 the main light comes from the HDRI (I believe it is the skies of iradiance), but that sun light comes from behind. I wanted it this way because I liked how his red hair glows in the light. But that light makes his face very dark. So I used a small plane just beside the camera and used a very low intensity Uber shader on it. It just makes his face nicer without cast shadows or light up the rock.

By the way this technique is very commonly used in photography and film industry. They not only use lamps. Often you can see their assistants take a large round shield to reflect environment light on the subjects. The principle is the same. It casts a very natural soft light on the subject.

You can also use an image as light. For example the image Selfie At Chinese New Year's Eve the firework on the background was actually a photo I took at the new year's eve on January 1st 2017. I selected the photo in the Base Color of the surface, than put the Uber light shader on the surface, change the emission color to white and selected the photo again in the Emission Color. So that the plane glows exactly like the photo. If you don't put the Uber light shader on it and let it emit light the images will be very dull. The same trick I also used for the image Delicious (the background is a photo by the Hubble space telescope of the Crab Nebula) and even for the image Crazy Diamond, so that the photo that hang on the wall really glows and doesn't just look like a dull picture.

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IndusGuys In reply to Philopp [2019-01-12 14:23:15 +0000 UTC]

Yeah my ex was a photographer. I was actually just clarifying what you meant as people here often use the term for different things.

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