Light Intensity

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Permalink Reply by Render Plus on May 31, 2011 at 3:02pm

Are you using just interior lights, or both interior lights and sun or sky?

 

If you are using just interior lights, then the easiest way to tone them down is to use the brightness slider.

 

If you are using both interior lights and sun/sky, then a good way to balance them is to turn on Lighting Channels, set the channels to 8, then balance the lights while rendering. See Lighting Channels

 

Note if you are using nXtRender, which does not have Lighting Channels, and are combining artificial lights with sun and sky, then try making the lights very, very dim (e.g. 1 watt) and see what happens.

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Permalink Reply by Alan Roberts on July 1, 2011 at 3:35pm

So, if I use the "interior, no sun", the lights are very bright.  turning down the intensity (watts) does not change them.  the renderings look kinda bad.

 

If I use the High Dynamic, they look awesome.  So, why would I use anything but the High Dynamic?

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Permalink Reply by Christopher Alan Krupp on July 2, 2011 at 12:18pm

Alan:

I personally set the lights to 20 watts max, then adjust them using lighting channels. I prefer to make my own lights using the "Set Properties" dialog box. I don't really like the pre-fab lights in I Render. They are too difficult to control.

To do this, create a surface or object, then right click on it to invoke the dialog box. Here you can set the wattage, the light direction, and set the surface to act as a light. Make sure you set groups of lights to a channel. There 8 channels that can be set. It is critical to group them by channel so they can be controlled individually or in groups. Make certain that you also set I-Render to utilize all 8 channels in the initial setting dialog under "lights". Without doing so, the lights will not be able to be controlled in the rendering. You can adjust the lights any time during the rendering process, or after it's done. I usually save many version of the finished rendering after I've fiddled with the lights, giving me options as to which version I prefer to use in the end.

 

The Sun and Sky controls in the lighting channels are defaults. I do not use ANY I-Render presets as this can less controllable and you get unexpected results. This image has 6 channels being used and the sun and sky. I find that playing with the "sky" channel can have a major affect on the over-all result. The recessed lights here are 6" circles pushed up into the ceiling 1" and the resulting circular surface has been made into a light using "set material properties."

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