Lighting a Scene in Cycles

In this chapter, we will learn how to correctly add lights to a scene and create a realistic environment for our 3D models. We will first explore the different lighting options available in Blender and then learn how to simulate natural, environmental lighting, which will allow us to create photorealistic scenes. Finally, we will learn about some lighting techniques for simulating artificially lit environments.

By the end of this chapter, you will have a great understanding of how lights work in Blender, what contributes to realistic lighting, and how to create high-quality lighting environments. Creating good lighting is a key element in the presentation of a 3D model or scene, and it will allow us to greatly increase the impressiveness of our work.

The following topics will be covered in this chapter:

• Generating light in Blender
• Simulating realistic lighting
• Generating studio lighting

Technical requirements

The prepared resources can be found in the Chapter11 folder within the book’s downloadable resources folder, available here: https://packt.link/mA1OU

Generating light in Blender

In Blender, there are several different methods for generating light. We will sort these methods into three categories: light objects, emission lighting, and environmental lighting. We will now go over them one by one to find out how they work and what they can be used for. This will give us a lot of options for creating the perfect lighting for many different scenarios.

Using light objects

Light objects are a special type of object intended for adding individual sources of light into a scene. They are easy to use and allow us to manually create any type of lighting environment we want. There are four different types of lights: point, sun, spot, and area. To understand how they work, we will study them individually.

Point light

A point light is an object that generates light from a single point. It emits light evenly in all directions from where it is located. The best way to understand how it works is to create one and try to use it yourself...

Simulating realistic lighting

We will now learn how to use lights in Blender to create a realistic environment. To understand how realistic lighting can be created, we will introduce the hot/cold lighting principle.

The hot/cold lighting principle is simply a method of lighting a scene by using both warm- and cold-colored lights simultaneously to create a universally applicable lighting environment. Red, orange, and yellow are warm colors, while green, blue, and purple are cold colors. Figure 11.19 shows a simple scene with a warm-colored area light on the left and a cold-colored area light on the right.

Figure 11.19 – Hot/cold lighting principle

The reason that this is effective is because, in real life, there are typically multiple light sources in a scene. For example, there can be direct, orange-colored sunlight shining into a room, as well as indirect blue or white light being reflected from buildings or the sky through a window. Adding...

Generating studio lighting

We will now learn how to create lighting that simulates a studio environment. This will allow us to create renders that are suitable for advertising, product presentations, and other visualizations. In the following steps, we will use Emission lighting to simulate a studio environment:

1. Create a simple scene consisting of a surface and an object, as shown in Figure 11.22.

   For this demonstration, we will use a sphere because reflections are best visible on round, smooth surfaces.

Figure 11.22 – Creating a simple scene

2. Create a new material for the sphere, with a Metallic value of 1.000 and a Roughness value of 0.25 or less.

Figure 11.23 – Creating a new material

3. Create another plane above the scene and use an Array modifier to create multiple instances of the shape, as shown in Figure 11.24.

Figure 11.24 – Adding a plane with...

Summary

In this chapter, we learned about the different types of lights available in Blender and how they can be used to create compelling scenes that present a 3D model in a better light. With the help of these lighting techniques, we can quickly and easily make our scenes and 3D models much more attractive. This will help us create compelling renders and artwork. If you would like to explore some more lighting techniques and concepts, I encourage you to investigate three-point lighting, IES lighting profiles, compositing with light passes, or color temperatures.

In the next chapter, we will learn how to apply custom environment images known as HDRIs to simulate real-life lighting and improve our scenes.