Author Topic: Lighting - Balancing Interior and Exterior Light  (Read 4187 times)

2018-11-18, 08:30:20

Graeme

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Hi,

I am haivng problems with balancing my interior and exterior lighting when rendering. I use an HDRI, Corona Sun.


Please see attached pic. (Ignore the noise, I didnt wait for full render).

The interior is too dark, I have played around with overall Exposure, Sun, and HDRi settings, making them higher and lower but I can't get a good balance. Either Exterior is too bright, or interior too dark.


Must I just place more lights in the interior?



Any help would be great, Thanks


2018-11-19, 09:31:13
Reply #2

gpz

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if inside is too dark maybe the lighting set up is wrong. There is non enoguh light.
Look at some images that you like a try to understand:
which is the principal light?
which are the secondary lighs?
are there lights used just to fill somo black spot?

https://www.ronenbekerman.com/photographic-approach-in-architectural-visualisation/

take a look to some video like this

2018-11-19, 10:34:44
Reply #3

patrick.testa

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I agree that in real photos the exterior would look overexposed if you expose the interior correctly but sometimes you need to tweek things to make the shot more natural looking, like explained in the above video (or most times because your client simply wants everything to be in light…)
In this case I think you should increase exposure and work with the "highlight compress", "contrast" and "filmic highlights" parameters of the camera to make it look better.
What I would do is to move the sun so that it doesn't enter the room directly; in that way you should be able to increase exposure without having areas directly hit by the light that would be burned.
Another thing I do in cases like this is to make the windows glass darker, so that the exterior looks less overexposed, but using a ray switch material so that the glass is dark only for reflect, refract and direct while it is still very clear for the global illumination. It usually works for me...
Anyway a slight overexposure of the exterior would make the shot more realistic in my opinion.
My advice is to make the scene look good with the natural light only and then turn on the needed artificial lights with low intensity, only for decorative purpose and not to light the scene.
I hope it helps...

Patrick