Author Topic: Restaurant Viz - Lightning  (Read 17363 times)

2014-08-18, 22:38:15

tomislavn

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I am working on a restaurant visualization at the moment and I have decided to use Corona as my primary render engine. This is an early light study preview after few days of modeling the furniture and general layout.

What do you guys think about the lightning? I will be using around 40 IES lights, 12 Corona standard lights and Corona sky/sun with some portals on the front door.

I am kind of concerned about the whole look since, by the design, most of the furniture will be using a dark material. Do you think I will be able to pull it off with this setup or should I change it? I am getting pretty much the same results when I replace Corona sun/sky with HDR.

I think the main problem might be that the only light entrance is the front door - there is no windows anywhere.

I would really like to hear any kind of feedback from anyone that had similar setup/problem.
« Last Edit: 2014-08-19, 10:05:48 by tomislavn »
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2014-08-19, 12:20:00
Reply #1

tomislavn

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No lightning tips for those small opening, "bigger than a kitchen/living room" scenes? :/
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2014-08-19, 12:46:53
Reply #2

romullus

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If there's small openings and you want that ambient light would play significant role in lighting, then definitely, portals are your friends.

As for tips, it deppends on what mood you want achieve. You can turn all artificial lights on max power and get flat lighting, that shows well all geometry you put there, but are rather boring, or you can try to find fine balance between artificial and ambient light.
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2014-08-19, 13:05:34
Reply #3

tomislavn

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If there's small openings and you want that ambient light would play significant role in lighting, then definitely, portals are your friends.

As for tips, it deppends on what mood you want achieve. You can turn all artificial lights on max power and get flat lighting, that shows well all geometry you put there, but are rather boring, or you can try to find fine balance between artificial and ambient light.

Thank you very much for your feedback Romullus, I appreciate it a lot! When you say that I should use portals - that means only on front door openings, right?
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2014-08-19, 13:15:18
Reply #4

romullus

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If that's the only openings, then - yes :]
I'm not Corona Team member. Everything i say, is my personal opinion only.
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2014-08-19, 13:16:40
Reply #5

tomislavn

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If that's the only openings, then - yes :]

Hmm okay, thank you! There are 7 small planes with portal material on each door window opening already (on the sample render) so I guess that should be it then.

Need to work on the materials then check it out again :)
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2014-08-20, 12:02:55
Reply #6

tomislavn

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Hmm, I am not quite sure how to feel about this. I have started to work A BIT on the material/lightning part and I am already starting to think that the lightning won't suffice without major tweaking.

Light setup: I have switched from corona sky/sun to HDR (PG's Clear Sky 1224) and at the moment there is around 30 lights inside of the casings that are ON. There are portals (with portal material) on the front door glass openings.

Here is a sample render (low quality, 5min quick preview with 20 passes) to get the general idea. No tweaking or post was done.

What do you guys think?

« Last Edit: 2014-08-20, 12:13:48 by tomislavn »
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2014-08-20, 12:39:10
Reply #7

agentdark45

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For interiors I tend to get them lit properly with natural daylight first. Imagine you were a photographer standing in the restaurant with all lights turned off, what would you see and would it be as dark as your render? After the render looks fairly ok, I'd then bring up the artificial lighting to a sufficient degree and drop the exposure slightly.

It seems like you need to tweak your exposure / highlight compression quite a bit judging by the test render in order to get the room lit evenly without harsh burnouts.

Another problem you might be having is that the black floor material could be too black and not bouncing enough light around the scene?
Vray who?

2014-08-20, 13:20:14
Reply #8

tomislavn

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For interiors I tend to get them lit properly with natural daylight first. Imagine you were a photographer standing in the restaurant with all lights turned off, what would you see and would it be as dark as your render? After the render looks fairly ok, I'd then bring up the artificial lighting to a sufficient degree and drop the exposure slightly.

It seems like you need to tweak your exposure / highlight compression quite a bit judging by the test render in order to get the room lit evenly without harsh burnouts.

Another problem you might be having is that the black floor material could be too black and not bouncing enough light around the scene?

Thank you very much for your feedback! Thing is, I can't really seem to light this scene good enough without using artificial lights. I have tried corona sky/sun combination, then HDR only - but each time I try to get it lit enough, I get insane burns that not even highlight compression can fix.

I guess it must be the floor material that is causing that. Without materials it comes out just fine.
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2014-08-20, 17:30:53
Reply #9

CiroC

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Couldn't you control the highlight compression with the HDR Toning in Photoshop?

2014-08-20, 19:54:19
Reply #10

fco3d

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You have a lot of pendant light there, is that the architect choice? or it is your design?
If some design all those light, and you follow the intensity of those lamps you room should be lit correctly.  in real life those spaces don't look like those sine "Scandinavian" renderings that we see all around, with that dark floor, and dark furniture your scene will suck a lot of light.
First I would check the intensity of our spot lights, adjust the spread angle on them too, then check the albedo of your materials. if everything still too dark for you taste, you can always save as an EXR 32 bits and fix the image in Photoshop or sue hidden lights in your scene to compensate the low lighting.
AS mentioned before here if you are a photographer and the place does not have enough light, then you will have to use "fill lights" to compensate.

Check this images references from the internet, look how much light is coming from the lamps and how many are they using to compensate the lac of natural light.
Also you also will see the falloff of the sun light coming from small openings.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-5N9vz4sHg6U/UaI1tg87exI/AAAAAAAAABg/_Q9oiImHUCY/s400/Restaurant-Interior-Design-Ideas-and-Gallery.jpg

http://premierline.net/_ph/5/33746599.jpg?1404080958



edit :wrong link
« Last Edit: 2014-08-21, 00:11:12 by fco3d »

2014-08-20, 19:59:57
Reply #11

tomislavn

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Thank you very much for your valuable feedback guys :) I will try to play a bit more with it. It was an architect who created/designed the layout. I am just doing the visualization of his project.

This is the last render - HDR only, no other lights are on atm.

Seems decent to me. I guess :/
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2014-08-21, 01:33:38
Reply #12

agentdark45

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What about aiming the sun into the room through the doors so that it casts over the seating? That should bring up the interior light levels without creating burnouts.
Vray who?

2014-08-21, 03:25:39
Reply #13

antanas

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 Hi, recently I worked on similarly lit project and one thing I can tell - that lighting scenario sometimes can be a real pain in you know where :) Well from my recent experience or rather my recent mistakes, you can learn this:

- 1st portals should be done similar to this
- on the outside of the window\door facing the interior plus one portal plane should cover entire opening no need to add portals for each of the window's glass parts, sorry if I'm mistaken about what you did, but you wrote "Corona standard lights and Corona sky/sun with some portals on the front door" so I made a suggestion you didn't set up those correctly and portals done that way (I mean multiple portals, especially if done on the interior side of the window) can produce some ugly-never-going-away noise or just do not speed up rendering at all - it depends on the situation

- 2nd try to make window glass one sided geometry with thin(no refraction) option ticked in its material - this is quite important, yet not just for speed or noise (well those too, but difference is not too big) but more (from my bad experience) to the power/brightness of reflections/refractions/specular coming from the hdri (probably corona sky as well but I have not tested this) and it will be quite difficult to balance lighting and reflections coming from the outside with those from the inside objects  - I don't know if that's a bug or physically correct behavior (which I highly doubt) but this happened to me so better be safe than sorry :)
 
 Hope that helps .   

2014-08-21, 06:19:12
Reply #14

snakebox

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Sorry to jump on this thread, but quick question to those who know... when you create a plane and add the portal material to it... does it matter which way the plane is facing? like is there an in and out? or does it boost environment to both sides? 

Also seems like intersecting geometry isn't a problem? or do people put them just outside/inside say of windows?