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Hey guys,

I'm curious, I'm going to be lighting a car interior I've modeled and I'm wondering if anybody has lighting tips for Octane Render. I'd like to get as close to possible as the attached in terms of the lighting / HDRI setup. I'll obviously have to mess around with the materials to get what I'm after. Any ideas on where to start?

Thanks you.

If you want to light something well don't use HDR, go light for light positioning it the way you like and accentuating the shapes, you work with each light isolated and then start merging the results to see what all looks like then after all of that is done, you may use an HDR to get ambient light or to just enhance reflections.

PD: Also I can't say for sure in this example but in any kind of illustration you will see several lights merge separately in Photoshop masking each layer to just parts of the whole image so light doesn't "spill" into unwanted areas.

Hey Terry,

Thank you for the explanation. I think I might need more info, so is there a tutorial you can recommend, preferably using Octane? Also, I'm planning on this being an animation, so Photoshop polish really isn't an option.

Sadly no, but it's not too hard either, this workflow works for every renderer and every 3D program out there like I said you start with one light and lit something specific with it then when you do the next light you turn off the previous one only with the intention of not getting distracted and focusing only on the one that's active, you repeat this process several times until you have enough and then turn them all on and make tweaks accordingly, in Octane on top of this you can render each light contribution separately using the lighting passes, you assign each light an ID and Octane will render each ID into a separate pass with this in post-production you can mask out details that you may consider distracting from certain lights, make exposure animations, tints, etc. Maybe with 3 lights you will have what you want or maybe 8 it's the number don't feel limited.

PD: You can also get an HDR or "Ambient Light" pass so you are not just limited with standard lights and can also use HDRs

PD2: I learn this workflow watching Product Photography tutorials on Youtube and also MasteringCGI tutorials/streams.

professorhaddock wrote:Hey guys,

I'm curious, I'm going to be lighting a car interior I've modeled and I'm wondering if anybody has lighting tips for Octane Render. I'd like to get as close to possible as the attached in terms of the lighting / HDRI setup. I'll obviously have to mess around with the materials to get what I'm after. Any ideas on where to start?

Thanks you.

From my side this image there has the background add on post as to get bright inside the car is the same way as interior lighting the exterior would be over exposed and this is the case on the image there the reason why replace the background image in post.

I would say as workflow is kind of two, One is more like VRED style used a lot for car you could use direct light with AO but this look really fake but some car companies like it.
the second one would be normal lighting I always use a portal light at windows to help on the sampling stage and then if I need any extra light But I try to leave natural as possible with the path tracer and the GI, Is quite straight forward, the extra light can be set if you need but many Time I didn't need If the exposure of you external HDR is enough high for the car.

Just think as interior room would help you a lot to achieve the photorealism.

Cheers,
JO

Hey Jolbertoquini,

So I'd apply the Portal material to all of the vehicle's windows along with a Sky object, and add extra area lights or spot lights as needed?

Hi professorhaddock,
the Portal material should be used only in internal scenes with small opening, in this way the kernel can more easily find the path to reach the environment outside.
In automotive rendeting, the windows are wide, so better to use an invisible emitter to bring light inside, instead of the portal material, along with a Sky object, and add extra area lights or spot lights as needed.
ciao beppe

Hey bepeg4d,

By invisible emitter, do you mean an object with an emitter material and an Octane Tag applied and set to not be seen by the camera? I'm not familiar with that technique so I'm just trying to make sure I understand.

Hi professorhaddock,
in general, I duplicate and move few mm away the inner polygons of the glasses. Maybe you need to slightly scale down to avoid intersections, this will reduce a lot the noise.
Then I use a diffuse material with colored emission like the indirect light, and opacity at 0.
This helps a lot to boost the indirect light that comes in from outside.
In 3.07 there are a lot interesting new features for emission:
viewtopic.php?f=33&t=62395
ciao beppe

Hey man, thank you for the detailed reply. Apologies for not getting back to you sooner.