Tips for camera/light angles?

[enthewhite]

Hi everyone.

One of the things I find most challenging when setting up renders is getting the lights positioned. I will desire a certain specular highlight on my subject, so I will move my lights around, trying to guess at which angle relative to the subject and the camera I will get my desired effect.

Are there any tricks to doing this? I suppose it will be much easier when there is an integrated plugin for my software (softimage) so that the render can update as I am moving a light around. But there must be a better way people have done it before the advent of live rendered views.

Thanks for any tips!

Ian

[Tugpsx]

With "geometrygroup" node you can now load a plane set it to emission and use it as light source. Use the placement node to move it around in your scene and get realtime lighting feedback.

See radient hints http://render.otoy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=7566


@Radiant time for a video on this one.

[enthewhite]

Hey tugpsx, thanks for the tip! Forgot I had posted this question