lighting challnege

[bpzen]

I am really struggling with indoor lighting. I can render images with HDRI and they come out fantastic. Once i use an enclosed setting - 4 walls, ceiling, floor... and do not want massive lighting going on i seem to run into 1 or more of these issues

1. No high lights due to lights being so dimly lite they cant produce it
2. Lots of noise esp with IES (I have tired over 100 free and purchased with very little success)
3. Very flat lighting, sorta same as 1 but just blaaa compared to same scene hiding walls and cellign and lighting up with HDRI - looks like 2 different images (skin, clothing, eyes, everthing

Has anyone had success with indoor lighting were it looks crisp,clean (comparable to HDRI) and lit up where you want it and shadowy in other areas of a room, can you share your workflow?

Is the stand alone engine better with lighting, I assume its the same and this is not a plug in issue?

Is there HDRI for in door lighting, ive found some but still lights up the scene way too much

I know rendering indoors can look very nice, i see Vray, Metal Ray and other rendering engines all the time look super realistic, clean etc.... Is Octane just not cut out for it unless we use HDRI?

[ASyme1]

I am really struggling with indoor lighting. I can render images with HDRI and they come out fantastic. Once i use an enclosed setting - 4 walls, ceiling, floor... and do not want massive lighting going on i seem to run into 1 or more of these issues

1. No high lights due to lights being so dimly lite they cant produce it
2. Lots of noise esp with IES (I have tired over 100 free and purchased with very little success)
3. Very flat lighting, sorta same as 1 but just blaaa compared to same scene hiding walls and cellign and lighting up with HDRI - looks like 2 different images (skin, clothing, eyes, everthing

Has anyone had success with indoor lighting were it looks crisp,clean (comparable to HDRI) and lit up where you want it and shadowy in other areas of a room, can you share your workflow?

Is the stand alone engine better with lighting, I assume its the same and this is not a plug in issue?

Is there HDRI for in door lighting, ive found some but still lights up the scene way too much

I know rendering indoors can look very nice, i see Vray, Metal Ray and other rendering engines all the time look super realistic, clean etc.... Is Octane just not cut out for it unless we use HDRI?

Well, I've made dozens of interior images with Octane that are any match to Vray. I don't usually use HDRI's though. Daylight with sometimes lights in the windows to push in extra light. I often remove ceiling geometry too to let in some more "natural" light. Off camera of course. That's a big help.

Let me know if I can help further.

Thanks
alec

[bpzen]

Thank you, are you using mesh emitters square or ball/point? Using IES?

Can you give me an idea of what you would do differently with this image?

http://erotic3dx.com/misc/testies.png

Ive set up a few Point light above her (converted to Emitters using script) IES filter on it i front it lights up the room much too much, ive left them at 100% size

The screen in-front of her is Mesh light no IES

Outside is HDRI Moon light windows 0 opacity

this has rendered now 5 hours 6000 passes and base don past testing with this her left shoulder, cleavage and face will not get much better i have no idea why or what to do ive tried non ies, square mesh ball mesh Puting lights in diff places always seems to look crappy not clear crisp as it should

ive been trying to lite this for almost a week with no luck. hence my post here

thanks

[Spectralis]

I am really struggling with indoor lighting. I can render images with HDRI and they come out fantastic. Once i use an enclosed setting - 4 walls, ceiling, floor... and do not want massive lighting going on i seem to run into 1 or more of these issues

1. No high lights due to lights being so dimly lite they cant produce it
2. Lots of noise esp with IES (I have tired over 100 free and purchased with very little success)
3. Very flat lighting, sorta same as 1 but just blaaa compared to same scene hiding walls and cellign and lighting up with HDRI - looks like 2 different images (skin, clothing, eyes, everthing

Has anyone had success with indoor lighting were it looks crisp,clean (comparable to HDRI) and lit up where you want it and shadowy in other areas of a room, can you share your workflow?

Is the stand alone engine better with lighting, I assume its the same and this is not a plug in issue?

Is there HDRI for in door lighting, ive found some but still lights up the scene way too much

I know rendering indoors can look very nice, i see Vray, Metal Ray and other rendering engines all the time look super realistic, clean etc.... Is Octane just not cut out for it unless we use HDRI?

Well, I've made dozens of interior images with Octane that are any match to Vray. I don't usually use HDRI's though. Daylight with sometimes lights in the windows to push in extra light. I often remove ceiling geometry too to let in some more "natural" light. Off camera of course. That's a big help.

Let me know if I can help further.

Thanks
alec

One of the problems I find with indoor lighting is that if I have the power up too high (>3) then the room looks fine but any figures in the scene look either washed out or too dark depending on their position. It seems very difficult to balance the light in the room with the characters in the scene. I've tried so many combinations of daylight and HDRI but can't find a solution. I've even tried rendering the characters as an alpha with the background switched off and then merging the images in Photoshop. But this is less than ideal as the results are unpredictable and can look artificial (unrealistic or non-existent shadows) even after adjusting the lighting of the character alpha. Another trick is to lighten the walls, floor and ceiling which allows for lower power settings - not so great if the scene decor is meant to be dark. Indoor lighting is one of the biggest problems with Octane Render. Does anyone have any tips?

[ASyme1]

Loose the mesh lights altogether. They always cause noise. Try with daylight and remove some walls and let the light in. If it has to be night use standard lights.

alec

[Spectralis]

What are mesh and standard lights?

[dsyee]

What are mesh and standard lights?

I don't know what "standard lights" means, but mesh lights are meshes (objects) with an emission node.

Point lights are bad - I think they get converted into small spheres? Flat mesh lights are better, and larger is better unless you really need sharp shadows. If you think about it, any path that doesn't intersect a light source will be black. If you have many black paths and relatively few colored paths, you get noise (since it's highly unlikely that two adjacent pixels will find the same light source). With small light sources, most paths will not find a light source.

I tried to quickly throw together a similar scene using stuff in my library. Path tracing w/16 diffuse bounces, 4000 samples/pixel, in 1h37m:

PT 4000 s/p, 16 bounces, 1:37

Still not noise-free, but noticeably better, I think? I then drew an area render around the character and let it run for ~30 mins longer:

PT 4000 s/p, 16 bounces, + area render 2:07

I think letting that run for another hour would produce an acceptable result. There are three light sources:

1) Two-sided plane emitter in front of the monitor with opacity set to 0
2) Large one-sided plane pointing down from the ceiling with opacity set to 0
3) HDRI through the window (specular material)

Here's a render with emitters set to full opacity so you can see what's going on (Direct Lighting/AO):

Also, how did it take 5 hours for you to get 6000 samples/pixel? Your hardware is better than mine...

[mlru]

Thank you, are you using mesh emitters square or ball/point? Using IES?

Can you give me an idea of what you would do differently with this image?

http://erotic3dx.com/misc/testies.png

Ive set up a few Point light above her (converted to Emitters using script) IES filter on it i front it lights up the room much too much, ive left them at 100% size

The screen in-front of her is Mesh light no IES

Outside is HDRI Moon light windows 0 opacity

this has rendered now 5 hours 6000 passes and base don past testing with this her left shoulder, cleavage and face will not get much better i have no idea why or what to do ive tried non ies, square mesh ball mesh Puting lights in diff places always seems to look crappy not clear crisp as it should

ive been trying to lite this for almost a week with no luck. hence my post here

thanks

assuming this is a night scene:

set you camera for a low light setting: focus 2.8, ISO 400, matching film setting (eg Kodak 400), exposure to 1.0

throw away all light emitters except the hdri environment.
adjust the hdri rgb texture to gamma 1.0 and power 1.0
adjust the environment power to something, that gives you a nice rim lighting on the figure (moon light through the window from behind!)
don't mind, if the scene is still too dark overall.

convert the lucent part of the monitor to a texture based emitter and put the texture into diffuse and the emitter channel
adjust the power of the emitter (should be low, maybe 1 ... 5, just enough that her face gets lit)

add a single sided square and put it in position where a ceiling light might be
convert it to black body emitter with temperature 3900...4800K.
set the power to 75 or 100 (watts)

switch to PMS mode

adjust camera settings (exposure, focus) until the scene is nicely lit.

play with position and scale of the single sided square until the lighting looks good.

that's what I would try

[bpzen]

Thanks all

HDRI lighting with walls down is way too much light most of the time to be honest. I normally use an HDRI as a fill light on low power and that seems to work.

Using mesh lights without ies filters the light blows up the scene in nmost cases.

So Mesh lights are no good?

And what are standard lights?

[bpzen]

Also, how did it take 5 hours for you to get 6000 samples/pixel? Your hardware is better than mine...

I lost one of my cards so im working with 1 Titan at the moment until i upgrade my PS, I also am using SSS on skin and hair and there is another figure in the scene but not in the camera view that's probably the length of time issue im have.