I added some more objects and enlarged the scene. Here is the first image. It has two round lights about midpoint in the room. I like the deep shadows but dislike that that they're hard and you can see both of them.

Here is the second. I made a hemisphere behind the camera. There is a single light output of 1 no falloff. It's up in the top portion of the dome. I also turned cast shadows off for the ceiling and floor so the light would come straight through. Which looks better, first or second? What could I improve?

the second one is more ambient, but the first one strikes the eye better. i'd put a small burning candle on the table, give it a little light, and stick with the first one.

Man I wish you threw up the wire frame or the wire frame imposed on the image anyway Im going to open my mouth here (might be the last time) so here goes. Id start working from the first one, first Id soften the shadows on both radial and see how that looked, then Id turn of shadows on each one separately, and then both together, and compare the three outputs. Then Id make sure sun shadows were off and drop a spot casting shadows outside the window and then try it with an array of four or five low level radials casting shadows in the same place outside the window. Then Id start experimenting with ranging the output on the two interior radials and using a gradient, until I had about 20 versions to choose from, and then Id start a slide show with the outputs and start eliminating

Message edited on: 07/05/2004 20:09

PS - You've got some wicked cool stuff in there!

Sorry, here is the wireframe for setup 1.

Here's setup 2. The half sphere is covered with brushed silver material. Each setup also has a radial light outside each window. Sunlight is off for both images.

Have you taken the default checkmark from in front of Gamma Correction? It helps to give a cleaner, clearer image.

Just my .02 cents.

Wade

It seems you have to lower the haze/fog settings, too. The first one is better, but without that bluish cast would be even better.

It may just be me, but the first set-up seems more consistent with the established light source of the windows. I agree with Erlik that perhaps the haze/fog setting on the first one could be thinned. JL

The room just is not big enought to have distance haze. (agree with Erlik). Might also suggest some texture on the ceiling and just a tiny touch of DOF. The only problem with a single spherical is that the shadows are wrong for the windows and the ambient is unrealistically high. What you need is a more parallel light from outside the windows (bright, slight yellow and hard shadows here). I would then add two wide angle conics with limited range and power on the floor to simulate the reflected scattering (use soft shadows here). I would also use one sphereical without shadows set to a low power to provide just enough ambience to pict out some detail in the shadows. This should give you a better image lighting wise. Richard

Message edited on: 07/06/2004 11:25

Give me a shout if you would like to discuss this more.

It's interesting how haze can really make a difference.