This is my latest WIP. You can barely see it but there are cells on the other side of the glass and I will be adding more objects after I get the lighting done. As you can see from my image I'm having alot of trouble with the reflection on the glass causing you not to be able to see into the cells. But I need the door lit well to show the detail.
Any ideas? Oh and I threw a radial light into the cell on the left just so you could get a faint impression of the bunk I have placed in there. Message edited on: 10/09/2004 10:19

maybe more directional light near the door.I'm barely literate when it comes to lighting, but maybe a parallel light facing the door. I think part of the problem with the glass walls is that they're set to be reflective; if you're comfortable modifying the textures, you might be able to turn that down some. The idea is to confine the light in the hall to the door, and maybe some radials in the cells..more good answers following this one..;)

I'm fairly comfortable modifying textures, but maybe one of you can tell me exactly which setting to change on the glass. I don't want to turn the reflection down TOO much because then you wouldn't be able to see the glass, would you? And I chose a glass that had low reflection to begin with, but obviously that wasn't the case, lol.

I was going to suggest something similar to pakled, but now that you say you wouldn't want to reduce the reflection on the glass, I suppose you could increase light intensity from within the cells... ...or try this balance: as you increase the intensity of light inside the cells, reduce the intensity of the light outside the cells by the same percentage.

What pumeco said. Maybe try changing the falloff parameters on the outside lights ?

karineq i'm not sure which glass you used but the image here i used Glass Bubble with no changes to the reflection, give that one a try. First one in Glasses. Another way you could try first is to counter act the light outside the glass by placing some soft light inside the cells just to dull the reflection a little bit.

Message edited on: 10/09/2004 14:59

you can always increase the ambiance level of the mat,which would allow a dimmer light on the outside of the cells.And then further tweak with the lights inside the cells as others have said.There are a few ways I would suppose.Maybe reduce the amout of reflection too?

Try lowering the refraction level of the glass.

Either that, or in a scene with this much relfection, try turning up the Ray Depth and TIR level in the Render options. Sometimes the rays just don't make it through, those little bastards. Cool scene, by the way!