I usually use Vue for outdoor scenes, but a scene I was working on in Carrara simply won't load anymore (I can't seem to get more than three Millenium figures into Carrara on my 2.5gb 1.8ghz machine, but I can do at least 10 in Vue)...

I'm wondering if there are any good tutorials out there for lighting an indoor scene in a room with no windows.

Should I use global illumination or global ambiance or other indirect lighting? Should I set up any haze? I desire my figures to be over a foggy pit, but in clear air themselves...

I can post a thumb of what I did in Carrara a bit later on, it's got about half my desired scene... and ever since the app just crashes when I try to add more. I should have known better than to try to get any use out of that app. :)

Essentially I want clear air, with strong shadows as if from torches or candlelight, and a foggy glowing mist underneath the scene. The figures are then holding a number of glowing items which themselves then give off a little light and make more shadows...

But outside of even my particular needs, any tutorials on indoor lighting would be valuable to find, as I'll probably have more indoor needs in the future.

I found the following to be helpful.  It's alot to digest.  I'm constantly struggling to get lighting right.

Hope these help:

http://www.nggalai.com/tutorials/tut_01.htm

http://www.newtek.com/products/lightwave/tutorials/animation/lighting-002/

http://www.alquier.org/linfa-net/cg/archives/_cg_concepts/lighting/

http://www.itchy-animation.co.uk/light.htm

Persevere,

Mark

Oops, forgot to add the "backroom" right here!  I'm not sure that's it's been updated recently though.  But still it's helpful too.  :)

Thanks. Those have been very illuminating. :D

Arcady,

You may also find a bit of stuff on my Vue site:
http://www.altuit.com/webs/altuit2/vuelab/IndoorRadiosity.htm

Also, this image was rendered with GI and no ceiling.

You can see a larger version at:
http://excalibur.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1140867

Hope it helps! Good luck :-)

Quote - I usually use Vue for outdoor scenes, but a scene I was working on in Carrara simply won't load anymore (I can't seem to get more than three Millenium figures into Carrara on my 2.5gb 1.8ghz machine, but I can do at least 10 in Vue)...

I'm wondering if there are any good tutorials out there for lighting an indoor scene in a room with no windows.

Should I use global illumination or global ambiance or other indirect lighting? Should I set up any haze? I desire my figures to be over a foggy pit, but in clear air themselves...

I can post a thumb of what I did in Carrara a bit later on, it's got about half my desired scene... and ever since the app just crashes when I try to add more. I should have known better than to try to get any use out of that app. :)

Essentially I want clear air, with strong shadows as if from torches or candlelight, and a foggy glowing mist underneath the scene. The figures are then holding a number of glowing items which themselves then give off a little light and make more shadows...

But outside of even my particular needs, any tutorials on indoor lighting would be valuable to find, as I'll probably have more indoor needs in the future.

Curious, I can get Carrara5.1 to render more Poser objects than Vue5I -- but not many more.  Do you have texture spooling turned on in Carrara?  Are all unused masters purged from the scene?  I'm not trying to start some silly Carrara vs. Vue here, as I like both applications, but do have different uses for them at times.

Carrara does get very finicky with multiple volumetric clouds, and using them while trying to render a bunch of Poser figures is hard to do.  I usually have to remove something to get such files to render.

All 32 bit applications are suffering from lack of memory (I understand that the 32 bit version of C4D has similar problems), and until we get Vista, and the new 64 bit Mac OS on line, things will get no better.

I've never seen concincing interior lighting of a room that HAD a ceiling in Vue, but that's just me.  :(

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1272684&member

I ended up using an 8 light scheme:

1 key spotlight
2 fill spotlights
5 effects direct lights (for magic glows on the staves and the belt bead, plus distant blues and reds - these all set to low power settings.

Ambient turned off, sun deleted from the scene. 100% of the lighting is from the above lights. One of those effect lights was at 120 strength, but it is off scene to the bottom left by the distance of the scene itself, another was at a similar rating, but it below the scene in the red area (made with the fog control) and likewise red - done to smooth in the fog effect and cast a slight red underglow to certain figures. The other effects lights have strengths of 20, 10, and 1 and are inside of objects to make them glow. Only the key spotlight and the distant blue (the off scene light) cast shadows.

Overall, I think I'm going to try more indoor experiments in the future.

Quote - I've never seen concincing interior lighting of a room that HAD a ceiling in Vue, but that's just me.  :(

This is something I'm working on, but it's very hard. Often I need to do shots that will include some of the ceiling. It's not too difficult for rooms that are entirely artificially lit - the real difficulty is doing a bright room lit by sunlight coming in from the windows. The area directly lit from the windows needs to have sharp shadows, but the rest of the room must (a) not be dark, and (b) not be shadowless. The GI and radiosity models have not proved useful so far.

I have had some success by putting a very strong, very distant spotlight in the sky with shadows set to 50%. This is then only partly blocked by the ceiling. Oddly enough, this trick does not work with directional lights, and I don't know why.