Hello. I have just started to use my Carrara4. I am having great difficulty with positioning lights. When it comes to spot lights I have no problems. You can see how far the light is coming down, or how big the radius is. With the other lights, I can't tell where the direction of the is going until after I render which can seem forever. I often get big flares on objects or walls and when I rotate the lights I don't know what I am really doing. So my question is does anyone know of a good tutorial somewhere that can help me. I would appreciate any help.

I guess the manual is a help in this case. The thing is, when you are not using spot or distance lights, the light actually has no direction (it spreads in all directions). And I must disagree with the possibility of 'seeing how far the light is coming down' with a spotlight. Experimenting is the best way to find out, but then you should use fairly low levels of render quality and sizes. The numbers you should use, for the millions of possible atmosphere you want to create, are not easy to put in a tutorial, because they depend on the size of the objects and the scene you use. Lighting is one of the hard parts, you can not learn it without doing it. If you Google on 'carrara tutorials lighting' most of the results are training cd's or dvd's. For this kind of basic onderstanding of the whole concept of lighting that might very well be a very good start if you do not have large amounts of time to spend, but have some cash.

Go to the library and get some books on lighting for photography. That will give you some ideas as to how light works in the real world, and should help dramatically with understanding lighting in the virtual world.

Absolutely! I started out in film production and when I work on a Carrara project, I fall back on basic three-point-lighting far more often than I'd ever imagine. If you don't know what three-point-lighting is, bluetone's suggestion is excellent. If you're planning on animating, I'd recommend books on motion picutre lighting, as well. There are some fairly big differences between lighting for stills and lighting for motion. Blaine Brown's book is very good. Good luck!

Good point about the difference for animation. Of course, there is a lot that can be done in 3d that can never be atempted in real life because of the constraints of gravity and the like. But, that's where the art comes in! :D

One little tip that help me a bit was also changing the Interactive Render Settings under Lighting from Lightmap to Actual it won't replace rendering the seen but you will at least get a clue as to how your lights are affecting your seen when positioning them.

"Constraints of gravity." Heh. Yah, there are so many tricks I can do in 3d that I wish for in my regular job lighting the stage for live theater. The biggest being that 3d lights aren't visible. Not only don't you have to hang them, or run power to them, but you can put them right in sightlines, even right in front of the camera, and no-one will see them. Another lovely cheat is fall-off. I've used spotlights several times of late to punch up an important element in the scene...and with a couple test renders you can tweak the fall-off to where the light just hits the target then stops, magically, in the air before it would cast an ugly shadow on the wall. Most of my scenes are three-point, plus practicals, and often a rim light and some specials. The way I usually set it up, is first I determine what will be the strongest and most dramatic light in the scene; moonlight from behind, a light through a window, a glowing gem at the center, whatever. I set this light up first, with no other lights, and do several renders until I like the shadows and so forth. Then find the second strongest, usually complementary. If the Key was sunlight, the Base is backfill from the blue sky. If the Key was the direct light of a floor lamp, the Base is the warmer scatter coming back off the floor. Lastly, I plop in a fill; soft shadows or even no shadows, more-or-less from the camera direction, filling in the gaps where the other two lights meet. That's in some neutral color (like a pale lavender), and at a very low level. Carrara gives you the additional tools that any of these three basic lights can be the sky dome, the radiosity-like GI scatter, an HDRI map, a large square with a glow channel, etc. I've done several outdoor pics that were just sky dome, a single distant light, and GI. What I like about three-point thinking (even if the final design ends up being twenty instruments from six directions, which is usual for me in theater), is that it asks you to find the most dramatic way to light, the light that most tells the story and leads the eye, and the light that most enhances the total look of the scene (the time of day, the season, interior or exterior, moody or friendly, chilly or warm...) Sorry. Pre-coffee ramble. And I'm facing a long day of moving real-world lights that weigh thirty pounds each and have lots of hard steel to bark knuckles on.

Sounds familiar... I set lights for business meetings sometimes, usually other stuff also. Those heavy metal objects SHOULD be invisible and be able to hang in mid-air!! :D Good advice on your technique, thanks for sharing it!

When you're starting to light a scene, a little light goes a long way. I always start with a light at less than 100%...usually 66% or less. It's easy to 'overlight' and have flares and shadows criss-crossing all over the place. I also like to just Ctrl_D duplicate a light [at, let's say: 44%] and move it around and fine tune by increasing or decreasing the fall-off. But it's lots of trail and error. Use the Snapshot camera to preview small areas. Be patient.

Attached Link: http://www.kurvstudios.com/lightwave/introduction_lighting.php

Attached Link: http://www.dvcreators.net/products/dv_enlightenment.html

Attached Link: http://www.vtc.com/cd/carrara4.htm

In the Carrara 4 Scenewizard menu you should find a "Lighting Scene" section with various light setting check them out. They are very helpful.

Hi I have noticed that lighting can be difficult to get just right in C4. You have to be able to picture what each lighting element you use will do. The problems start when (as frequently happens), the lights do not do exactly what you think they will. I do a lot of starship models in space. I ende up using limited range bulb lights with light spheres for glow effects on the ships engines and weapons. I also use distance lights to create the low level ambient lighting I need as well as sunlight from stars. It can get tricky doing this without overlighting the scene. I also play with the shadow properties of different objects and lights. I typically do about 50-60 test renders at low resolution before I do the final high resolution render. I persomanny thing they could have made some of the lights easier to use, I have yet to figure out shape lights or tube lights. Im hoping to play with them soon so I can use them for weapon shots. Just remember Never Give Up, Never Surrender...

Hi I have noticed that lighting can be difficult to get just right in C4. You have to be able to picture what each lighting element you use will do. The problems start when (as frequently happens), the lights do not do exactly what you think they will. I do a lot of starship models in space. I ende up using limited range bulb lights with light spheres for glow effects on the ships engines and weapons. I also use distance lights to create the low level ambient lighting I need as well as sunlight from stars. It can get tricky doing this without overlighting the scene. I also play with the shadow properties of different objects and lights. I typically do about 50-60 test renders at low resolution before I do the final high resolution render. I persomanny thing they could have made some of the lights easier to use, I have yet to figure out shape lights or tube lights. Im hoping to play with them soon so I can use them for weapon shots. Just remember Never Give Up, Never Surrender...

Hi I have noticed that lighting can be difficult to get just right in C4. You have to be able to picture what each lighting element you use will do. The problems start when (as frequently happens), the lights do not do exactly what you think they will. I do a lot of starship models in space. I ende up using limited range bulb lights with light spheres for glow effects on the ships engines and weapons. I also use distance lights to create the low level ambient lighting I need as well as sunlight from stars. It can get tricky doing this without overlighting the scene. I also play with the shadow properties of different objects and lights. I typically do about 50-60 test renders at low resolution before I do the final high resolution render. I persomanny thing they could have made some of the lights easier to use, I have yet to figure out shape lights or tube lights. Im hoping to play with them soon so I can use them for weapon shots. Just remember Never Give Up, Never Surrender...

Sparroonightmare is probably running on to the same posting problem I did. I click on the Post Reply button, and nothing happens so I think my reply was never entered. Renderosity aside from being the slowest web site I visit, it's also one of the bugiest.

Sparrow...have you noticed?

Heh Sparroon. "By Grabthar's hammer... by the Suns of Morvan... you shall be avenged. " I have the same problem -- and on a slow computer it's a nightmare. Render after render to get the lighting right. And then as soon as I jump up to full size renders new problems come in (usually insufficient photons).

Yeh it gave me a 404 on the first click or so when I went to post, They really need to speed up the server. ANyways, Yeh it is quite a problem. Worse is when you can't get the lens flare or 3D aura effect to work at the post render phase without returning that maddening "Memory Allocation Error". I run a 1GN machine with close to 800GB of storage. It should NOT be running out of memory.