I've noticed a lot of people asking about lighting setup questions. I'm happy with the way my latest image turned out, so I thought I'd share some info on the settings so maybe people out there won't have to do as many test renders as I did.

I used 6 light emitting objects: Sky Light, 2 Distant Lights, 1 Bulb, 1 Tube Light, and 1 glowing object. (The settings are in the image)

For my final render, I saved multiple versions of my file. One for each light source (plus one for the fog, and one for the icicles which had a very slight amount of glow). In each file, I removed all but one light source and re-saved the file naming after the remaining light. Then I batch rendered them.

I rendered all of them with GI. But because each only had one light source, they moved quickly.

I composited the renders in Photoshop 7. I just pasted each file into the Sky render, and set their blending modes to screen. I could then adjust the color and values of each light independently, and with better accuracy than I could in Carrara.

That's about it. I hope that these settings are helpful.

Thanks for the tips Pix! BTW, the final image turned out great... the neon really makes it come alive.

Great tutorial! Thank you for sharing your process! Markd

Thanks for the post. Very nice image. Great snow texture and terrain. I would never of thought of using multiple pass rendering. It's nice to see how others create their images. Keith

Excellent post. I'm on a mission to complete the Carrara brain trust which will have a section for project diaries and trust me when I tell you, you're going to be featured! -Kix

-Kix

Cool. That sound's like a great idea. Most of my techniques I learn from reading such postings from other people. So I would be honored to contribute.

Attached Link: http://www.geocities.com/scottspringer78/info/downloadsnowy.html

Someone asked in the gallery... So now the scene file can be downloaded at this link. Tested on Mac, so if you PC users experience problems, let me know ASAP, so that I can resolve the issue.

I hope that you find it helpful.

-Scott

VERY hip pixel! I especially like the multi-pass render solution you created for lighting. I have heard of doing this in other packages for specularity seperate from displacement seperate from blah, blah, blah, but it makes SO much sense to do it for lighting. (Slaps his head!) Now THERE's a feature for ver 3! Multi-pass rendering, as an option in the batch render options. You listening Antoine?

The Sit file download dosent contain a .car file, should it. FWIW a fantastic image and explanation, Carrara needs more of stuff like this.

the .sit file has a document MultipassMASTER in it. this is the scene file. just add .car to the end of it and it will change the icon to carrara's file icon. for some reason, mac version of carrara won't open file with .car on the end, and i made the sit on the mac. oh sit! let me know if you have any further trouble with it. -pix

So does rendering the whole scene light by light actually come out to be quicker in the end than rendering once with all lights? My 20MHz 386 (okay, it only feels that way when rendering anything) when rendering anything of some complexity or a scene with multiple lights.