Working on Space lighting Tutorial

[Auditor]

I've been forming ideas for a Space Lighting tutorial. today I randomally chose a ship to play with. The ship takes lights well in some ways and other it is a pain. I do like this image. It did give me ideas for the tutorial though, be cause it doesn't have the "normal" ship look so it really is good for working with difficult ships to light well.

The ship was on my hard drive. It came from Scif Meshes I believe I'll check on that. Apparentally it was for a web move don't know if it was made.

The ship is called the Protector. The film "Eclipse". I am in no way part of the project. All credits are given on the image.

[evil_genius_180]

It's a cool looking ship. Does it have a self illumination rig or are you limited to scene lights?

[Darrell Lawrence]

Looking forward to this tutorial

[gmd3d]

always great to have new tutorials .....

[Tenement]

Ditto on that!

[Auditor]

Originally Posted by evil_genius_180

It's a cool looking ship. Does it have a self illumination rig or are you limited to scene lights?

Thanks everyone. The ship doesn't have any self illumination. I will talk about that in the tutorial. I used a really wide angle lens for the shot. I bumped up the glow settings and luminosity on the windows. There are three lights. Could have used two, but I wanted the front lit up more.

Maybe tomorrow I'll post a pic of it with more flat lighting and a basic lens. So you can see how it started.

The image was done rather quickly. Couple hours.

At least no one said your lighting sucks why would you think you can do a tutorial.

[Auditor]

P.S. It looks alot darker on my computer at work.

[evil_genius_180]

I'm looking forward to the tutorial. I think I have a decent handle on lighting, but there are always new things to learn. Plus, you use Lightwave, which I have and (one of these days) will be learning to use.

[Auditor]

Hello. Spent the day working in lightwave. Doing some work on the space lighting tutorial. Thought I'd post some of the final images from today.

Hope you like them. There simple shots. They were all about a basic light setup.

[Auditor]

I posted some stuff on my blog with a little detail about what I'm thinking for the tutorial. Working it through. Maybe people could chime in with what they'd like to see or expect. Then I could get some more ideas and focus.

[gmd3d]

your renders look great....... I cannot offer any suggestions as I hardly ever render image these days..... I do look forward to see the tutorial, it will be great to have a guide for when I do get back into it.

[Auditor]

Thank you. Glad you like them.

Wanted to add that I plan on doing the tutorial as a PDF.

[gmd3d]

great idea, I was going to ask if you where

[evil_genius_180]

The lighting looks really solid in those images. All 3 have great highs and lows and you've accounted for the nebula gasses by adding fill lights. (a surprisingly large number of people don't do that) Great stuff.

.pdf tutorials are great. Especially for those of us who may like to download it once and then copy it to another device to view it so that we don't have to switch windows on our computer to see it.

[Auditor]

Thanks for the kind words. Glad you approve. Always thought your lighting was great. I hopefullly I can help with light wave.

All the advice is great. I like the pdf format for tutorials. You can save them to your hardrive or usb. I like that I can have it up on my second screen also.

I'll be posting again later today.

[Auditor]

Old School Lighting.

My Space Tutorial will be full of old school techniques and tips.

Another excerpt from my notes.

"Excuse my rather over the top example ot the self illumination image, but I wanted to get across some points on self-illuminating lighting for ships.

The object is beveled plane I created for this purpose. There are two main lights one specular only. They are simulating a sun. It's hitting the hull, but not the inset areas. There are three red point lights with fall off on as do the blue lights under the ledge. They all have raytraced shadows on. All five lights have flare on, but only glow is the only flare option selected.

The two spotlights have intensity fall off on and shadow mapped shadows.

Now you might be tempted to put volumetric lights on your ship spotlights illuminating those hull markings. To be accurate, space being a vacuum,there is no medium to warrant it's existence.

If you have issues with the sizes of your lights when placing them in parts of the ship adjust the grid size to change the representation of the lights to the correct size.

I'm not sure I will be getting in the tutorial on this aspect of the lighting, but hopefully it will be enough to get an idea of what to use in Lightwave or your 3D package."

All this stuff will be rewritten and make sense when I get a handle on the tutorial.

[Auditor]

Just wanted to let you all know I'm still working on the tutorial which of now is 29 pages long. Had the last two days off and spent a good amount of time on the tutorial.

It is aimed at beginners and intermediate users.

I'm concerned about making it too simple or too complex. Its fun doing a tutorial, but a bit stressful too.

[evil_genius_180]

Good to hear. If you need anybody to test the tutorial out before you release it to the "masses," I can do that. (once you get it done, of course) Plus, we have a few other LW users around here who may be able to help test it.

[Auditor]

Good to hear. If you need anybody to test the tutorial out before you release it to the "masses," I can do that. Plus, we have a few other LW users around here who may be able to help test it.

That is part of my master plan and you my friend are at the top of the list. You and Taranis.

[evil_genius_180]

Cool. I'm always up for helping. Plus, I figure I'll probably learn something in the process. So, it benefits us both.

[gmd3d]

send it when it ready ..... I don´t have much LW time these days...... but I can always do it for a tut test