How to create this lighting???

[Mylenium]

It looks like it’
s simply using an HDRI image as a spherical reflection map. You can either map the HDRI directly to the environment channel or apply it to geometry in your scen. Add a CCompositing tag to that geometry and set it to “Invisible for Camera”. This way you get the reflections, but not the actual sphere or hwatever visible in your image.

Mylenium

[Pour Myl

[Michael Munkittrick]

If I map the HDRI image to my environment, will it show motion in the geometry when a reflective object is moved with a camera accrss a plane?

For example, I’ve got a 2000 by 2000 by 2000 hollow cube acting as a “cyclorama” for a fictitious cleaning product shot. If I set a camera target on the product and have the product slide in to view from off screen and the camera simultaniously trucks around the product to the opposing side of the cyclorama, will the HDRI reflections appear to flow over and or around the product shot.

Also, is there such a thing as an “HDRI” video clip, or would heightening the contract and boosting the white-area be sufficient to give the impression of the environment having some life to it?

Michael Munkittrick
Gainesville, Florida USA

[Mylenium]

Yes, since the environment is projected in world coordinates, it would slide over the geometry as it moves. You can use HDRI sequences as clips – C4D doesn’t care where its pixels come from. How you create them, is another question… Bumping up the contrast and brightness usually are good enough, but of course you can add any other texture and animate it to get more live. So for instance if you were to create the illusion of leafy shadows, you’d probably put a dark Noise shader in Multiply mode on top of you HDR image in a layered material. For ultimate realism you should of course combine multiple techniques such as HDRI, gobos and invisible reflection objects, depending on your desired result.

Mylenium

[Pour Myl

[Michael Munkittrick]

Is there anything that you DON’T know about C4D? Man, a walking manual like yourself should be working for Maxon. I was pretty unclear about the C4D lighting architecture, but if it reacts similar to actual physics, then I’ll find my way through. Thanks so much for your time.

Michael Munkittrick
Gainesville, Florida USA

[Mylenium]

[Michael Munkittrick] “Is there anything that you DON’T know about C4D?”

There’s certainly a lot I don’t know. I’ve been away from it a long time and except for my now rather intimate knowledge of the MoGraph module, I’ve never been a power user even in the past. As for working for Maxon – they don’t even want me on their Beta team (unfortunately), so there’s nothing more to talk about and working for them on a permanent basis is a bit far flung, I think. I simply wouldn’t know how to fit in the greater scheme of things and if they could give me the fertile ground to grow. They don’t seem to have need for a middleman between the creative and the technical world such as I possibly represent when wearing my pink helper-bunny suit. I also seem to have honked them off quite a bit with a few carelessly chosen words and my usual jumping ahead with my big mouth, so we’ll simply have to see. ;O)

Mylenium

[Pour Myl