Lighting Question

[Adam Trachtenberg]

It could be GI or it could be ambient occlusion. In either case you’ll need a sky dome to provide that even lighting. So with GI, you would create a generic sky object, and with AO you would check the “use sky environment” box in the effect properties. AO can also be done per material.

You’d also want to turn off the specular channel for all of your materials.

[Jeremy Allen]

I’m pretty sure they are using ambient occlusion for that. Could be wrong though, I’m still kinda new to C4D myself.

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8core MacPro, 3.0 GHZ, 10GB RAM, OSX 10.5.6

C4D 11.5
AE CS3
FCP 6.0.1

[Adam Trachtenberg]

I should add that, if you use AO instead of GI, you’ll have to add lights to create that even lighting. You can do that by cloning lights onto a half sphere, or using an array (or several) of low intensity lights.

[Gary Smith]

Thanks for the help! I’m getting closer.

Here is a render of a sphere. The shading around the edges is way too dark. I think the low intensity lights in a dome will do the trick, but haven’t tried it yet. Any other tips to lighten the dark shading?

https://i39.tinypic.com/161nhx3.jpg

Thanks in advance.

[Gary Smith]

Cloning low level lights on a half-dome did the trick. Thanks!

[Mark Walczak]

Just to throw in another vote for Ambient Occlusion, I did a similar project here:

https://vimeo.com/4733849

I simply used solid colors (with no other material channels active) and, of course, AO. The half-dome effect certainly works, but I’ve had some trouble with parametric objects looking really faceted…

I’m glad you found something that works!

https://vimeo.com/explosivegraffix

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[Gary Smith]

Thanks for the reply. Nice work!

[Adam Trachtenberg]

Glad it worked out.

For future reference, there are a couple other things you can do:

* use a light or environment object with the ambient option enabled. Use of ambient lighting is frowned upon a lot because it tends to produce a flat render, but it can be effective in low doses;

* lower the density of your shadow-casting lights’ shadows;

* reduce your lights’ contrast setting;

* mix a bit of luminance into your materials;

* use fill lights to simulate bounce lighting (fake GI).