One of the most asked tutorials on my You Tube channel its finally here. I wanted to thank all the patrons that made this tutorial possible.

The light positions and configurations are really important to generate a good effect and to achieve the correct result with the best render times. Remember that the bigger the light the more calculations, meaning, more render times.  

Remember not to use Domelights for Interior lighting, this is going to increase the noise on the scene and also it would have as consequence, longer render times. Its recommended to use ENVIRONMENT node and bring the light inside of the room with portal lights.

Here you would find the overall guide to support the tutorial. Hope you like it.

Q/

Thanks for sharing! But why not Irradiance Caching instead of Brute Force? From Jim Bachalo

A/

Mostly because I did not need it, the render time is so low that I can get away with Brute Force, that is the magic using Redshift, render time is meaningless here, and for animation you can get away with Brute Force on almost any environment, also for Hair, you will get better results with BF, so this set up can be animated.

Interior Lighting Configuration

1. Center light : “Ambient”

The center light is going to fill the room with a tint and also is going to help the GI to have good results and to clean noise faster, Its important to have a fill light to reduce the flicker if animated ( on dark corners) and also is going to help with the overall look of the scene blending the other lights better with the models.

In this case I am using a RS Physical Light with a point light configuration, making it emit light in all directions to get the best results.

2. Window Lights : “Direct Front light”

The windows are using a RS Physical Light with a rect light configuration, As this is to simulate the light entering the scene the easiest way to get the result correctly is this.

The lights have white colors and no more information than the intensity, the position is outside of the window.

As an important detail, the light has a ramp with a tartan effect to reduce the emission of light over the borders, making it softer and giving a little bit more of realism over the lights, this is going to help to reduce the amount of light over the window frames and giving it a nice and soft shadow, its an “indirect” soft shadow simulation. Adjust the gradient accordingly to your needs.

3. Big Window : “Direct side light”

The window again, is using a RS Physical Light with a rect light configuration. This light is a little bigger and has a higher intensity than the other windows. The goal is to achieve the proper result and have a brighter intensity to make a “rim” light effect over the objects on the scene. Again here we are using the ramp technique.

4. Fill: “Left side light”

The window again, is using a RS Physical Light with a rect light configuration. This one is a trickier, its not mend to be rendered from the other angle, and It would only work from similar camera angles, if not the light can be visible, For this one I remove light links with the left glass to take the reflection of the light off of the render, as it was showing a white rectangle that looked unrealistic.

The goal of this light is to add a more interesting angle over the light and break the continuity of the diffusion, this way we have a bright spot at the bottom of the image that can help us to sense the space that is behind of the camera giving us a better comprehension.

5. Fill: “right side light”

The window again, is using a RS Physical Light with a rect light configuration. The bathroom light is going to help us to define the space and to have a better comprehension of the goal and function of the design, it is not to bright because we want to be subtle and not to grab to much attention from the center of interest that would be the room.  It would help also as a rim light on the right side, helping us to see the shapes better and to break the shapes from the background.

6. Portal Lights

The window again, is using a RS Physical Light with a portal light configuration. On the reference image is not visible the Big window portal light but you have to set it up also. This setup requires the use of an external source of information for the interior lighting to work. And the recommendation here is to use and ENVIRONMENT to create that information, DO NOT USE DOMELIGHT.  The render time is going to be faster when working with dome lights.

Some people are confused about the position of the portal light, and it should be behind outside the windows, close to the window but outside. Again the intensity is going to be remaped to a ramp to generate a better effect and smother light over the borders, this can increase the noise, but the results are much better than simple value intensity.

Remember that the Portal light needs higher GI Samples to clean the noise and this is going to be reflected on the attributes, meaning that you need to increment the GI Samples to get better and free noise results here.

And with all the set up in place, you can add the real models to the scene and start making amazing renders!. Remember that you can download the scene at Patreon.