ROUGHS & CONCEPTS, LIGHTING IN BRYCE,

THE HAIR, THE DRESS, THE FIGURE, THE FINAL IMAGE

Lighting in Bryce
Lighting is a very important part of an image. Actually, with 3D images, the AMBIENT light is a very important part of an image, whether it is the ambient light in a scene or the ambient light of a texture.

Have you ever seen a 3D image where the shadows of an object appear light gray or chalky and flat? This is the texture's ambient light setting set brighter than it's original color. It flattens out the texture and leaves it lifeless.

On the other hand, it shouldn't be black either, shadows need life to them too.

With my 3D images, I try to brighten up the shadows with light, rather than giving the texture a bright ambient setting in Bryce's Material Editor. Not only does this give consistency to your shadows it reveals subtleties in the objects shape as well.

Human skin is always a challenge. It's a challenge with paint and it's a challenge with 3D images. Because skin is subtle, translucent and has a slight shine, it tends to need a higher ambient setting than, say, a rock which has almost none of those qualities.

In the Material Editor I give any skin texture a medium dark ambient setting using the same color family as the main skin color. Then I use very low intensity radial (and sometimes spot) lights placed low to the ground to lighten up dark areas and give the shadows some life. With the radial lights I disable cast shadows, which brighten up darker areas without any unwanted shadows in the background.

This also gives the illusion of radiant light, or light which is rebounding off of other objects in the scene and bouncing back at the original object. A very realistic effect.

Above is a Poser head with the sun as the light source (1). The same head with one white spot light (2). The third head has a spot and a radial light to lighten up the shadows (3). Now the head has colored lights (4).

The main spot is a warm color and the radial light is a cool color. There is no direct, bright light on the central figure. Only soft radial/spot lights were used to illuminate her body with the brighter lights used as highlights from the back and side.

Above is a 3/4 view of the scene in Bryce. Look at the size of the curtain terrain to the far left. I had to move it far away from the figure because the spot light used to illuminate it was getting "swallowed" by the large sphere used for the arch wall. The huge, flat spot on the floor is illuminating the arches from below to add some drama.

In this top view you can (almost) see all the lights. One radial light, five spots: front (selected), over the figure, behind her shoulder (small, near the "M"), large spot facing upwards for arch, large spot for curtain.

proceed to THE HAIR