Three point lighting in C4D

Some limitations of the physical sky from my previous post is that it can only really display a certain set of colours, angles and reflections. Because of this I decided to look into how to do three point lighting in C4D. I found some useful diagrams depicting how three point lighting works and is set up that I will be using to further demonstrating how I put the scene together.

Three point lighting:

Before any lighting or shadow mapping:

I rendered an image of what the sphere and floor panel looked like before any tweaking of how shadows are mapped or any area lighting.

Shadow mapping:

Some settings that I needed establish before setting up the lights were what sort of shadow mapping every light used (an important note is that anything beside 95% density doesn't look too good)

After setting the shadow map to soft, I also changed the resolution of the shadow map to 2000x2000, the soft shadow map is useful because it makes the shadows of the object less sharp and able to blend with other shadows in the scene nicely. Raising the resolution does increase render time but will make the shadow a lot less pixelated and therefore more realistic.

finally, this just shows that the type of light that I used is an area light with a 79% intensity.

First light e.g. Key light:

The key light is the largest source of light in the scene. the positioning of the light can be practically anywhere on the visible side of the framed object but in the depiction it is above and at about a 45 degree angle from the cameras position.

As a quick tip on how I put together my scene. Rather than having to angle every light after every slight movement you can add an null object in the centre point of your scene. You can use that null object in cooperation with a target modifier on your area lights. By doing this all the lights will point directly at the centre of your scene.

For the colour of the key light I decided to go with an orangey tan colour. I did this because using a white colour would be extremely piercing and therefore the shadows in the scene don't look as nice either.

Single light render:

Second light e.g. the fill light:

the second light servers less as something to illuminate fine details and more as to add colour to the scene and fill the scene. because of this the fill light is a lot less intense and normally uses a softer colour such as pastel blue depicted in the image.

These are the settings I used for the fill light. as I mentioned previously, it is a bluer and softer with a lower intensity

Render with two lights:

Third light e.g. back light:

The third and final light of the three point lighting is the back light. This light is positioned almost directly above the centre of the frame but slightly behind. this is to create a more defined shadow of the object on the floor and to make details that are almost completely drowned out by the other two lights slightly more visible.

This light is normally the weakest light out of the three as to not over power the other two lights but that is up to what sort of style and aesthetic is being conveyed via the piece.

Final render with all lights combined:

with just these three light's a quite realistic style can be conveyed. It does still have some what of a artificial feel but this render was done without using any sort of added textures and solely made of two objects and three lights with some settings changed.