Need Suggestions for Lights placement in Blender

[mktsang]

Hi this is mktsang

I usually use texture baking to make my texture

I always wonder how to make better textures using built in material and baking in blender

I recently learnt using Ambient Occlusion to bake textures with slight "noise" and fake shadows.

 

By trials and error, I found out that "sun" generate a softer and more natural looking shading

Hemi gives a large area a more solid glow, usually used to light up the mesh if it is too dark

light give a small area a lift to make it more visible

and the others are.. not very easy to use..

 

In my knowledge from my Maya class, my instructor show us that need a main light source, a back light and a support

intensity being main the highest than back than support

but in making a clothing, especially armors require brilliant lighting to show up the glossy part.

and it also requires a symmetrical lighting, even though I only make one side of the armor and mirror it.

 

 

So I think I need a suggestion on lighting

may be a main concept since I only learn very little thing in my maya class!

 

Thx for the advice!

[Ghogiel]

what you really want in AO map: What should happen is that light rays are cast out from the surface of the mesh in all directions. Every ray that doesn't hit some other geometry is going to be bright, and rays that hit things will change the output pixel on the map to something dark, the distance the ray went before it hit something determines how dark or light it is, the further it goes the less it'll occlude. the 'spread' of the shadows is a controllable parameter in most bakers. This will control how tight the shading is or how loose it is. I suppose the only thing to think about in terms of spread is, you want a tighter spread on things that are very large scale in the scene, and the reverse. But mainly just go for what is cool looking. 8)

 

Your 3 point lighting set up is a local lighting set up, not global, It is directional, and the bake will have directional lights in it. (though you may want some directional occlusion from something else that is not on your mesh...ie the floor. good for static props. but characters get this to a lesser degree depending on the bake method used/ if you want it.)

 

Maya has access to mental ray. Mental ray has several ways to bake AO> however I have read even to this very day baking high > low poly AO maps is kinda fubar in maya. however in 3ds max you have AO material and the AO element bake, both work in max :/. Weird consider it is the same renderer and there are similar baking elements. Take that witha grain of salt as I have only ever done modelling in maya and not much else.

 

I use the MR AO material or the AO element, the AO material is a material that has 100% white emission, just like the emissive material property in the nifs... so I am guessing it takes that self illumination and uses that as a ray cast from the meshes surface.. you do not use any actual lights at all when baking. The light source is the mesh itself. Which makes a lot of sense.

 

ANYWAY.... my advice is forget directional lighting setups for AO baking altogether. That is not really going to make a good AO map.

 

Usually there is a very specific procedure to setting up AO baking in any particular 3d app. And I have never seen one that needs more than 1 light source, be it a single sky light, or the meshes surface being the light itself. could be wrong, I just don't see how that makes sense considering what an AO map is supposed to be :unsure: I expect blender can bake real AO maps. My guess that you will have a particular way to do so, and if you use regular lights, going by your descriptions, it'll be the sun light.

 

I mentioned Xnormal... this can work, but it is a far bit of set up and might take you a whole Saturday to get the work flow down and trouble shoot it. but it can deliver some results. http://donaldphan.com/tutorials/xnormal/xnormal_occ.html

 

I totally recommend actually baking more than one type of AO, from geo, and from the normal map, and extracting detail/cavity maps and combining them all to make your final map.

Edited May 23, 2011 by Ghogiel