Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/Adding Lamps

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You can quickly add several different types of lights to your blender scene

SPACE > Add > Lamp > Spot

A light will appear in the location of the 3D cursor. You can move a light just like any other object.

If you want to quickly light a scene just for illumination, not for a specific look, add four lamps around your subject. If you are interested in experimenting with a lighting arrangement, a nice quick way to experiment is to create a Monkey in the scene to test with.

SPACE > Add > Mesh > Monkey

The monkey is just as good of a test subject as a human face, so give it a try. You can throw various materials on the monkey and try different textures too. Don't bad mouth the monkey, she is really useful.

Contents

[edit] Explaining the Different Lights:

  • Lamp: Single point light source. This simple light source can cast sharp shadows, but is best for filling in dark areas without shadows turned on.
  • Sun: A light with parallel rays that will illuminate the scene with a bright even light. Often a good starting point for outdoor scenes.
  • Spot: Spot lights produce light in a cone shape, and have some special features. They are the only light source that can be made visible with the 'halo' option, to simulate light in a fog. They are also the only light source that cast fake shadows, called buffer shadows. Unlike raytraced shadows , these buffer shadows are smooth, but not as accurate. They are FAST though, the only real choice for animation.
  • Hemi: 180° constant light source. Great for use as a fill light, or as a back light.
  • Area: These are similar to lamps, except that they are rectangular instead of an infinitesimal point. As a result they can cast accurate raytraced soft shadows. These are my lamp of choice for still shots, but they take a lot of time to render.


Standardlamp.jpg Standard lamp

Arealamp.jpg Area lamp

Spotlightlamp.jpg Spotlight lamp

Sunlamp.jpg Sun lamp

Hemilamp.jpg Hemi lamp

[edit] Creating a basic scene with basic lighting

  • This addition is simply a way to apply what you know about lights and to discover a few settings like colors or creating simple shadows. The purpose here is to create a basic scene with a sphere over a plane, nicely lighted. You should already know the basics of Blender (creating a mesh, moving and rotating it, rendering).

[edit] Creating the scene

  • Okay, let's start! Open a new file. Add a UVsphere of 32 rings and 32 segments. Exit EditMode. Leave it in the center of the scene.


Smooth button

Tip : Go in the Editing buttons Edit button is pressed, and push Set Smooth so the sphere will render as a nicely smoothed sphere.


  • You should already have a plane in the basic scene, otherwise add a Plane. Have it in ObjectMode and move it just under the sphere. Scale it so it is very big. The ideal would that we can't see borders with the camera.

Top view of our REALLY BIG plane

  • Then we will move the Camera. Grab it and rotate it so it looks at the sphere from top and a bit from the right. You can have an idea of what it sees pressing Num0 to have a CameraView.

What the camera should be looking at

Trick : First click on the Camera, then on the Sphere holding Shift( the order is very important ). Do a Ctrl+T and select TrackTo Constraint Select TrackTo Constraint . The camera will be looking at the center of the sphere... You can then move either the camera or the sphere and the camera will still point at the sphere. The Camera is looking at the Sphere hieudaigia

[edit] Adding the lights

  • Okay, what we have is a pretty beautiful scene, isn't it?... Well, it isn't! But it is enough to add some lights... Here I will describe a basic lighting scene I use as a default for fast renderings. I picked it out from another tutorial, you can find the link at the end of this page.
  • Now we will add our so-awaited lights. Add>Lamp>Spot. Yes, we will first use the Spot light. We can see it as a projector. This is the only light casting shadows. Place it so it is upper and on the left of the sphere. Rotate it so it looks at the Sphere (you can use a Trick I gave you before to have the light looking at the sphere).
  • Okay, let's see what we can tune with the spot light. Having the lamp selected, go in the Lamp settings Click on Shading then on Lamp. You will see these buttons.

Lots of buttons, but don't worry !

  • Yeah, really lots of options. Don't worry, I'll explain the basic ones.
    • Dist : Sets the maximum distance the light can reach. Increase it so the lighting cone really goes behind the sphere. I set it to Dist:40.
    • Energy : This is the force of the light. You can leave it at Energy:1.
    • RGB : You can change the colour of the light. Click on the colour and a little window will appear to select the colour you want. Leave it white.

Let's colour our lives

    • Buf.Shadow : Enables the light to cast shadows, leave it pushed. Here you will create the dark side
    • OnlyShadows : This light only creates shadows, without casting light ( yeah quite unrealistic, but it can be useful ). Leave it unpushed. File:OnlyShad.png
    • SpotSi : This is the angle of your cone, in degrees. Leave to SpotSi:45.
    • SpotBl : This smoothes the circle cast by the light. We will smooth it so that it looks better. Set it to SpotBl:0.4.
    • ClipSta and ClipEnd : This is the distance from the light between which shadows will be cast. You can see the "line of effects" in the 3D windows when you change these. Set them so the line starts before the sphere and ends far ( well, a bit ! ) behind the plane. You should obtain something like this. (this is very important... If you do this badly, it can result in completely dark scene!)
  • Now, we have set our Spot light. This light will be our side light and shadowing light. You can make a fast preview pressing F12. You can see your so nice shadow. But there isn't enough light... Let's add some more!

So dark! Let this tutorial bring light to your scene

  • Time to add a second light! Add>Lamp>Lamp. This time, we will create a basic lamp. This is like a point which emits light in every direction from that point. You should place it at the opposite of the camera, quite at the same height. This light will be used to better see the form of the sphere and to add a sort of general lighting of the scene.
  • Go in the Lamp buttons, and set it to a higher energy like Energy:1.25. You can make a quick render to see how much this light is important to a scene.

Yo, much better !

  • Now, we will add a second basic lamp. Add>Lamp>Lamp and we will place it just behind the camera point of view, a bit moved at the opposite of the Spot light. This third light will slightly light the dark parts of the sphere.
  • Decrease the energy of this light, as it is only supposed to fake the reflections of the environment. I set it to Energy:0.8. Another little trick, as this is not supposed to be a direct light, there shouldn't be a little white glow called Specular on the sphere coming from this light. Push the No Specular button. This light won't cast speculars
  • Okay, it's time for the final rendering. Of course, this is a really basic lighting set you can use for rendering a simple mesh; but for more complicated scenes, lights can come from other places, with other colors, etc... Thus we didn't use the Sun, Hemi and Area lights, which are a bit more complicated.

All this, only to light a sphere ...

Note that the following site contains nude figures: For a more in-depth tutorial, here is a tutorial from the Blender Documentation, which has been a great source of help for me.
User note: you might want to check this tutorial on lighting: http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=US&v=YJiR2Q7uvbQ

[edit] Outdoor lighting

  • Here you will use a Sun in conjunction with a Spot light and some little Lamps.

[edit] Lighting Without Lamps


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