Lighting - Methodology/Concepts

[toaster_oven]

hi-

I was wondering if anyone knew of any general lighting tutorials/websites relating to 3D rendering. I'm getting the feeling that lighting is probably the most important aspect of 3D rendering - even if it isn't photorealistic. exploring quality of light as a concept during early design is particularly interesting to me, and I'd like to know enough to make a real impact in the final design (and maybe get the client excited enough to let me play around more).

I'm just starting to get into 3D rendering, and have been finding that there are several terms and concepts that I should at least have some understanding of - mainly within the science of light, and the rendering algorithms used for lighting. I've been looking at some photography/cinematography lighting concepts and have been finding them pretty useful - but it would really help to understand what all this stuff means, how it translates into a rendering app, and what terms are good to know and so forth...

I've found some tutorials on the gnomon workshop website which seem to be pretty useful, but if anyone had something like a difinitive source, good books, etc... i'd really like to know.

Thanks!

-to

[toaster_oven]

I found some stuff on CG Architect:

Lighting Analysis and Design:

http://www.cgarchitect.com/resources/lightingDesign/default.asp

Global Illumination:

http://www.cgarchitect.com/resources/radiosity/default.asp

if I find more I guess I'll post it here.

-to

[Richard]

Mate the question you are asking will be very relevant to the application you are proposing to utilise for rendering. Many apps utilise different lighting techniques.

Maxwell for example can utilise light from a physical sky (the actual sky characteristics of the sky for global location and time of day), sky dome (even illumination from the sky (suited to creating night time type renders) and emitters which have a user defined surface area which can be set to emit light.

Having read through the MODO website last night it is obvious all lights are defined by the user and emitters or area lights seem necessary to achieve good results.

So as I suggest each renderer will have its own lighting method and sometimes their own terminology, I know there is a good tut on the maxwell tut forum on physical lighting that is very good and descriptive of the physical characteristics.

I would also suggest mate if lighting is what you wish to study maxwell is the monster to likely tackle as the lighting is physical and doesn't rely on fakes to achieve illumination and shadow cast. If you also utilise real glass panels in lieu of the Architectural Glass Solution (AGS) you will get real caustics that would be caused by the lights interaction with the glass, but render times will be slow but will be physically correct.