LIGHT A NIGHT CITY SCENE IN BLENDER
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Add some more lights! When you think you’re
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done, add some more lights! Why? Because we are aiming for sensory overstimulation like the lighting seen in Seoul, Beijing and New York. So you can’t go wrong with adding a bunch of lighting details on top of your initial setup. What could this be though? It could be the paper lanterns shimmering in the air, garlands behind the windows or smartphone displays… You get the idea.
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Use Light Path node to control the brightness
Have you ever wondered how to make the emissive object brighter without making it way too bright? In other words, how to stay within the dynamic range no matter what? By making use of the Light Path node you can break the emissive object into two parts: the light that is emitted and the look of the object (ie what the camera sees). Thus you can control the brightness of the object without compromising the amount of light it emits! 06
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Create awesome reflective materials using non-physically correct values
So you transformed the scene to make it look like it rained a few hours ago, but what can you do if the reflection doesn’t look right? For example, if you want it to be much, much more dazzling? Use the Math node to multiply the reflections (you are going to use the Add operation). This will push the reflections over their physical values. It’s cheating, but you know what? It doesn’t have to be physically correct here, it just has to be aesthetically appealing. 09
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Enhance your lighting by adding glossy surfaces This may sound obvious, but think about it – when you add mirror-like objects in your scene, you
crank up the amount of light that reaches the retina. In cinematography you see this trick all the time. They just pour water on asphalt to make it reflect the street lamps, it will look gorgeous ten times out of ten. So go ahead and add puddles, glass panels and other glossy stuf. Pour the water on the asphalt. Now what if you want to make the reflections even more prominent? Let’s take a look at the next step for that.
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