3d art

Lighting the scene
To give depth and make it believable
Drea Horvath
I am a 23-year-old self-trained freelance digital
landscaper living in Budapest, Hungary. I started
playing with Vue as a hobby about two years ago.
It took a while to develop my skills to my current
level, and to find the style that suits me best.
Mostly I create large, complex environments, with
powerful, dramatic atmospheres. Recently I joined
iMU Studios’ THUNDER Throne Wars game project
as an environment and level designer.
In Perfect Harmony Vue 8 Infinite,
Photoshop CS4 (2009)
This render turned out somewhere between real and surreal, but
I actually liked the result. The soul of the scene is the atmosphere;
it’s powerful and dramatic, yet it reflects peace and harmony.
11 Global Radiosity and shadow softness
To make the scene look as believable as possible, it was
clearly best to use Global Radiosity. I used a Gain of 2.0
to add some reflected light, and I increased the Sky dome
lighting gain to 0.30 to add some light being reflected
from the sky itself, just like in real life. Since most of the
sky is covered by trees, this value of 0.30 was enough.
Pulling the light balance to Sunlight (70%) decreased
artificial ambient light, and the ambient light was set to
come from the sky, instead of being distributed
throughout the scene. Since the shadows don’t have such
sharp edges in real life, I set Sunlight softness to 3.00°,
then I found the best sunlight direction k.
12 Sky, Fog and Haze
Sky settings didn’t have a big role in this scene, so I left
everything at default. Thick forest mist is a key element of
such scenes. Sometimes it can be achieved by increasing
Haze density, though in this scene I wanted to keep the
colours as vivid as possible. So I ended up decreasing Haze
density to 12%, and increasing Fog to 30%. To keep the
warm reddish tones, I added a slight red tone to the fog
colour (RGB 94 90 85). Since I wanted a somewhat
powerful morning sunlight, I pulled up Glow intensity
to 100%. For subtle rays, I used volumetric sunlight l.
13 Adding more depth
A very nice, mysterious forest mood can be achieved
by increasing Aerial Perspective. It actually multiplies
atmospheric values, making the scene look bigger. Here,
my purpose was to add more depth and misty look, so
I increased AP to 30, and added a fuzzy metacloud to
enhance the effect. After global settings, the scene was
ready to be rendered m.
Bitmaps and
procedural
materials
Besides using bitmaps to
create materials, in Vue
it is possible to apply a
procedural method to
create your own materials
or use and modify presets
as well, using fractals that
are literally infinite.
Procedural materials can
be dependent on any
aspect of the world that
you create, such as
altitude, slope, or height.
In my scenes I use
procedural materials for
terrains and water, and
plants have bitmaps.
k Screen grab of the Sunlight
softness and Lighting settings
l Screenshot of Sky, Fog and
Haze settings
m The difference is significant
Sanctuary Vue 8 Infinite, Photoshop CS4 (2009)
My goal was to create a large jungle scene with realistic
lighting and ascending morning fog. I populated the rest of the
terrains with Alder, and for the foreground I used crawling
bush and AsileFX jungle plants.
k
l
Chasing Heights Vue 8 Infinite, Photoshop CS4 (2010)
This render is a the result of some experimenting with rock
materials and functions. The unusual POV, the fog and the subtle
God rays add some drama to the image.
m
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