Studio Lighting tutorial

In this tutorial, we will cover how to recreate a simple photographic lighting studio setup that can be used for lighting and render all manner of objects. We will use a combination of Arnold area quad lights and HDR maps for creating realistic specular reflections in the scene. The HDR maps will provide rich specular reflections in the surface of any model that sits in front of it and will add to the photo-realism of the final render.

Note:

The scene file can be downloaded here (does not include HDR maps).

Set Model

The scene consists of a curved backdrop with a floor plane and one plane on either side with a dark gray standard_surface shader assigned to both of them.

Lights

Create an Arnold quad_light for each of the three lights - top, left and right. These will represent large soft boxes as used in a photographic studio.

This tutorial uses HDR maps. If you do not want to use file textures, you can use simple box ramp texture maps. However, the reflections in your model will not appear as realistic.



_{softbox_midlle_wrm.HDR}	_{softbox_midlle_cold.HDR}	_{softbox_square_gs.HDR}

Connect each HDR map to the color parameter of each _quad_light as indicated in the images below:



_{softbox_square_gs.hdr -> color parameter of quad_light 'Top'}	_{softbox_midlle_cold.hdr -> color parameter of quad_light 'Right'}	_{softbox_midlle_wrm.hdr -> color parameter of quad_light 'Left'}

Exposure

Test render the scene. You should get something like the image below. If the reflections appear too bright, remember that you can lower the exposure settings in the Arnold parameters for the render camera.

_{The high dynamic range of the HDR maps are visible when the lowering Arnold's camera exposure parameter}

The light HDR map details are visible when lowering the camera exposure. You can see the full high dynamic range visible within the specular reflections in the scene:



_{exposure: 0}	_{exposure: -2}	_{exposure: -4}

Alternatively, you can experiment with changing the lights intensity or changing the HSV attributes of the HDR maps to get the effect you want.

If you find that the lighting appears a little dark at the front of your object in the studio you could also try adding a reflector plane in front of the camera (disable primary_visibility for the plane).

Spherical Camera Lens

Once you have completed this tutorial, why not have a go at converting the scene into an HDR map using the spherical_camera.

_{Scene rendered with spherical_camera}

Info: More information about the spherical camera can be found here.