this tutorial is about lighting so that you can light your kitchen. this simple example is a better way to help you understand lighting. what i would recommend is that you save this lighting example so that you can review it later. you will never remember all it. you will be able to return to this file and practice the different settings for directional, spot and point lighting and find the best fit for your project. what i want you to do is open a new blank file. change the design layer to â½â€ = 1’-0â€. now draw a rectangle that is 15’-0†x 8’-0â€. once drawn extrude it to 1/16†so that it becomes a 3d object and give it a fill.
once that is done draw two rectangles that will represent walls, extrude them to 8’-0â€. don’t worry about the wall thickness what ever you do will be fine, we just want a surface for the light to fall on. and then, in the middle of the floor surface draw a circle with about a 12†radius and then extrude it to about 5’-0†tall. if you go to an isometric view it will look something like this and then render with open gl. the cylinder has a white fill. in open gl we don’t we don’t get a lot of details, we do get some shadows on the left wall and some shadowing on the cylinder. i have added no lighting to this drawing at this time. now let’s go to final quality renderworks and there is not difference. now let’s go to plan view and go to our tool sets the visualization and up to light. then, just click in the drawing and place the default light source. now let’s change the axis to 96†so that the light source is located at ceiling height.
the azimuth is -45â° and the elevation is 35.26â°. open the accompanying document on the website under this week. this doc. explains the meaning of the lighting terminology. it will be helpful to have it open during this exercise. now let’s look at the drawing in front view and you can see the directional light source is at ceiling height. go back to right isometric and open gl. notice that the shadows are a little sharper now. now let’s go to final quality renderworks and now we have a big difference. the shadowing makes sense based on where the light source is located. now let’s talk about the azimuth. the azimuth is the direction the light source is pointing. go to plan view and change the azimuth direction to 0â°.
now the light source is pointing north or up on the page. and if we go around to the right to -90â° we are now pointing east. 90â° is west and -180 is south. so that’s what azimuth is all about now let’s point it to north by changing the azimuth to 0â°. now let’s talk about elevation. it is not the elevation of the lamp but rather the angle of the light source, up or down off of an imaginary horizontal plane. in our example the light source is at 96†so the ceiling would be the horizontal plane. image that you are holding a flash light with it’s light beam horizontal, as you rotate the beam down towards the floor you are changing the angle from 0â° to 90â° once you are shining the beam straight down on the floor. that is the elevation angle. let’s change the elevation angle to 90â°. now let’s look at it in front view. you can see it is pointing straight down. if i put in 45â° it will be 45â° to the ceiling. look at it in right side view and you can see it is at 45â°.
now let’s go to a right isometric view and final quality render works. you can see the shadow has changed. if i move the light source over here to the right notice that nothing has changed. so think about this light source as if it were the sun light pouring in from far away rather than from the discrete point where you place the light source. so the light source can be placed anywhere in the room and as long as your azimuth and elevation are what you want the room will be lite properly. now let’s change it one more time. let’s change the azimuth to 90Ⱐor west and go back to our rendered isometric view.
you can see the sun is shining from east to west. if i move the light source over here we should see the exact same shadowing. so that’s how directional lighting works. i’m going to delete the light source and go back to the lighting tool and put in a point light. this one is like a light bulb, it’s directional but from a discrete point like a light bulb. this type of light is omni-directional. so let’s place it in the corner, right there,. let’s choose soft shadows and our point light specs we will set none first. move the light source up to 96†and render. this one is position sensitive. if i go back and move this light over here and render ,
it’s putting light out in all directions you can see that the wall directly behind the light is brighter. now let’s look at the distance fall off. right now we have it set at none. let’s set it to smooth, it’s a little more realistic looking. if we go to realistic it get’s even more focused. these setting are there for you to get the look you want. so that’s point light. now let’s go to spotlight. i’ll bring this in and we will go with white light, shadows, soft shadows again, let’s use the emitter, which measures the light output in lumens and candellas. lumens is a measure of light at the light source. candella or candlepower is only associated with directional lighting like spot lights of flood lights.
in the case of a par lamp the light is bounced around inside the lamp and intensified, candellas measures the amount of intensification. one candlepower or one candela is the amount of light that a candle would place on one square foot of a sphere with a radius of 1 foot. imagine the sphere floating and encircling the candle flame. you can also set the color temperature measured in the kelvin scale. we typically light a kitchen at somewhere around 2800. then your spot light specs can also be set . the beam 30â° is the half the spread of 60â°. let’s leave the falloff at none and select ok and let’s place the light source. let’s do a left iso view and move the light source up to 96â€.
with this type of light source azimuth is changed to pan. this is geared for interior lighting. let’s go to plan view and rotate the light source from east to north, to west to south. in the case of a can light it wouldn’t matter which direction it was pointing because the tilt would be at 90â° pointing straight down. “look to height†sets the point on the z axis on which the light lands. if i set it at 0 the ground plane is at 0 so the beam will land on the floor. if we look at it in front view we can see that the light has extended to the floor. if i wanted the light to fall on my countertop i would set it at 36â€. now let’s look at it in right iso and we can see our 53â° beam. let’s change the beam from 5â° to 25â° and see if anything changes,
not much but when you set it at 53â° it gets very defined like a searchlight. so think of the beam setting a way to change the look of the light as it lands on a surface. the closer the beam angle is to the spread the more spotlight like and the lower the beam angle the softer the light will be. now lets take the spread down to 5â° and we get a pin point beam of light and a 2% beam will soften it a bit. let’s do one more thing. let’s move it over here and point it to 90â° and tilt it to 45â°. now let’s look at the column. we can se the little pin point. let’s change the spread to 53â° and we get a much different look. i want you to light your kitchen, but first play around with these different light sources and light setting.
i will show you what i did with my kitchen. here it is all rendered. i want you to experiment around and come up with your own lighting scheme, that’s how you will learn this program. i’m going to get out of this view and as you begin lighting and rendering use open gl to check things, and use final quality renderworks only at the end because the rendering time is so long in final quality renderworks. let’s take a look in plan view. i have 4 general light sources here, an ambient light source that is outside the kitchen , it’s directional light and imitates the sun shining in the window. there are 2 cans over the sink and undercabinet lighting.
let’s look at the directional light first here are the settings i used. the most important setting is the azimuth at -180 and the elevation at 44â°. then there is the under cabinet lights which are point lights. the brightness is kicked down to 23%. i pulled them forward to the front of the wall cabinets and they are setting just below the wall cabinets. then we have the 2 cans over the sink. they are spotlights with these settings. i used a narrow 30â° spread to just light the countertop. in addition i drew in a 4†diameter circle, and extruded it to 1/16†with a white fill to emulate the actual can light. i did this because the light sources don’t show up just the light that they emit.
then out here i put in a 6†diameter can trim. the light source is a spot and set as you see it here. so that all the lights i have in this drawing, you guys try it out, try some of your own ideas and have fun with it. i do want to show you one other thing, that is how i get the view and how i render it. i go to right iso, then to view>perspective>normal distance. then i select the flyover tool and kick it up, and then i zoom in on it until i get it looking the way i want. there are a couple of things i’m trying to accomplish here. i want see the can lights in the ceiling and the sink. so now let me show you how to render this. i go over to view>rendering>custom renderworks options, and set up as you see it. lighting options, ambient info turned off. the other settings i have are renderworks styles> realistic interior final. when i choose that it begins rendering.
so here is my rendered kitchen, i’m not that happy with it so i’ll keep working on it but you can spend hours and hours working on rendering so watch your time. our last kitchen viedeo will be on creating viewports, see you then.