Need help with lightning:

[andrejavus]

Hello,

I'm new to this 3D world and kinda need your help. I'm making a school project where I'll show an animated interior. (has to be modern and good looking)

Anyways: I found this render and I liked what i saw:



So... I tried to do the same, and I can tell you that it's harder than it looks. I wasted 2 hours of my life just searching for how to for instance make that blue side lightning. And still, no freking idea...




So, if you know how to create a light like this, please, do share .

[Mr. Bluesummers-3DT]

You're off to a fine start. Looking forward to your final render!

There are two ways to replicate this effect that I can think of.

1) USE MATERIALS
+ Create a strip of polygons that follows that path (facing right, toward the rest of the wall) and apply a glowing material with a high intensity. Fast to make but may dig into your final gather solution timing.

2) USE LIGHTS
+ Create a spline of the path and use the spacing tool to instantiate omni or cylindrical area lights along the spline. It'll be kind of chunky but it should work. Slow to make but should give you more render-time control.

3) USE AMBIENT OCCLUSION
+ Break off the polygons out there and use an ambient occlusion map to self-illuminate the wall where it comes close to that intersection. Not sure how this one will look, but it'd be fun to set up.

[andrejavus]

Thank you Mr. Bluesummers,

I decided to go with the second alternative. I tried glowing materials at first, but the result wasn't satisfying and the last option, I didn't really understand a word you wrote (I suck at that ambient occlusion thing, every time I try to use it, I ruin the whole project ).

anyways, after 2 billion tutorials and many many wasted hours here are some of my renders (not finished yet). I'm really impressed with my work myself haha










P.S: I couldn't help noticing those V-ray and mental ray differences. I believe I'm using mental ray right now, but almost every tutorial and almost every nice renderedpicture on the internet is made with vray. I've been using this mental ray for as long as I have been using 3dstudio max. should I switch to vray now and forget all about mental ray? :S

/Andreas