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How to: 3 Point Lighting straight out of Medium

P3nT4gR4m
Consultant
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In photo mode pull up the camera settings and set "Attach" to off. Line up the framing and fov you want then jump into scene editor and place your key light. Go back into camera mode and take the photo. Very important - do not touch anything apart from the trigger in camera mode from here on in if you move the view, even half a pixel the baddies will win.

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Bounce back to scene edit and position the light behind for backlighting. Change the brightness, change the colour. Back into photo mode (remember do not move anything) Take the shot

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One last time, hop over to scene edit, dim the light down, tweak the colour, shine it on the bits that were black in the last two shots, Boom - Fill light. One last trip to camera mode. DO NOT TOUCH A GODDAMN THING!!! (we're almost done - don't want to ruin it now) Just take the shot and get out of there.

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Exit camera mode. Exit Medium. Pull up photoshop and load in the first png. 

Load in the other two as new layers and set the blend mode for both of these to "Lighten" in the Layers Panel

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Enjoy!


18 REPLIES 18

nalex66
MVP
MVP
Here's my Terminator sculpt with some lovely multi-source lighting:
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Cheers for the excellent method!

It's a shame that the camera placement isn't saved in the file. I wanted to go back and add one more light for a little specular highlight over the top of his head, but upon reload I lost my camera placement. I've learned to keep Medium open while I go over to Photoshop and combine my layers, just in case I want to add more lights or tweak one of them.

It's cool the the "Lighten" layer stack doesn't do anything when the colours match. I was worried that I was going to have to turn off my glowing eyes for the extra lighting passes, but having them in multiple layers had no effect (I guess I was thinking of the "Multiply" effect). So I just set my sun colour to 0.1 as my base lighting, then moved my scene light around and tweaked its colour for each photo, while leaving the sun turned on.

DK2, CV1, Go, Quest, Quest 2, Quest 3.


Try my game: Cyclops Island Demo

P3nT4gR4m
Consultant
I've invented the scattergun approack to lighting. Just blast off a couple of dozen from all over the place and then try mix and match until you're happy with it. 

southerngfx
Adventurer
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Had another go of the multiple passes idea today. Really helps make the models pop with nothing more than three layers and some blends. Tried to keep it really subtle here.

P3nT4gR4m
Consultant
Don't forget you can toggle layers on an off during this process. Handy for rimlighting a bunch of chimps when there's a massive stack of amps behind them. Good for "ghost" effects too.

southerngfx
Adventurer
Ah cool. Never thought about turning layers on and off. Cheers.

steveteeps
Explorer
Yooo this technique is killer. Had no idea you could un-dock the camera in this way. Just tested it out last night on a character bust I was working on... Just 3 lights in Medium and a curves adjustment on the output and you get a pretty decent "render" straight out of VR. 

Love these discoveries! 

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P3nT4gR4m
Consultant
This is what I love about version 1 software, right now we're all getting excited cos there's a 20-mins arse about process for getting a decent photo out the thing and I'll guarantee you five years from now we'll be saying things like "Christ, back in the day, remember we had to piss about moving the lamp and joining it all up in photoshop" 😄

Anonymous
Not applicable
This is a great trick, I used it in my latest sculpt! Good thinking on your part! 🙂

Sterling77
Rising Star
You can also get the Ambient Occlusion Pass out and a Mask as well if your tricky 🙂 
https://forums.oculus.com/community/discussion/52965/sterlings-sketchbook