Luminous Material Lighting Panels in Studio

[mcphatty]

Hi everyone,

I've been playing with luminous materials in Studio and have tried to replicate the kind of basic global illumination style HDRI lighting I used to aim for in Cinema 4D. Below is the result, the first render is my lighting with Intensity in Studio's Render menu set to zero and for comparison below that is the standard Mechanic lighting with Intensity 2.

I think that by getting rid of the default illumination and effectively turning off the HDR sky in Studio the model looks less overexposed, especially the upward facing surfaces which instantly lose the bright, sterile white reflection. The darker model means the highlights stand out a lot more, and since studs and edges are reflective there are plenty of nice highlights to look at! I also added some illumination in the scene, the white parts around the edge of the landing pad and in the upright light are luminous soft white and there is a bit of glow coming from the engines.

I rendered these with transparent background and added a coloured backdrop and some noise in Photoshop. It's not a realistic image by any means but I think it'd a decent improvement, it's certainly helped my renders blend in with my photos on Instagram profile. Here's the Studio file of the lighting arrangement (_HDRI Lights by Ron_McPhatty.io) if you'd like to to give it a try, remember to turn the "Illumination" option in the Render window down to "0" before clicking render.

 

 

To achieve the lighting effect I arranged a heap of large plate pieces into rings, angled them at downwards to aim at the subject positioned in the centre and positioned a few luminous panel spotlights directly above to give extra shadows and highlights. Other lights can be toggled on and off by Hiding/Showing the parts groups, so it's possible to light objects slightly differently for example all light from one side to give the impression of a bright planet. Here's how it all looks in Studio...

 

Here's a few more examples with different models. I hope the idea is useful, any suggestions to help me improve the set up would be great, and feel free to use and abuse the lighting set up if you like it and I'd love to see other models rendered in this style.