WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.010 --> 00:00:05.000 Lighting can be one of the most important factors of making your scene look presentable. 2 00:00:05.000 --> 00:00:12.000 Often times you can spend hours on a model, but none of the detail is visible at render because it's either too dark or too bright. 3 00:00:12.000 --> 00:00:17.000 For this, we're going to go over a very simple way to make sure your lighting setup looks good. 4 00:00:17.000 --> 00:00:19.000 Three-point lighting. 5 00:00:19.000 --> 00:00:25.000 Three-point lighting is a standard setup for lighting that has carried on through the ages as one of the best ways to light a scene. 6 00:00:25.000 --> 00:00:29.000 In film, photography, painting, and now digital graphics. 7 00:00:29.000 --> 00:00:35.000 Let's go over exactly what it is, why it's so good, and how to set it up in Blender. 8 00:00:35.000 --> 00:00:39.000 Three-point lighting consists of three lights, hence the name. 9 00:00:39.000 --> 00:00:44.000 These lights are called the key light, the fill light, and the rim or back light. 10 00:00:44.000 --> 00:00:46.000 Let's go over each of these real quick. 11 00:00:46.000 --> 00:00:48.000 The key light is the main light. 12 00:00:48.000 --> 00:00:51.000 It's the primary or key light source. 13 00:00:51.000 --> 00:00:58.000 So when someone looks at a scene and says, oh, the light's coming from the top left-hand corner, they're most likely referring to the key light. 14 00:00:58.000 --> 00:01:01.000 That's the light that defines the light source in the scene. 15 00:01:01.000 --> 00:01:07.000 Now, the fill light is the one that sort of fills or softens the shadow that the key light casts. 16 00:01:07.000 --> 00:01:11.000 It's usually the least bright light in the scene, but it's very important. 17 00:01:11.000 --> 00:01:15.000 The fill light acts as a way to keep the shadows from being too dark on your subject. 18 00:01:15.000 --> 00:01:20.000 That way, you can still see those details and soften the contrast that the key light makes. 19 00:01:20.000 --> 00:01:24.000 The third light is called the back light or the rim light. 20 00:01:24.000 --> 00:01:30.000 Now, this, as you might be able to tell from the name, is cast onto the back of the subject. 21 00:01:30.000 --> 00:01:38.000 Usually, it's actually the brightest light in the scene, but it's there just to give a sliver of brightness around the edge of your subject. 22 00:01:38.000 --> 00:01:44.000 This gives the subject an outline or a rim of light, which helps it stand out from the background. 23 00:01:44.000 --> 00:01:47.000 So let's try to recreate this in Blender. 24 00:01:47.000 --> 00:01:52.000 Instead of our default scene, let's go ahead and replace our cube with a monkey. 25 00:01:52.000 --> 00:01:56.000 To do this, simply left-click Select Your Cube and press the Delete key. 26 00:01:56.000 --> 00:02:00.000 Then, go to the Add menu at the top, go to Mesh, and select Monkey. 27 00:02:00.000 --> 00:02:04.000 We're also going to right-click it and select Shade Smooth. 28 00:02:04.000 --> 00:02:11.000 Now that we have our monkey in our scene, let's get our three light sources set up according to the three-point lighting technique. 29 00:02:11.000 --> 00:02:18.000 We already have a light here, but if you don't, you can simply add it through the same Add menu, but go to Light, Point Light. 30 00:02:18.000 --> 00:02:21.000 I'm going to go ahead and treat this first light as my key light. 31 00:02:21.000 --> 00:02:27.000 Let's use the Move tool in the Quick Tools bar to bring our lamp to the top left-hand side of our monkey's face. 32 00:02:27.000 --> 00:02:32.000 Now, you may notice that our scene is not showing any actual lighting effects. 33 00:02:32.000 --> 00:02:34.000 That's because we're in Solid mode. 34 00:02:34.000 --> 00:02:40.000 To see how our light actually will look at render, let's go ahead and change our viewport to Rendered mode. 35 00:02:40.000 --> 00:02:46.000 You can do that by going to the top right and clicking the right-most sphere, or pressing the Z hotkey and using the Pi menu. 36 00:02:47.000 --> 00:02:52.000 Now that we can see the effect of our light on the monkey's face, we can adjust the light a bit more as needed. 37 00:02:52.000 --> 00:03:00.000 If you would like to adjust the brightness of your light, simply go to your Light Properties tab, indicated by a green light bulb icon, in the Properties Editor. 38 00:03:00.000 --> 00:03:08.000 You can then edit the power of the light by left-clicking dragging, or you can left-click Tap the property and type a number manually. 39 00:03:08.000 --> 00:03:12.000 I'm going to go ahead and leave this at the default value of 1000W. 40 00:03:12.000 --> 00:03:15.000 Next, we'll make our fill light. 41 00:03:15.000 --> 00:03:24.000 Now, as long as you have one light, it can be very easy to make more, as you can simply select the first light object and press Shift D to duplicate. 42 00:03:24.000 --> 00:03:28.000 With this new light, let's place it on the other side of the key light. 43 00:03:28.000 --> 00:03:34.000 If the key light is a little higher than the monkey, make sure to place the fill light a little lower. 44 00:03:34.000 --> 00:03:37.000 However, it seems a bit too bright on both sides. 45 00:03:37.000 --> 00:03:43.000 If you remember from our previous descriptions, the fill light is meant to be the dimmest light in the setup. 46 00:03:43.000 --> 00:03:50.000 I'm going to go into our Light Properties tab and slide our power value down with left-click drag, all the way down to zero. 47 00:03:50.000 --> 00:03:57.000 Then I'll slide it right back up just a little bit to a point where I feel like it's bright enough, but not too bright. 48 00:03:57.000 --> 00:03:58.000 That's perfect. 49 00:03:58.000 --> 00:04:02.000 Now, we can finally add our back or rim light. 50 00:04:02.000 --> 00:04:08.000 Let's create a third light object in the same way we did before, and place it behind the monkey's head. 51 00:04:08.000 --> 00:04:15.000 For now, we can place it directly behind the monkey's head, but oftentimes it is a bit off-center depending on where the camera is. 52 00:04:15.000 --> 00:04:18.000 Feel free to experiment with this to get the best outline shape for your subject. 53 00:04:18.000 --> 00:04:23.000 Now, if you remember, the rim light is typically the brightest light in the setup. 54 00:04:23.000 --> 00:04:28.000 So, let's just start off by dragging that power slider in the Light Properties tab as high as we can get it, 55 00:04:28.000 --> 00:04:32.000 until we see that bright white outline around our subject. 56 00:04:32.000 --> 00:04:37.000 Just to save you some time, I'll say that the number I decided to use was around 50,000. 57 00:04:37.000 --> 00:04:41.000 Definitely the brightest light, but feel free to tweak the numbers based on your scene. 58 00:04:41.000 --> 00:04:46.000 Awesome! Now you have your three lights set up, and it looks pretty decent. 59 00:04:46.000 --> 00:04:50.000 However, let's add a cube to act as our environment real quick. 60 00:04:50.000 --> 00:04:56.000 To do this, simply go into the Add menu of the viewport, go to Mesh, and select Cube. 61 00:04:56.000 --> 00:05:02.000 We can then scale the cube up with the Scale tool until we find ourselves inside of it. 62 00:05:02.000 --> 00:05:05.000 Now, you might notice something a little weird. 63 00:05:05.000 --> 00:05:08.000 Our cube is almost completely white. 64 00:05:08.000 --> 00:05:13.000 What's happening here is, our environment is now super bright because of our lighting setup. 65 00:05:13.000 --> 00:05:18.000 This isn't very ideal, especially if you want to have your character stand out. 66 00:05:18.000 --> 00:05:24.000 One reason for the environment being so bright is because we're currently using point lights for our light sources, 67 00:05:24.000 --> 00:05:27.000 meaning that they cast light in all directions. 68 00:05:27.000 --> 00:05:34.000 In film and photography, the physical lights used are typically directional lights, specifically to avoid this problem. 69 00:05:34.000 --> 00:05:36.000 Let's try to do the same. 70 00:05:36.000 --> 00:05:39.000 Starting with our brightest light, the rim light. 71 00:05:39.000 --> 00:05:45.000 If we select it with left click, we can go into the Light property tab to see other light options. 72 00:05:45.000 --> 00:05:48.000 Point, sun, spot, and area. 73 00:05:48.000 --> 00:05:53.000 Feel free to experiment with each light type, but I personally like the spotlight for this purpose, 74 00:05:53.000 --> 00:05:57.000 as you'll be able to focus the spotlight column as needed. 75 00:05:57.000 --> 00:06:01.000 Simply select the spot option, and you'll already notice a difference. 76 00:06:01.000 --> 00:06:06.000 Our environment is more clear, but our monkey's rim light is no longer there. 77 00:06:06.000 --> 00:06:10.000 That's because our spotlight is currently rotated the wrong way. 78 00:06:10.000 --> 00:06:13.000 Let's use the rotate tool to point it back at our monkey. 79 00:06:13.000 --> 00:06:22.000 Now, because this is a spotlight, you can also adjust your spotlight's effective area by dragging the size value in our light property tab. 80 00:06:22.000 --> 00:06:23.000 Awesome. 81 00:06:23.000 --> 00:06:30.000 Now our backlight still has the same effect it had earlier, but without the issue of over lighting our environment. 82 00:06:30.000 --> 00:06:38.000 Optionally, you can do the same thing for your other two lights, but this can be situational, so feel free to experiment and adapt. 83 00:06:38.000 --> 00:06:39.000 And that's it. 84 00:06:39.000 --> 00:06:42.000 You now have a beautifully lit monkey and blender.