Firelit moonlit night

[jelsayeh]

Here’s my current scene …

I did not design any “real objects” like windows or anything, just focusing on the lighting:

• I set the world lighting to 0: on the “world properties tab”, the color was set to gray, so even without any lighting the world was not yet dark … My night-time scene feels better with this color set to black
• I have a cone mimicking some hearth in front of the cylinder which casts a nice shadow on the backdrop
• On the right, I have a plane which mimicks a window through which some night light is shining in (white-light blue moonlight), casting the shadow to the left.

I am having troubles with determining the “realism” of the shadows, I guess I just should have a look at more reference pictures to see what shadows from window lighting and from firelight should look like (sharp/soft/no shadows at all?) … Ideally, I guess that there is a window and a hearth should be intuitively clear (or at least deemed plausible) without showing them, right?

Secondly, I feel my light sources are too far from the cone (with, consequently, higher intensity). Does this make a difference? Is it better to have the light sources at “realistic” distances? I did it like that out of laziness: now I can easily position the camera the way I want without having the light sources in my screen …

[NixeKnox]

Blender’s default settings aren’t actually too accurate when it comes to realistic lighting. Switch to filmic under color management for more accurate lighting.

Both shadows seem harsh. Every time I see a second shadow the one that has a light source farther away is usually casting a softer shadow. The shadow should soften by pulling the moon light source further away. It’s located up in the sky after all. If you’d like for it to not have a shadow uncheck Cast Shadow under the light properties.

[jelsayeh]

Thanks for the feedback!

Apparently “filmic” is a new feature, on my 2.78-Blender-laptop I don’t have that option yet, on my 2.79-Blender-PC I do … So for now, I tried with “film” and a “Canon Optura 981113”.

I think I am putting myself into trouble by modeling the moonlight by a plane … Like you say, the moon is far up in the sky, but I want to model the light coming in through a window (i.e., its an indoor scene). Yet, I realize now that the approach I use is wrong, as the moonlight should still be more or less directional (maybe an area light source is better than using geometry here …)

For now, I have this:

To be continued …

[NixeKnox]

Ah, so in 2.78 filmic was made as a downloadable add-on available here: https://github.com/sobotka/filmic-blender

[jelsayeh]

Great, thanks, I’ll look into that!