8

Guidelines for Lighting 1135
Ar tificial Light
Outdoor scene with natural twilight and one streetlight
Artificial light, whether used indoors or outdoors
at night, uses multiple lights. The following
guidelines are for creating normal ly lit, easi ly
legible scenes. You don’t have to follow the
guidelines, of course, but then you call attention
to the lighting itself, rather than to the subject of
the scene.
The subject of a scene should be lit by a single
bright light, known as the
key light . Position the
key light in front of the subject and slightly above.
In addition to the key light, position one or more
other lights to illuminate the background and the
side of the subject. These are known as
fill lights .
Fill lights are less bri ght than the key lig ht.
Whenyouuseonlyonefilllight,theangleat
ground level between it, the subject, and the key
light should be approximately 90 degrees.
Key-and-fill lig hting emphasizes the subject of a
scene. It also emphasizes the three-dimensionality
of the scene.
In3dsMax,aspotlightisusuallybestforthekey
light, and either spotlights or omni lights are go od
for creating the fill lighting. See
Targe t Sp o t ( p a ge
2–1143)
, Free Spot (page 2–1144) ,and Omni
(page 2–1148)
. Ambient li ght can be another
element of your fill lighting.
You can als o add lig hts to emphasize secondary
subjects in a scene. In stage terminology, these
lights are known as
specials . Special lights are
usually brighter than the fill light but less br ight
than the main key light.
To design using physically based energy values,
distributions, and color temperature, y ou can
create
photometr ic lig hts (page 2–1155) .
Ambient Light
Left: No ambient light
Middle: Default ambient light
Right: User-adjusted ambie nt light
Ambient light in 3ds Max simulates the general
illumination from light reflecting off diffuse
surfaces. A mbient sett ings determine the
illumination level of surfaces in shadow, or those
not receiving d irect illumination from light
sources. The Ambient level on the Environment
dialog establishes the scene’s basic illumination
level before any light sources are taken into
account, and is the dimmest any portion of the
scene can ever become.
Ambient light is most often used for exterior
scenes, when the sky’s broad lighting produces an
even distribution of reflected light to surfaces not
in direct sun. A common technique for deepening
theshadowsistotinttheambientlightcolortobe
the complement of t he scene’s key light.
Unlike the outside, interior scenes typically have
numerous lights, and a general ambient light level
is not ideal for simulating the diffuse reflection of
local light sources. For interiors, it’s common to
set the scene’s environment ambient level to black,