9

Guidelines for Lighting 1281
Ar tificial Light
Outdoor scene with natural twilight and one streetlight
Artificial light, whether used indoors or outdoors
at night, uses mult iple lights. The following
guidelines are for creating normally lit, easily
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 ligh t, known as the key light.Positionthe
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 know n as fill lights.
Fill lights are less bright than the key light.
Whenyouuseonlyonefilllight,theangleat
ground level between it, the subject, and t he key
light should be approximately 90 degrees.
Key-and-fill lighting 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 good
for creating the fill lighting. See Ta rget Sp o t ( p a ge
2–1289), Free Spot (page 2–1290),andOmni (page
2–1295). Ambient light can be another element
of your fill lighting.
You can also add lights to emphasize secondary
subjects in a scene. In stage terminolog y, these
lights are known as specials.Speciallightsare
usually brighter than the fil l light but less bright
than the main key light.
To design using physically based energy values,
distributions, and color temperature, you can
create photometric lights (page 2–1301).
Ambient Light
Left: No ambient light
Middle: Default ambient light
Right: User-adjusted ambient light
Ambient lig ht in 3ds Max simulates the general
illumination from light reflecting off diffuse
surfaces. Ambient settings determine the
illumination level of surfaces in shadow, or those
not receiving direct illumination from light
sources. The Ambient level on the Environment
dialog est ablishes 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 t he 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 the scene’s key light.
Unlike the outside, interior scenes typically have
numerous lights, and a gener al 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,