LightsWorks

Lighting interior spaces has long been a somewhat complicated process. Poorly lit interior spaces often require global illumination algorithms to do a lot of work to provide a reasonable amount of illumination, necessitating large amounts of processing power and/or quite a wait. Using a simple ambient light raises the lighting levels within the scene enabling users to see more. However, traditional ambient lighting can wash out an image, removing shape information and making the image less photorealistic as a result. LightWorks has added Ambient Occlusion and HDRI lighting to its cannon of rendering tools which have now been integrated within TurboCAD. These techniques used in concert can provide more interesting and realistic lighting, particularly to interior spaces.

What is Ambient Occlusion & how does it work?

Ambient Occlusion is a shading method used to add realism to a scene, by taking into account the attenuation of light. It does this by approximating the way that light in a scene would radiate in real life. Ambient Occlusion is calculated by casting rays out in every direction from a point on a surface: where these rays reach the sky or a light, it increases the brightness and when they hit an object, it provides no illumination thus making these areas darker.

What are the benefits?

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Ambient Occlusion gives the effect of looking at a room on an overcast day, with no strong direct light or sharp shadows. It produces an overall more diffuse lighting effect. Ambient Occlusion is fast technique, which can give users realistic looking lighting in a relatively short time. The images tend to look softer and are more aesthetically pleasing. It is particular suited for interior spaces and product design scenes where the user is keen to see all the components within the scene but there they need to be distinct and not blurred.

Suitable for: Interiors, Exteriors, Product Design.

What is Hdri lighting & how does it work?

Hdri lighting uses a High Dynamic Range image to provide lighting and reflections in a rendered image. The lighting provided by an HDRI is subtle and complex giving a pleasingly realistic effect with almost no setup on the part of the user. Simply supply an image and hit render.

HDR images have been created by LightWorks using a Spheron 360deg camera, which creates a spherical image, which can be displayed as shown below. Adding such an HDR to a model of a house for example, the render will pick up the colors of the sky and grass as part of the scene.

What are the benefits?

Without hdri it can be difficult to work out where to put lights and what lighting values they should have in order to get a good image. By using HDRI lighting, all the complex lighting is automatically incorporated within the scene, making it easy to get the complexity and shadows required to give both more variation in color and intensity which results in even more realism.

Suitable for: Interiors, Exteriors, Product Design.

Summary

Using LightWorks Ambient Occlusion alongside HDRI Lighting, as integrated within TurboCAD makes it very easy for users to add that extra degree of depth and detail of lighting to give greater photorealism to final images.