Lighting La Ruelle - Chapter 1 (C4D): Fog/Mist (Damp) at Nighttime

About this tutorial

This is the first chapter in a series of 5 lighting tutorials for Cinema 4D.

The files of this tutorial were created by using release 11.5 but I had no problem opening them in release 10. Release 9.6 or earlier does not work unfortunately.

Concerning the fact that not everybody owns the Advanced Render or a third party render, I will try to concentrate on the functions of the core-render in Cinema 4D as much as possible. It should be possible for everyone to follow this tutorial. As you might see over this series of tutorials using classical ways of illumination does not mean getting bad results. Another point is that features such as Global Illumination (or Radiosity in earlier versions of Cinema 4d) have strong differences in their workflow, parameters and functionality in depending on the version you use for your work. The attributes manager contains a lot of folders for the different settings. In the following screenshots I will only show areas where changes have been made, the rest being in default.

So let's start...

We have to think about the fact that such a lighting situation is a combination of a variety of light sources such as moonlight, lamps placed in the scene , light coming from lamps outside the view- area of the camera, bouncing light reflected by the surfaces and even the reflected light generated by the foggy elements. Therefore we never have one light source in our environment even at night.

The Render Settings

While we look at the render setting menu we can see that I used Ambient Occlusion which is part of the Advanced Render. Well, if you do not have the AR it is not an essential feature to follow this tut- It just looks nicer. The other point is sub polygon displacement. To get a workaround, just subdivide the meshes and use the normal displacement in the material manager.

The render resolution very much depends on the performance of your system, but using a wide of 320 pixels only might be too small...

The glow I activated here could be done in post work also. If you have problems with your render speed while using anti-aliasing, you can set it to "None" of course (Fig.01)

Fig.01

Fig.01

The Moonlight

Of course we need some moonlight here in our scene. There is no need to figure out a clear position for this light source. If you take a look at the editor screenshot you can do it in a similar way as I did. The color of the moonlight has a slight "blueish" tint and the strength is not set to "full power". This is because we will have a lot of lights in the scene later on and so we should avoid having too much light in our alley which could lead to the impression it not being set at night. The contrast is lowered too. In nature mist has a damping effect on rays and so we can simulate that special kind of diffuse illumination. In most cases the shadow strength of the different lights is not set to 100 % which would be unnatural in reality. This delivers an extra bouncing light effect. After all you now have a similar result as in the render of the moonlight pass (Fig.02 - 04).

Fig.02

Fig.02

Fig.03

Fig.03

Fig.04

Fig.04

The Street Lamps

As I mentioned in the beginning, we have light sources generated by street lamps directly. They are very important for our scene and therefore we will take a closer look at their structure.

Lamp 1

This one can be considered the main element in the composition. It is the only one which lies in the focus of the scene cam directly. Its position is the same as the model of the lamp mounted onto the wall of the right building. If you take a look at the strength you will recognise that it is set to 250% with a color range going into yellow and an area shadow which defines the surface structures around this area. We do not need a precision of 100% for the shadow parameters here. Good for the render performance.

The next step is to create the illusion of a glowing light bulb. Simply copy/paste the light object. Set the parameters to "Visible" and activate the option "No Illumination". It does not have to illuminate the scene but instead deliver the image of a glow coming from the bulb inside the lamp.

Cinema 4D provides the option to use an environment object and activate its fog function.



This is a good thing in a lot of cases, but we do not use it here. So again: copy/paste with no illumination, but this time using volumetric visibility with a soft shadow. Although it is not an active illuminating element, the shadow option influences the rays of the volumetric character.

This combination gives us more flexibility and it simulates fog at the same time. Another advantage is the better render performance in C4D (do not ask me for the reason). The strength of the light is now independent from its visibility.

The render of the lamp1 pass gives us an impression of the result (Fig.05 - 09).

Fig.05

Fig.05

Fig.06

Fig.06

Fig.07

Fig.07

Fig.08

Fig.08

Fig.09

Fig.09

Lamp 2

The second light is coming through the gate of the stairway. I used an Omni light here to get a soft illumination around this area. Like many other light sources in that scene, I defined a linear falloff to avoid a negative "accumulation" effect of light. This would increase the total exposure too much at the end. This kind of behaviour simulates reality much better.
Next: copy/paste and set the light type to "Square Spot". This gives us a better focus of the volumetric effect. We do not need a bulb simulation here, because it would not be visible from the cameras point of view (Fig.10 - 13).

Fig.10

Fig.10

Fig.11

Fig.11

Fig.12

Fig.12

Fig.13

Fig.13

Lamp 3

Lamp 3 is very simple. Just an Omni light placed in front of the left building. I used a very low custom setting for the shadows here to get a more diffuse illumination. We do not use any volumetric light here, because this area should stay darker. The blue color gives a nice contrast (Fig.14).

Fig.14

Fig.14

Lamp 4

To create a shadowing effect like lamp 1 I simply made a copy of the lamp model in our scene and made it a child object. Again we do not use any volumetric here (Fig.15 - 16).

Fig.15

Fig.15

Fig.16

Fig.16

To summarise what we have so far - we have the moonlight and the lamps combined here in this render with the area of the windows leading us to the next step directly (Fig.17).

Fig.17

Fig.17

Door And Windows

Door

I wanted to create the impression of an open door in the left building; the parameters of which are hopefully obvious in the following screenshots.

The visible light is copy/paste again (Fig.18 - 19).

Fig.18

Fig.18

Fig.19

Fig.19

Right Window

The last render showed up some windows with a background luminance. As you take a look in the scene files, you will discover that I used planes with a luminatic material for this. In this case we get the illusion of a room behind the windows and we do not have to create a visible light like the light bulb. I`ve chosen a square spot again which is a good combination of render performance and control over the direction the light is cast. The volumetric light is produced like the others again (Fig.20 - 21).

Fig.20

Fig.20

Fig.21

Fig.21

Middle Window

In the case of this light source I used an invisible light only. Additional volumetrics would result in too strong a glow in the area in front of the middle building (Fig.22).

Fig.22

Fig.22

Left Window

Here are the settings for the window light and its volumetrics (Fig.23 - 24).

Fig.23

Fig.23

Fig.24

Fig.24

These renders show the separate window pass and the combined render with all the other lights we have so far. You can see how the inner volumetric shadows are working when something is crossing their path. (Fig.25 - 26).

Fig.25

Fig.25

Fig.26

Fig.26

Bouncing Lights

As I said before, we need some lights to simulate the diffuse light coming from the atmosphere or as a reflection from the different surfaces. Without the usage of GI, we have to do it this way.

Moon Bouncing Lights

As the name suggests, these lights should simulate the indirect light coming from the sky (yes, even at night). Both bouncers are identical in their parameters apart from their position, strength and some variation in color (Fig.27).

Fig.27

Fig.27

Bouncer 3

Let's get some extra definition onto the facades (Fig.28).

Fig.28

Fig.28

Bouncer 4

When you study the parameters of all light sources, you will discover that light coming from above has a cool color tone. Light coming from lamps, windows or reflections are generally warmer in hue. Bouncer 4 helps to get more light onto the small structures of the buildings (Fig.29).

Fig.29

Fig.29

Bouncer 5

Most of them are working in a more subtle way...but they work (Fig.30).

Fig.30

Fig.30

Bouncer 6

I used an area shadow here. This allowed me to get a little more definition on the surfaces of the right building (Fig.31).

Fig.31

Fig.31

Bouncing Lights at the Right Window

To add an extra level of realism, I positioned three square spots pointing to the side, top and the bottom of the window on the right side. This creates the illusion of a more convincing light coming from inside the building. Cinema 4D allows the possibility to scale the form of the light object along the axis. So I created a kind of rectangle. Because of the fact that I wanted to add this extra illumination to a very limited area only, I used the include option in the attribute menu.

While creating this setup I added the same bouncing lights to the other windows but due to the cameras point of view you'll see no difference. I therefore decided to drop them out of this set again. (Fig.32 - 34).

Fig.32

Fig.32

Fig.33

Fig.33

Fig.34

Fig.34

Let's take a look at the separate bouncer pass (Fig.35).

Fig.35

Fig.35

If we open the object manager in Cinema we should find a bundle of light objects like those in this picture (Fig.36).

Fig.36

Fig.36

When combining all the lights in the scene your image should look like this (Fig.37).

Fig.37

Fig.37

Final Rendering

I used the settings for the final rendering as mentioned at the beginning. Instead of a width of 800 pixels I preferred to go with 2000 pixels. The whole image rendered on my workstation in about 20 minutes. The only post work I've done here was a bit tweaking to the contrast and color balance.

I hope you liked my little tutorial (Fig.38).

Fig.38

Fig.38

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