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Lighting and Environments
Light plays a big role in the overall look of the scene.
The same scene can look completely different with different lighting. Even a simple cube with default material can look interesting if you add quality lighting.
Designing a beautifully lit scene requires skill and experience. To make the design process faster and smoother, Vectary Studio comes equipped with preset lighting. By default, the scene uses global lighting, called Environment. There is a whole library at your disposal to choose different variants of the environment. You can also customize it by changing parameters, such as intensity, rotation, blurring in reflections, and so on.
The second way to illuminate a scene is with local light sources. To better see how they work, turn off the global lights and add local lights.
It is also possible to combine both. There is no unique recipe, it all depends on the effect you are trying to reach.
Environment
What is the Environment?
The image below is an example of an HDRi-map. Below you see just a png cover, but such a map should be in .hdr format. The HDRi map is usually intended to be imported into a 3D program to shape the Environment.
On the image, there are areas with lights that will provide the global illumination of the scene. Of course, the lighting can be adjusted, turned off or other local light sources can be introduced.
Note that Environment and Background are not the same thing. A Background refers to the space. The Environment refers to the global illumination, that works with any other selected background.
Vectary has its own Environments library. There are two kinds of Environments: studio and outdoor. When you change an environment, you won't see the image of the Environment itself in the background (even if you select Environment in the Background settings). You will only see the light and dark areas of the Environment.
Different environments can make a big difference to your scene. We encourage you to explore them and their settings. If you need additional maps to the ones available in the Vectary library, you can always import them as .hdr files.
Each Environment has the following adjustments for you to fine-tune as needed:
- Intensity - By changing the intensity you can dim the light or make it barely noticeable. You can set an intensity value greater than 100, just enter the desired value. Or turn it off by setting it to 0.
- Rotation - The angle at which the light falls on the object is quite important. Rotating the surroundings can reveal new results.
- Hue - Change the shade of the light to create different moods.
- Saturation - If the effect of the environment is too colorful or intense for your scene, a negative saturation value will correct this. Do the opposite if the color is not strong enough.
- Shadow - Adjust the intensity of the shadows.
- Blurriness - The HDRi map is visible on the reflective surfaces. With this setting, you can blur that reflection.
Local light sources
There are four kinds of light sources at your disposal. There are different schemes of studio lighting arrangements (you can easily find them on the web). These schemes will help you understand the general principles. It is easy to control local light sources in Vectary Studio. Take a look:
1. Note that by default all light sources do not create shadows. This will have to be enabled in the right panel for each light source. 2. You can set an intensity value greater than 100. Just enter the desired value.
- Point Light — Light spreads equally in all directions, as from a normal incandescent lamp.
- Spot Light — Light is emitted in the form of a cone from a single point. You can adjust the size of the spot and its softness.
- Directional Light — Light is emitted from a source that is infinitely far away. That is, you cannot bring the source itself closer or farther away, but you can control the direction of the light. All the shadows cast by this light source will be parallel, ideal for simulating sunlight.
- Rectangle Light — Light is emitted from a rectangular plane on one side. You can change the width and height of the rectangle. (For example a very long and thin light source.)
