Well, I think a nightshot is one of the most complex light setups.
I’ve made some experience with IES Lights from www.erco.com
It’ s time consuming to understand the system, and of course it would be a great help to understand which lights you need to to use and how - so that you will get a spefic look.
I think it’s an art and a scienece too. I made a call to erco last year, and the guys are really good. They do have proffesions just for light, because lighting an architectural building is not easy.
I still work on better solutions for my own, but I think with IES lights you can really get good results in combination with vray lights.
Here is my first test I made with a little description from last year:
night shots are all about the lighting. Alot of time spent on good looking localised lighting is pretty important. Best piece of advice is to find some great renders/photos and just start recreating it.
if it helps, i explain how to do a very simple night scene here: Checking your browser...
actually i find setting up a night scene is fairly easy. its really very similar to a daylight scene. the only differences are that the colors and intensities of the direct light and environment light are different.
please excuse the site…it really needs to be updated
-joe
Maybe it will help you, the file is stripped down to the camera sun and one omnilight. The settings in the file are the ones used to get the image shown, no postprocessing, image straight out of the render.
Be aware huge rendertime, 720x576 cost me 1 hour and 13 minutes on a e6600 core2duo :shock: . Some optimization tips would be great!
Thanks for sharing your settings Erik. I have a client considering a night shot and your scene file may well help me reduce the amount of head scratching I’d have to do!
