Physical lights add realism and drama
Dramatic lighting can help capture the eye of your audience. Escape the routine of creating renderings that look like… well… renderings. The secret is in lighting (or one of the secrets anyway).
If you use the basic default environment in KeyShot for your renderings, your results are likely going to look flat and lifeless. You need to inject some drama into your images.
Search google images or Pinterest for dramatic lighting. The best photography and films rely on scenes in which there is lots of contrast between well-lit and dark areas. This is what we describe as dramatic lighting or low-key lighting. It helps to create a focal point within your image and enhances the form of what’s being lit.
Dramatic lighting requires few lights
The easiest and quickest way to add dramatic lighting in your scene is to use physical lights (not an HDRI) and as few lights as possible.
You could of course create a similar effect using HDRIs, but you’d want to use a single pin within that HDRI and have the rest of it be black or very dark.
This will result in brighter areas and much darker areas creating contrast. Further, by using physical lights, your shadows and highlights will have more natural roll-off or falloff which produces a more convincing result and overall more pleasing image.
Too many product renderings suffer from neutral, flat or boring lighting. Take a moment to learn about how to add drama to your renderings. It’s probably the easiest thing you can do to improve your images with the least amount of effort.
In just a few minutes, this tutorial will show you how!
In this tutorial you’ll learn how to:
- Import a model
- Add a plane
- Apply an area light material
- Use Cloudy plastic material
- Rotate a light around an object
- Adjust material samples
- Control shadow sharpness
- Back-light a model
- Use the geometry view
It’s honestly the best online KeyShot training available. With 15 hours of 100+ video lessons, follow-along project lessons, feature-based lessons, 14 chapters, project files and quizzes, it’s pretty epic. If you need more convincing, check out the product page with testimonials, course previews and more by clicking here!
Related Content
Dispersion Tutorial
Dispersion creates cool rainbow effects within a transparent material. This tutorial will explain how you can achieve it in KeyShot.
Create a Custom Area Light Library in KeyShot
Add realism with area lights. Save time and improve your renderings by creating and using a library of realistic area lights in KeyShot!
KeyShot HDRI vs Physical Lights
What’s better, a KeyShot HDRI or physical lights? In this article, I answer that plus the pros and cons of each.
Perfect Reusable KeyShot Light Studio
Studios are a great way to manage scene variations. Stop wasting time and learn how to manage your KeyShot scenes!
Animate Glowing LEDs in KeyShot
Need to render convincing LEDs in KeyShot? This tutorial has you covered. The next time you need to render KeyShot LEDs you'll be ready.
The Best Books About 3D Rendering
Here are my favorite books when it comes to 3d modeling, rendering and CGI in general. Figure out which book is best for you.