Lights settings

[NandoMogollon]

hi. while a can get the Dwight's book. can any body help me?

i have doubts about How to configure the lights (ambient, must of all)

Case 1.
Interior Rendering.
usually i set a Low intensity Skylight object (30%) and a high ambient source in the PhotoRendering settings (100 or 110%). by today it works well must of the times... is there a much better way to do set it?

Case 2
Exterior Rendering.
I just can't get any satisfactory image. I'm setting the Skylight object to "sky object type / realistic method" and a high intensity (90-100%) and a low ambient source in the PhotoRendering settings (40 or 50%). ... it always take a lot of time to render, and it appears to have grains all over the surfaces... Should i ignore the ambient source too? as the camera and sun source?

FYI, i always set Sun light object about 85-100%, and in interior renderings use a lot of windows light objects.
The interior renderings doesn't look bad... but the exterior renders always looks Fake.... too fake.

i'll appreciate any help

[NandoMogollon]

the other image...

[stefan]

The realistic sun shader in AC10 (and 11) is working fine. But it needs the Sun light to be on.

I'd suggest to dump the Ambient light: it will make everything rendered FLAT. Setting it to 10% to have non-black shadows might help.

SkyObject and SunObject: you might not need them with the Sun shader in the Render Settings dialog. You could add an additional SkyObject for more control, however. But then I suggest the book of Dwight. It's worth its price, even though I have not read it cover to cover.

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[All in all, I usually convert to VIZ or Artlantis for rendering... Especially VIZ 2008/3ds max 9 with improved Mental Ray materials and lights can do miracles without much effort. Combine that with some Ambient Occlusion in a separate render pass and some Photoshop tweaking... Probably not really helpful...]

[vfrontiers]

I am having trouble getting lights to work.... at all.. Using the Lightworks render engine, the LIGHT FIXTURES (wall sconce 4 and wall sconce 2) do not cast any light! No matter how I change the settings.

I have to place a LIGHT SOURCE on top of it.

Then, once light source is placed, changing certain parameters will cause the light to NOT CAST any light. Funny thing is that I can change the parameter back to where it was before and it still won't light!.. I have to actually UNDO to get it back to lit.

I have yet to UPDATE, but was looking for any guidance. I had been changing parameters of the light cones.... CONE ANGLES, ANGLE FALLOFF, DISTANCE FALLOFF.. Sometimes, changing the light angles by the parameters would cause it to go black, while making the same change in the 3d window (by stretching the cones in the 3d window) would be fine.