Renderings at night time!

[Anonymous]

Can anyone give me some good advices for making renderings outside/inside of an house at night time.!

At daytime you use sky, sun and window lighting objects in lightworks. What do you use at night time and what adjustments do you make.?

(A quick rendered photo attached)

[Dwight]

Night rendering is best done just after sunset where the sky can still be defined and is not yet black. Like the photographers do.

With the lightworks sky object, make a strong blue light color.

No sun.

Use flood lighting to model the building with light.

Keep your actual lights down low.

Adjust ambient light intensity.

Are you using the camera light? This is making directional light from the camera viewpoint - not good

[Dave Jochum]

Dwight's the man to answer the technical question. I'm just curious why you would want to produce such a rendering. I'm assuming this is a rear yard view of a private residence. Is this something the client wants to see? Just curious...

[Dwight]

And there's no such thing as white!

Everything you do needs color - yellow sunlite

mauve ambient

golden lamp light

start to tint your light sources and get color not scalding.

Start looking at architectural evening photography.

[Anonymous]

Ok, Thanks Dwight I think I'm beginning to get the picture of it.!

When you say "Golden" lamp light which color do you mean - light yellow

as the sun.?

When you make night renderings what kind of background pictures/colors do you use?

How much should the intensity of the lamp have.? about 20-30?

I have used the camera light on the picture, that it correct. In what situations should you use camera light.?

How much should the intensity of the ambient light be adjusted.?

What about the windowobjects do you give them a strong blue light color to.?

To your answer Dave: The client want's a front view of the house with the big windows. The sea is 20 m. below the front of the house.!

[Dwight]

Find a photo you like to emulate - this will show you what to do. Don't ask me any more questions until you can put your experimental rendering up against a real photo as a guideline so we can refine the rendering with an objective in mind.

This is going to take ten or twenty renderings to refine. Are you ready for that? Then you'll know something worth sharing.

Golden - the color of gold, like warm light from an incandescent lamp, not intense and almost white like sunlite. Look at a 40 watt lamp bulb - the color it casts.

I don't make night renderings because I am afraid of the dark - see the ArchiCAD library or look at an architectural magazine. - the cerulean blue/black at the top fading to the just-after-sunset-skybluepink color. What you are using is garish.

Experiment - start all lamps at 10% and go up in 5% increments until you actually know something about how lamp intensity works.

Never use camera light. Never is the right time to use the camera light. NEVER!!!!!!!NEVER!!!!!!!NEVER!!!!!!!NEVER!!!!!!! I mean - what the hell light is the camera light??? - a big bulb on your head - I already teased you once in your interior rendering for using it and making that horrid glare spot on the inside glazing. Wake up and smell the burnt ends of the torn out lamp from your head.

Start with ambient at 10% and work upward at 10% increments. The objective is to eliminate black shadows - black anywhere. Usually for an interior I set ambient to 100% unless the walls are white which I'd never do.

You don't need windolites in an exterior night rendering. Use the Sky Light set to dark blue. Experiment.

Experiment.
Experiment.
Experiment.
Experiment.
Experiment.
Experiment.

Then you'll know.

[Anonymous]

I have done some night images using that old Hollywood trick: Blue light.
This is not photorealistic, but we are so used to see Night scenes filmed during the day with a blue filter, we instantly recognize this setting as a night image.

[Anonymous]

The sky looks very nice!, What are your presets in archicad.?

[Anonymous]

Why not EXPERIMENT to find out what might work FOR YOU?

... as hinted, use BLUE as the sun colour. I would suggest a DARK blue might work better than 'sky blue' ... and use 10% figures at first. These are not 'correct values' (there is no such thing) just a suggested starting point.

As you develop you might decide that it looks more 'dramatic' if you add some red to the blue light.

Also check out some photoshop plug-ins if you want 'interesting' skies ... Alien Skin might be a place to start.

Have fun experimenting!

HTH - Stuart

[Anonymous]

Ever wonder where Dwight lives? I hear its cold in Canada.

My intrepretation of Dwight's House, at night of course.


Anim 1.8MB - http://www.Burginger.com/ARCHICAD_TALK/NIGHT.mov

Mark