3D Designing

Instructor: Patrick V. Mole, MIT

3.0
Lighting and
Cameras
Lighting Types and Settings
⬡ When you create a scene in Blender, you start with a few basic elements
that will include a camera and a light.
⬡ Remember that what the camera sees is what will render out as a picture
or movie depending on what you tell the program you want as a final
output.

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⬡ To get a simple rendered view, press the “F12” key. This will open a
window that will display the rendered output of what the camera is
focused on.
⬡ If the picture is black, you do not have a lamp or the lamp settings or
placement is incorrect. To exit the render window, press the “Esc” key.
⬡ In most cases, you will need more than one lamp in order to properly
illuminate your scene.
⬡ Most scenes usually require 3-4 lamps. Be careful not to use too many
lamps!

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The different types of lamps available for you to use are as follows:
⬡ Point – Omni-directional point of light, that is, a point radiating the same
amount of light in all directions.
⬡ Area – The area light simulates light originating from a surface (or surface-
like) emitter. For example, a TV screen, office neon lights, a window, or a
cloudy sky
⬡ Spot – A spot light emits a cone-shaped beam of light from the tip of the
cone, in a given direction.
⬡ Sun – provides an even angle of light, regardless of placement from objects.
A sun light provides light of constant intensity emitted in a single direction
from infinitely far away.

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Power of Lights
⬡ The power of sun lights is specified in Watts per square meter.
⬡ The power of point lights, spot lights, and area lights is specified
in Watts.
⬡ But this is not the electrical Watts that consumer light bulbs are
rated at. It is Radiant Flux or Radiant Power which is also
measured in Watts. It is the energy radiated from the light in the
form of visible light.

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⬡ If you want to set the power to real world values, you have to convert the
wattage of consumer bulbs or LED lights to radiant flux, but it is not a
straightforward process..
⬡ The wattage of bulbs means the electrical power required to power them.
LED lights have a “Watt equivalent” which is neither the electrical power
they require nor the amount of light they put out.
⬡ Some consumer lights specify lumens or luminous flux which is the
radiant flux weighted with the wavelengths perceived by the human eye.

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To save you from doing the conversion, here is a table of typical power values
for point, spot, and area lights:

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And a table of typical Strength values for sun lights:

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DEMONSTRATION
⬡ Adding Lights (4 Types) in Blender
⬡ How to Change Color of Lights in Blender

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Camera
⬡ By default, your scene already has one camera and that is usually all you
need, but on occasion you may wish to add more cameras.
⬡ You add more cameras by Shift + A, like.
⬡ To change which camera is active, you need to select that camera and
press “Ctrl” and number pad “0”.
⬡ This changes the active camera.

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Camera Follow/Track Object
⬡ Add “Empty” (Shift + A)
⬡ Click on the Camera, go to “Object Constraints” tab/properties
⬡ Under “Tracking”, select “Track To”
⬡ Click the target and point to “Empty”

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 Activity No. 4
⬡ Import your character (Activity 2) to your created structure
(Activity 3) using the Append or Link
⬡ Experiment the Lighting and Camera
⬡ Note: Check the Google Classroom for the full instructions

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Link and Append
These functions help you reuse materials, objects and other data-blocks loaded
from another blend-file.
⬡ Link – creates a reference to the data in the source file such that changes
made there will be reflected in the referencing file the next time it is reloaded.
But linked data is not editable.
⬡ Append – makes a full copy of the data into your blend-file, without keeping
any reference to the original one. You can make further edits to your local
copy of the data, but changes in the external source file will not be reflected in
the referencing file.

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