Three key concepts in 3Ds MAX lighting are: 1. Intensity, direction, and diffuseness are properties of light that determine how light spreads and illuminates surfaces. Shadows are cast by objects blocking light, not by lights themselves. 2. Three-point lighting is a basic lighting setup that illuminates a scene using a key light, fill light, and highlight. The key light is the primary light source, the fill light reduces shadows, and the highlight adds depth. 3. Ambient light and IES skies/suns are used to simulate indirect lighting and realistic outdoor lighting conditions, though creative lighting is also possible.

1. 3Ds MAX lighting; concepts
and techniques
BY: RANDHIR PRASAD YADAV

2. Properties of Light
 Intensity/Luminosity
 Intensity and luminosity are similar concepts. The following two images illustrate
the difference.

3. Direction

4. Diffuseness
 In general, diffuse light is any light that has been scattered after leaving
the light source, or any light source that has a varying area of luminosity
or intensity. Scattering can be caused by atmospheric gases or by reflection, or bounce, off an uneven or rough
surface.

5. Shadow
 Shadows are not technically a quality of light. While some may
teach that
lights cast shadows, in fact it is objects that cast shadows. A shadow
is
the absence of light and therefore cannot generally be considered a
light
quality.

6. Contrast
 Contrast refers to the range of difference between the
lightest parts of
the image and the darkest parts. An image in which the
lightest parts are
much lighter than the darkest parts is considered to have
high contrast.

7. Size

8. Interior or Exterior

9. Time of Day

10. sun

11. skylight

14. Specularity and Glossiness

16. Reflectivity and Diffuse Color

17. Luminosity

20. The key lighting a scene is the
primary source of light. It can be
any light
source from any angle. It is the
that provides primary illumination.
Sunlight is an easy example.

21. The Fill Light
 Fill light does two main things. Most obviously,
it illuminates areas that are shad-owed from
the key light. It also usually illuminates all the
areas that are
lit by the key light, or at least some of them where
the key light and fill
light overlap on a surface. In other words, in a
situation with a key light
and fill light, the shadows are illuminated by the fill
light and the
unshadowed areas are illuminated by the key light
and the fill light wher-ever they overlap.

22. The Highlight
 The highlight is also known as the top light,
the back light, the tip light,
and the rim light, depending on where you
learned your lighting. Its pri -mary purpose is
to make an object stand out from its
background, to help
define the shape, and to provide a nice,
defined edge for those nasty
green-screen or blue-screen shots.

23. Three-Point Lighting

24. Three-point lighting is a simple, versatile, and powerful method of pro-viding an
immediate “beauty” lighting scenario in which most elements
are likely to be visible and attractively lit. The key light provides primary
illumination, the fill light provides form and shadow fill, and the highlight provides
dimension.
Three-point lighting using spotlights is also extremely fast to render
with shadow maps.
No scene or lighting analysis is necessary, and the artist can import
a generic three-point lighting rig from a prepared scene any time, scale
the rig, and start a render.
What Is Great about Three-Point Lighting

25. Ambient Light
Ambient light doesn’t exist in the real world, although
it is meant to
approximate some lighting behavior we see every
day. In the real world,
light reflects from one surface to the next over and
over, perhaps mil -lions of times, until all the light
energy has been absorbed. This is
known as radiosity. Radiosity has the effect of giving
an overall brighter
appearance to any environment and occurs
everywhere all the time.

26. IES Sky
“IES” refers to the Illuminating
Engineering Society. Wherever you see
these letters, it means a bunch of
physicists have gotten very picky
about the light behavior, and while you
may not even notice the differ-ence or it
might not seem to work the way you’d
like, don’t worry—at
least it’s physically accurate.

27. IES Sun
IES Sun is another photometrically accurate lighting
instrument and is
intended to be used with IES Sky for outdoor lighting
environments.
Once again, being the creative people we are, we certainly
aren’t obliged
to use the tools exactly as directed. I can throw an IES
sunlight and an
IES skylight together any time I want without using the
Daylight Sys-tem and I will probably never be jailed for it.