Exterior Lighting Test
For this project, I downloaded the free "City Sample" project, rearranged some assets, and deleted any existing lights in an attempt to create my own authentic outdoor lighting setup. A major goal of this was to limit myself as much as possible to using more realistic lights and testing the limits of Ultra Dynamic Sky (a lighting plugin which I had recently downloaded). This strayed away from my traditional approach of using setups that were based in traditional photography practices and paying more attention to the use of practical lights. Overall, I had a lot of fun trying this and am happy with some of the challenged that I was able to overcome!
In this starting scene, the lighting comes from Ultra Dynamic Sky's initial preset.
Next, I tweaked the plugin's settings to get it to a state that I was happy with. I wanted to create a somewhat romanticized golden hour for this fun cityscape!
After this, I added a soft, warm, spotlight to help make a better gradient and fill in some of the areas that seemed a bit dark.
Then I added an interior light to the car. My dad told me about this technique being used in some famous race-car photoshoots and I enjoyed matching the lighting temperature to UDS to help accentuate the time of day.
Next up, I added headlights using an IES profile.
Although a bit impractical/fun, I added a subtle blue "underglow" light. I mainly just wanted to have fun with it and see how adding a complimentary light would affect the overall composition.
After that, I added in the streetlights! These (along with the windows) were originally accomplished through the use of textures; however, I didn't want to simply copy the original work so I developed a new approach using point and rectangular lights!
Finally, I added the building lights in. Getting these to a state I was happy with was definitely the most challenging part of the project, but overall I was pleased with them. Now I'm reviewing the original author's approach to learn more!
Lastly, I took the previous render and edited it some. Thanks for looking this over!