single basics

Fundamentals of Lighting in Blender 2.7

Instructor:
Kent Trammell

Without light, nothing can be seen. 

Thus it is extremely important. And beyond the basic requirement for sight, lighting is equally, if not more important for appeal. 

To be a competent and/or skilled 3D artist, you need to understand first how you can introduce illumination into your scene. This can be accomplished with lamp objects like Spot lamps, Sun lamps, Area lamps, etc. You can also assign an emissive material to non-lamp objects so they illuminate as a light source. 

Lastly, you can illuminate your scene with the World environment. Each of these are explained in the "Types of Illumination" chapter. After you know the basics of how to illuminate, the next step for a lighting artist is developing appealing illumination. The baseline light setup is called "3 Point Lighting". 

The "Application" chapter covers this as well as how to illuminate your scene entirely with a single HDRi environment texture. 

CC Music: "Outer Planet" by Robbero

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Awarded upon completion:
100xp +
Course Curriculum
  • 1. Chapter 1 - Types of Illumination (Cycles)

    There are several ways of illuminating your 3D scene. These include "Lamp" object types, emitting light from mesh objects, and environment illumination with a "World" texture.

  • 2. Chapter 2 - Application (Cycles)

    It's one thing to know how to introduce light into your scene and another to make illumination appealing. This chapter covers a standard 3-point light setup along with HDRi illumination.

  • 3. Chapter 3 - Quiz (Cycles)

    Fancy a knowledge test? Go ahead. I dare you.

  • 4. Chapter 4 - Exercise

    In applying what you've learned, the challenge here is to light a pre-made bedroom scene once for day time and once for night time.