Lighting

Lighting will determine whether your render is beautiful or not. No matter how well built every other element of your scene is, if your lighting is poor, the quality of the objects in your scene will not be evident. Poor lighting is the easiest way to destroy the good effect of work well done, just as it is the best way to quickly resuscitate even mediocre efforts (Fig. 7.1).

Sometimes the term photorealism is used to describe the level of quality expected in a render. What does this mean? A photograph is the equivalent of a render, and, even if the lighting could be described as poor, in a literal sense, the result will always be photographic for that setup. This is because a camera can only produce a photo-real image. Strangely enough, some photographic images are not what is meant by the term “photo real,” not because they aren’t, but because the term is meant to describe something more specific than just what any camera will record. If it is possible for a photo to fail the test of being “photo real,” then clearly, something else is meant by it.