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Hi Everyone,

I am kind of a newbie on maxwell, and doing my first product shots. I am having trouble mostly on illuminating the background to a smooth gradient. Can someone share some advise on how to get good results on the subject?

I am using mutilight, so the intensity of the lights itself is a matter of tweaking. My main issue is about how to get the "background light" to not overexpose the background. It sounds easy, but has not been so.

By the way, the emmiters have a smooth gradient, like on the wine glass tutorial http://think.maxwellrender.com/studio_lighting-68.html


Any help will be appreciated.

Have you tried making your background further away from your object? In a photo the backgrounds often look like they are immediately behind the object but are often further back. Might be worth a try and you could also try to change the angle of the bend in your backdrop

Hi caryjames,

I have already tried increasing the distance object-backdrop. That is the case on the render with the woman on it. Also the angle of the backdrop on the first render, originally was more tilted horizontally. I changed it to vertical because it was not working.

I believe the solution relays on the position or intensity (or something) of the top light.

Hi Giacc- you could try to build a baffle for your top light- like "barn doors" in photography terminology (I think).. I recall Bubballoo putting a square emitter into a cone to achieve a spotlight effect. This might allow you to have less "bleed" from your top light. I don't know if this will work but it might...

also have you tried angling your top light and/or moving it closer and/or farther away?

I just wrote a long post describing a couple methods to get the result you wanted, but Opera crashed on me so i'll quickly summarize..

1. My personal recommendation is to do the white backrougd in Photoshop. It'll save you lots of render time and get nearly the same result, albeit not physically correct.....if you're doing it all in Maxwell see point two and three

2. Your toplight is a step in the right direction. You might need two or three of these focused soley on the background..lighting whose only purpose to to light the background and not effect the bottle (keep in mind, more lights equal more render time which is why i recommend doing the BG in PS)

3. Your two front lights should be much wider. If they are wider they will give less direct light to your subject and more overall brightness to everything, including the BG...all without blowing out your subject. that'll be an extra help to getting the BG a bit brighter and make your job of getting it fully white easier.


couple tips for lighting in general:

If you're having a problem a certain type of lighting setup, search on the internet for the same issue in real world studio photography light setups. Lights in Maxwell work pretty much the same as real world lights. So find an answer in studio photo and it will likely work in Maxwell


I highly highly highly recommend a book called "Light: Science & Magic" by Fil Hunter, Steven Biver, and Paul Fugua. It shows you a bunch of theory in the first half, which will help you understand the princapals and in the second half it'll show you a bunch of examples about real world applications. The second half of hte book will show you a final photo (the example i'm looking at now in the book is a jewelry box) then they'll spend two or three pages talking about how and why they setup the lighting as well as show you a diagram of placement. There are surely others like this book, but this is the one I have and it has helped TONS!

Hopefully this helps you on your way. I posted real quick and didn't take time to proofread so hopefully it all makes sense. PM me or email me if you have other questions. good luck

Nice tips!

itsallgoode9 wrote: I highly highly highly recommend a book called "Light: Science & Magic" by Fil Hunter, Steven Biver, and Paul Fugua....There are surely others like this book, but this is the one I have and it has helped TONS!

quote, quote and quote again...i thought i already had the basics but this book unlocks a new level in interpreting lighting (see Brian, i wrote it correctly this time!)

I'm going to but that book today.

Here it comes the image. Sliders 4 & 5 are the MXI emmiters. As you can see, they contribute almost nothing to the illumination, altough they are multiplyed by 1000.

http://uploading.com/files/VAEZEN4C/Cap ... I.JPG.html

Your Iso needs to increase and then lower your shutter speed or just lower the shutter speed slide and already you should see an improvement!

This might help too! (Had to scan through my archives! )

I would second the recommendation to worry about it post. It was always a difficult thing to light for in reality, particularly on small sets, and most photogs now will just do it in post if it proves to be a hassle. The other way we used to do it a lot was to use graduated backgrounds (literally painted with a gradient).

Anyway, you can be purist of course, all depends on how you value your free time


b

Try gridding the emitter. Scale the depth of the grid to control degree and softness of illumination falloff.

Here you have an interesting link about lighting

Softbox with Egg Crate Grid - a Maxwell Render Simulation

http://www.digitalartform.com/archives/ ... th_eg.html