Lighting a Space Scene (and other things)

Its one of the many things that made the Expanse so good, they make space travel/movement followable while looking good. Especially combat scenes as if you were viewing it from a wideshot it would look so low energy/boring.

SnakeYikes

Neato! Really like the refraction and light angle tips.

I was just playing around with a jet at the edge of space the other day and I ended up just parenting some area lights with various colors from the BG to emulate the color glowing from the Planet below

Zachary Porlier

This is very cool thankyou 🤘

clean up Ian's assets so he can post them here lol

Are you on any freelance sites? That can be a good way to earn some extra money, or at least get your name out there a bit. Also, join some CG discord servers, I've seen a lot of job postings go through those!

Zeke Faust

HOHO! That's a great idea! I gotta try that first thing tomorrow! :D

Ian Hubert

Hey there Ian! I know you are a busy man so i will try to say this as short possible to not waste your time! I noticed that you might have a bunch of scans that you could need to get cleaned up. Im in a tough spot moneywise these days, living in Denmark, and since i have a bunch of experience with cleaning scans the way you also do it, i was wondering if that is something i maybe could do for you and earn a bit? If you have anything else i could do im open to suggestions! I do have a passion (and quite a lot of experience) with blender/photogrammetry/3D envoirnment! Thanks for taking your time to read this, even if there is no way for you to help me out <3

Nickolai bauer

Such a clever idea to mix the blue and yellow light together to imitate that atmospheric sunlight look

I love using the black body node and using the suns kelvin value, it makes a massive difference

Jed

good info here. love the tip about backing off the camera and zooming in. really helps!

Anderson Atlas

I love how the opening shots of BLADE RUNNER many of the backgound oil refineries were just flat black cut-outs. If you have knowledge of how the scene will be lit, you don't have to put so much time into a bunch of details where they're not needed.

Can't believe we work on the same shot

Larry Huang

in space no one can hear you dream

Richard Cave

In the series Babylon 5, one reason that there are so many nebulae in the background is precisely for the lighting on the ships to look more realistic (with the bright exposures and deep shadows), but still allow the viewer still be able to understand the ship's silhouette. At least, more realistic for nineties CG, compared to series like contemporary Star Trek that used the more Hollywood style cheating. A lot of fan renders of the show either don't recognize that this is part of the show's distinctive look, or ignore it. (It's still not particularly realistic lighting. Sadly, to the naked eye, I believe even close-up nebulae would tend to look grey and diffuse rather than colorful and distinct because they are so dim. In binoculars or a telescope they are dim due to immense distance, but if you move up close they'd be dim because the light would be spread out over a larger surface area per unit of light. Even ignoring those that are mostly visible in infrared or unltraviolet, the colors of most nebulae generally only come out because astrophotography can gather vastly more light than the human eye thanks to longer exposure times and larger apertures.)

Troll and Error