1

I am relatively new to the forums and have searched for advice on this question, but havent found what I am looking for. If I have missed something like this on this forum then please let me know and i'll happily go and read something that has been answered already! So please go easy on me!

I am in the process of creating a still rendering of an aircraft flying in front of a night sky. I am fairly happy with the aircraft itself.

The scene lighting comprises of a Node world light illustrated in the screenshot below. The purpose of this material is so that I can match the ambient light in the night sky with the light on the aircraft skin. I have also illustrated (in the same screenshot) the fuselage material.

I am trying to do the aircraft lights, which includes wingtip lights, a red light on the underside, and a white strobe on the tip of the tail. I am struggling with getting the lights to glow and light up the area around the light on the underside of the fuselage. It seems the fuselage material will not accept the light from the emission sphere, regardless of the strength.

enter image description here enter image description here

Thank you kindly!

Edit, attaching information that shows the aircraft when the emission shader is increased from 1 to 100.

enter image description here

Richie967
  • 13
  • 4
  • Hello and welcome to Blender SE :). What render engine are you using? Mesh lights are very limited in Eevee, but point lights work just fine – jachym michal Sep 24 '20 at 10:05
  • Hi Jachym, I am using the cycle rendering engine, from the limited number of videos I have watched, it seems eevee is a thing of the past?! – Richie967 Sep 24 '20 at 11:31
  • Hello :). The plane material is very light, very reflective and brightly lit. You'll need to increase your red mesh light strength quite a bit to illuminate your plane. – jachym michal Sep 24 '20 at 12:05
  • And to clarify - Eevee is a modern, real-time engine. It's predecessor, the Blender Render is a thing of the past :). Anyways, it doesn't matter as you're using Cycles here. – jachym michal Sep 24 '20 at 12:09
  • 1
    Hello and welcome. Please only ask one question at a time, make as many posts as necessary. In this case consider entirely removing your question 2. Art critique and feedback is considered subjective and will attract opinion based answers which are not a good fit for this site and off topic here. – Duarte Farrajota Ramos Sep 24 '20 at 12:17
  • https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/53309/ https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/1864/ https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/168662 – Duarte Farrajota Ramos Sep 24 '20 at 12:25
  • For realism, the background using is a long exposure photo, which should not able to freeze a plane. And the height of the plane is extremely low. – MA Jacob Sep 24 '20 at 14:18
  • @MAJacob - Thank you for the information, I will look into that. – Richie967 Sep 24 '20 at 14:23
  • @DuarteFarrajotaRamos - I have removed the second question as per your guidance. Thank you for the links on the glowing items. – Richie967 Sep 24 '20 at 14:24
  • @JachymMichal - Thank you for your help, I have increased the red light to a strength of 100, and this does not seem to affect the aircrafts skin at all. For some reason I am not able to post a picture in this comment. I will add a picture to my original question, showing what happens when I increase the brightness from 1 to 100 of the emission sphere.

    Should I maybe be using Eevee instead of cycles?

     – Richie967 Sep 24 '20 at 14:27
  • Hello :). I posted a second answer that could help, but I'm still not sure. Consider sharing the .blend – jachym michal Sep 24 '20 at 18:50
  • @JachymMichal - Thank you for the updated guidance, I have updated my material accordingly, and kept the emission light at 100 strength. But it still doesn't seem to make a difference. If I turn off the world lighting, the emission object does light up a portion of the fuselage. I am looking into how to share the .blend file. I'll make sure all the materials are in the same folder as the blend file so it all works! – Richie967 Sep 24 '20 at 18:55
  • That's good news actually :). At least we know the illumination is there, you just need to increase the light strength even more. Or darken the environment light. – jachym michal Sep 24 '20 at 19:07
  • @JachymMichal Ok, thanks for your help, It looks like ill need to have a bit of a rethink. As when I darken the environment light, the aircraft then looks too dark on the night sky. I'll have a play around! – Richie967 Sep 25 '20 at 08:55
  • No problem :). Cycles is a physically based engine, so you'd have the same problems in reality. One way is to add the red glow in post-production. – jachym michal Sep 25 '20 at 09:39

1 Answers1

1

The plane material is very light, very reflective and brightly lit.
You'll need to increase the light's strength to illuminate your plane.

enter image description here

jachym michal
  • 31,744
  • 5
  • 55
  • 115