I've seen several different lighting schemes but have not seen anyone use the Irradiance Volume. It seems like a good tool for the initial lighting of an object all around that one doesn't want shadows. I tired experimenting with it on a past render and I could eliminate a couple of area lights with similar results.
My lighting ability is pretty bad so I don't go much by that but I'm wondering if the IV is used much for serious more professional lighting projects? And do you use it in other courses as it does seem like a good tool for certain applications as far as I can noob-tell? 8^]
Original Render without IV
Render with IV and a couple of Area lights removed. It is a little washed out but the IV setting can still be adjusted better.
Hm,
The Irradiance Volume is to calculate indirect light (bounce light), if i'm not mistaken. Used for indoor Renders. The Industrail Environment with Eevee, for instance, uses it.
I don't know why you would want to get rid of the shadows, but you can disable Shadows (per Light) in the Light Properties.
I find the bottom picture a lot worse-looking than the top one. The grip especially appears to reflect too much light, it looks very flat and almost emissive.
But, as always; if you get the result you're after, 'everything is allowed'.
Thanks Martin.
Yeah, this is all new to me. I've seen product pics where they shine lights at every angle so there is no shadow and was thinking this could be used that way. IDK, I'm experimenting and asking questions because I don't know. Yeah, the bottom pic is worse but I probably could keep tweaking it but the purpose was to see if the IV could be used like the mega lights surrounding an object used in some renders and therefore eliminating a lot of lighting. But idk and was just asking... 8^]
Here is a short video I think better explains what I was thinking the IV's could do. Now that I'm further along in the lighting course I understand better. I don't know anything about lighting but I have observed various lighting used and one was lighting for no shadow.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q28UDL0q2YU&t=239s
If it's about shadows on a backdrop, in Eevee you can set the Shadow to None in the Object Properties:
Or disable the shadow in the Light Properties:
In portret photography, people sometimes use diffused light evenly lighting the face (large Area Lights in Blender), amongst others to reduce the visibility of wrinkles and co. (That is maybe not so much the photographer being professional, as the subject being idle?)
Hi Martin,
My original post was in trying to understand the use of IV's in the attempt to lessen the shadow as some applications require and at the time I thought using IV's would be a solution, I was wrong as I discovered later by experimenting and going further in the course. I didn't understand at the time how the IV's worked exactly until I experimented and continued on int the course. I was attempting to answer the question you had why I would want to have no shadows as it is something that is required for certain applications. I am not attempting to create a render without shadows at this time but was in trying to understand the use of IV's but thanks for the replies. 9^]
Oh yeah and I'm at the bottom of it all 8^]. I'm probably going to be asking more dumb questions, lol
Lighting is one of those things that there's science and rules behind it, but also it's has a lot of feel to it, as in how does it feel to you. And it will depend on what you're looking for and having the eye to see when a composition looks appealing. When I was trying to lit my models I searched and searched for some information that I had to be missing because my renders looked horribly lit. I could model an awesome model but I wasted it all with not knowing how to lit it. So I thought I was just missing some information that when I found it boom, I would just apply it and my render would look awesome. With time I realized that lighting is artistic and emotional, not hard coded and calculated. Lighting is a while other discipline man, and it's not easy, but we have to learn it as doing generalist 3D stuffs requires knowing it. So as always, it's just practice, practice, practice and at some point along the way you start getting better and developing your eye as to what works and what doesn't. And it's all about experimenting, when I do lighting I just don't place a light and it looks great, I have to fiddle lots and lots until somethings starts to click.