Tips for better lights through translucent sufraces

Hi all! While I was doing this exercise I found some difficulties in properly rendering the light bulbs in the scene. My issue was with concentrating light in one "hot spot", so that the translucent surface that was surrounding the light would have been lit differently based on the position of the light. In my case either the light was too bright and create too much illumination and a big cone on the wall or the intensity was too low and wasn't enough for properly lighting the rest of the scene. From the reference I can see that the light intensity near the light source (on top of the lamp) is much brighter than my render but at the same time the amount of light that "goes on" from that point is very little. How can I do that? What mixture of lights do I have to use? Emission meshes or simple point or area lamp? Any lighting of this topic woul be much appreciated! Thanks!

  • Kent Trammell replied

    Hi ggiacomoalbe - Could you post images of your render and/or your .blend file? I'd like to take a closer look at your lamp light settings to hopefully give you some clear advice.

  • Giacomo Alberini(giacomoalbe) replied

    Hi @theluthier and thanks for passing by! I really appreciate! My exercise is at this link Bedroom Exercise.

    As you probably can see, the lights especially on the night scene are far from the result you obtained, and I'd like to know how to get closer to your reference image with one or more lamps. As long as I understood from the video present in the exercise page, you were able to get that lights with only one source and I'm really curious to know how! Thanks

  • Kent Trammell replied

    ggiacomoalbe It looks to me like you have clamping enabled for you render. Like enabled pretty strong. That's the only time I see highlights and over-exposure not happening as expected. Are you using clamping? If so what value?