Realistic Artificial/Night Lighting with Vray & Photometric Lights in 3ds Max 2012

Rendering realistic images using artificial lighting can be a tricky process, this require a good base of references and a little of creativity, in personal terms i prefer to use high contrast environment when using artificial lighting because it makes the space to look vibrant and emotional.

For get this high contrast environment you have to use a small portion of diffuse light and a high amount of focused lighting, if you see in my kitchen i have some diffuse lighting around the kitchen but i have focused light in the principal spots of the room, for example the dining table, the paintings in the walls, etc.

With this kind of focused lighting, your room will look more lovely and warming, well i have told you some principles about high contrast environment and how to create this kind of feeling, now let me show technical aspect of my scene.

If you see near to the window, you can notice a blue light from outside, for this lighting i used a vray dome light with a dark blue, you can check the settings:

Now if you see i have a nice diffuse lighting coming out from the ceiling, this will give you a soft lighting around the room, for this one i used several photometric line lights, i prefer to use this type of lighting because it gives you a more real and natural lighting.

Check how i put every  lighting in the ceiling and check the settings:

In the Dining room, i used two photometric lights too with a ies profile, if you see almost in every light i am using a kelvin temperature below the 4000, this will helps to give a more warming feeling into the room, check the settings for this light:

To separate the dinning room from the back wall i used two lamps for lighting the paintings, try always to light your decorative elements in your scene, this will helps to make a more pleasant rendering, also in this case i changed the kelvin temperature to a more higher value so i will have a nice blue light and with this little change you break the boring pattern of warming lighting, check the settings for this light:

For lighting the counter top i went to a indirect/direct lighting, normally i used spot lights to the counter top, but in this time i was looking for something more softer and i used a line photometric light and i put a thin box with a vray light material, and the temperature for this light was high for having a blueish look, check:

Now a very important part of this scene is the vray physical camera, this is vital if you are looking for more control of how the lighting affects the room, let me show you the camera settings:

And the render settings, nothing special here, just like always brute force + light cache, i used a more lower settings than normal  check the settings:

In post production i did not do a lot, what i did was applying more contrast, some color correction and things like that, i hope you liked

Renders from this Scene

Courtesy @ http://www.aleso3d.com/blog/?p=874