tgj2o_3d-lighting_blender

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Lighting
So our ship is a bit bright. Space is anything but really light so let's play with lights a bit before we get into animating.

Step 1 - Moving our point-light
Notice how when I hit A to select everything, I have the original grid-space of our spaceship, the spaceship itself, the sphere in the background and that little circle with dotted rings around it.

If I deselect everything and click on that light specifically, it tells me what it is on the right panel. It's a lamp......in space......well, that just won't do. We want to change our point-lamp into a Sun (radiating outwards in all directions) logically. But without setting up the materials properly it's a pain so we're going to use a HEMI-SPHERICAL light and move it off to a distance.



To move it off, make sure you're in front-view (keypad 1), then select only the hemI-spherical lamp and press G to move it away to where I put mine. Finally, we'll rotate it along the Y axis (R for rotate, then Y to force it to rotate only on the Y axis) to face the ship. Finally, drop the ENERGY down to 0.5 since it's a bit bright.

Step 2 - Render a final shot
F12 for a render, then save the image (F3 after the picture has rendered). Choose an appropriate location. Save this picture as an indicator that you're completed this far along the tutorial. There remains some final tweaking, but we're almost ready to animate now.