Charlie Pollock | Last Updated: Summer 2024
This tutorial will cover the kinds of lights, camera placement, and rendering an image
If we want to make our images more visually interesting, one way to do that is to put some more time into the lighting. Lighting in Blender can be as wild as we want, since we can add as many lights as we want in any color we want.
Not only do lights have color and power settings, but there are also different kinds of lights to replicate real-world lighting better. These can be added directly from the add menu or changed in the light settings.
Point lights are the first kind of light we see in Blender. Point lights emit light in all directions, like a lightbulb. We've already touched on these before, but to recap: the color selection box allows you to set the color of the light, and the power box allows you to change how bright the light is, by inputting a power in Watts.
Area lights act as emissive shapes pointing in just one direction. These are great for directing lighting to face the direction you want, and lighting specific areas - hence the name. You can also change the shape of the light in the light settings, between a square and a circle. Try scaling and rotating this light as well, and see how it changes.
Spot lights replicate the look of real spotlights by projecting a cone of light that can be focused to highlight things. With a spot light in the scene, you can change the "Size" slider to increase the size of the spotlight, and the "Blend" slider to change how soft the spot is. The usual color and power controls are present as well.
The last kind of light is a Sun light. A sun light acts as a directional light that affects everything in the scene, regardless of where it is placed. Sun lights are great for exterior scenes, where you need consistent shadows from every object. For this example, I'll add a plane under the chair to better highlight the shadows. Adding a sun lamp to the scene, we can see that it immediately casts shadows from the chair on the plane. Rotating the sun light changes the direction of the shadows.
We want to show our model off eventually, right? While we could just take a screenshot or something, that's not what Blender is built for. We have a lot of options for rendering out images of our scenes in Blender, which can be saved and shown off much more easily.
If you've deleted your camera, no worries! We can add a new one from the add menu, just like every other object. The camera can be positioned in the scene in the same way as you would move other objects, with the move and rotate tools.
To see what the camera sees, there is a keyboard shortcut as well as a menu option. The keyboard shortcut is 0 on the number pad, if you have one. If you don't have a number pad, then the menu option is your best bet. It's located under the "View" tab in the 3D viewport, under Cameras->Active Camera.
While in the camera view and with the camera selected, we can still move the camera around to better place it, using the keyboard shortcut. The toolbar tools will not work here, but you can still press G to move the camera and R to rotate it. Plus, pressing R twice will enable trackball rotation, which lets you look around with the camera.
One other way of placing the camera is to use the "Align Active Camera to View" option. This is located in the view menu, under the Align View heading. Alternatively, the keyboard shortcut is Ctrl+Alt+Numpad 0.
Also, to move the camera closer in, there is a convenient keyboard shortcut. After pressing G to move the camera around, middle click on the mouse and release it and the camera will switch to moving forwards and backwards in the direction it is pointed.
Now, to set up our render, we're going to make sure we're in rendered view and place the camera to frame up the chair well. If you want a floor, you can make one by placing a plane, moving it down and scaling up, and giving it a floor texture.
Arrange your lighting as you want. For a studio lighting arrangement, there is usually a light behind the object to put a highlight on the edge, as well as lights on both sides to put more light on the object. Making the side lights contrasting colors like blue and orange will give the render more visual interest.
To render your shot, at the top left of the screen (not just the 3D viewport, the whole window) there's a dropdown labeled "Render", next to "Edit" and "File". Select the dropdown and choose "Render Image." Alternatively, you can press F12 to render an image. A separate window will pop up, and after a short wait, the rendered image will appear. You can save the image by selecting Image->Save As and then choosing a file location. Name your image and click Save. We're done!
The land on which we gather is the unceded territory of the Awaswas-speaking Uypi Tribe. The Amah Mutsun Tribal Band, comprised of the descendants of indigenous people taken to missions Santa Cruz and San Juan Bautista during Spanish colonization of the Central Coast, is today working hard to restore traditional stewardship practices on these lands and heal from historical trauma.
The land acknowledgement used at UC Santa Cruz was developed in partnership with the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band Chairman and the Amah Mutsun Relearning Program at the UCSC Arboretum.