# Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/Basic Lighting Rigs

|previous=Understanding Blender Lights
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!Blecch Open a new Blender
document. Delete the default cube, and insert the Monkey (Suzanne)
instead. Hit  to render. You should get
something like this.

See how the character's face---arguably the most important part you
usually want to look at---is in shadow? That is absolutely terrible
lighting.

In this section, we will look at how to improve the lighting of this
scene. The object of the game is not to get rid of *all* shadows,
because flat-lit scenes tend to look pretty boring, too. Instead, we
will look at how to make imaginative use of the placement and strength
of highlights and shadows, to add interest and realism to the scene.

In photography, there are basically two kinds of lighting setups:
outdoor and indoor. In the real world, outdoor lighting (at least in
daylight) is dominated by the Sun. This is a single, extremely strong
light source. But there is also indirect sunlight reflected off other
objects, including the sky, and these tend to soften the shadows and
even add some colour to them. Outdoor close-up model photo shoots also
frequently make use of metal sheets, held up by support crew, to
deliberately add more of this indirect reflection and make the lighting
of a model more even.

Indoor (studio) lighting setups are commonly described in terms of the
number of lights employed, commonly "one-point", "two-point" or
"three-point" for 1, 2 or 3 lights.

In 3D graphics, you can cheat over this outdoor/indoor distinction.
After all, the Sun is just another light source you can choose to place
in a scene. Instead of metal reflectors, it is usually simpler to just
add more lights, even if it is meant to be an outdoor scene. In Blender,
the lights themselves need not show up in the render, only their
illumination of the scene.

## One-Point Lighting

!Ho-hum Continuing on
from the above example, move the default lamp so it is roughly in the
same location as the camera. Now your render should look something like
this:

This is similar to the lighting you get when you take a picture on a
point-and-shoot or cameraphone with flash enabled: because the light
source is close to the lens, you don't see many shadows (think about it:
the parts the light doesn't reach are close to the parts your vision
doesn't reach), leading to a very flat image. This is why experienced
photographers often try to avoid using the flash.

## Two-Point Lighting

!At least some
variation\...
This time I have gone back to the default light position, and added a
second light ("fill light") close to the camera, reducing its strength
to 0.5, while the original "key light" stays at 1.0. That way the second
light fills in the shadows just enough to make things legible, without
flattening out the lighting completely.

Set the direction of the light using object rotation. The light must be
selected, press the  and move the mouse to
change the angle.

The important point is that **the key (brightest) light is not at the
camera position**. That way, the image will contain some interesting
shadows.

## Three-Point Lighting

!Positioning the
backlight

Now we add a *third* light, called the "backlight". This is positioned
behind and a little above the model, and serves to accentuate the upper
silhouette (particularly the head and shoulders), and make our model
stand out from the background. I set its energy to 2.0, to increase the
effect. This screenshot shows what should be a good position for this
light (it is directly above the green line of the Y-axis). Put it too
close to Suzanne, and her bald head will glow a little *too* brightly.
:)

!I'm ready for my close-up, Mr
DeMille.
Now the render looks like this. Does the effect look familiar? You
should have seen something like it in countless close-ups in film and
TV, as well as portraits.

## Other Lighting Setups

Of course, there are countless other ways to light a scene. The above
ones are mainly intended for close-ups and portraits. But where there
are multiple characters in a scene, or even no characters at all and
just the scene, you may want to position multiple lights to draw
attention to some parts or characters while playing down other parts.

