Hi all, GI really helped improves interior lighting but I still have problems creating daytime exterior lighting in IC8. And seeing as how my next project is nearly all exteriors its time to level up my techniques.  Sunny, cloudy, sunset or sunrise I welcome all advice, links to tutorials or thoughts (though Id like to keep the conversation in Iclone). 

How do you do exterior lighting?

Thanks!

I recall a couple of tuts from Bennie D:
Tut #1
Tut #2
Your mileage may vary...

Reallusion Certified Director / Reallusion Best Visual Award / Reallusion Certified Content Developer
See all the G-Tools Plug-Ins available for iClone here: G-Tools Plug-Ins

Probably a huge topic. But here's a few pointers I usually use for outside scenes.

A least amount of lights. Probably just one directional light coming from a source (the sun). Decent shadow, with resolution depending on how cloudy the sky is.

Sky  - high resolution 360 panoramic image. If I use sky provided by RL, I usually up-convert it to 16k x 8k in Topaz Gigapixel to get crisp sky/clouds.
Rotate it until I get correct position of the sun (if one is depicted in the sky texture). Or sync key directional light with location of the sun in the sky.

GI is must. The Bounce amount and other parameters are set individually per scene. Voxel mode has to be hi-res (set in Project settings).

Either IBL or some amount of bright color Ambient light should be present to enhance the GI and equalize to some degree.
In case of IBL, it should be an outside scene HDRI with some bright spot source for the sun.
IBL should be rotated to match the bright spot with the sun location in the sky and directional light.

HDR effect should be ON with Threshold and Bloom scale set appropriately.

LUT Post Effects (even basic Color Adjust and Color Filter) can be very handy to amplify the overall atmosphere.

As a mandatory, I do place a low intensity shadow-less spot light right in front of the face of each character, enable a tube shape, vary its size to get a good light reflection in the eyes.
Then attach it to the head. Also set very low range and angle so it does not affect other objects nearby.

All of the above should be well balanced and it sometime take a lot of time with going back and force on settings to create a decent outside atmosphere.
It also depends of what you wish to emphasize in the scene. A well composed settings for distant shots might not be appropriate for characters closeup and would require some tweaking.

I usually recommend to bookmark https://courses.reallusion.com/ where tutorials could be searched per product with specific keywords (like GI, lights ... etc in this particular case).

Just an example of a few different times of a fairly sunny day and different sun angles.

Great posts guys.  Thanks for the links and the tips!

A little late, but I usually think of this often. This is mostly from my experience.

I tend to notice people film like it’s in the middle of the day and you get this harsh shadow that’s tough to work with. I usually try to light like I’m filming in the late afternoon where the light is a bit more diffused. I would use fill lights to even out shadows in iclone. Another thing is color. Filming in pure white causes a lot of issues. I attached an image from studiobinder on color temperature. It’s a setting in UE but you can use an eye dropper in iclone. I tend to use around 4750k for late afternoon shots.. Never hurts to film in golden and magic hour too



iClone Certified Director and makes miserable Westerns.

Great graphic tool and tips.  Thanks Ben!