Firelight

I’m trying to render the interior of a log cabin using only firelight. I have the cabin, I have the fire, I have the fire emitting, but it’s nowhere near enough to light any significant part of the scene. I have tried increasing the firelight, but that blows the fire out entirely. I have tried putting in some point lamps strategically to mix with the firelight, but it makes it look like lamps and not firelight. I even added extra gloss to the objects in my scene hoping to reflect the firelight around the room more and it doesn’t help. Is there any suggestions from anyone that has tried this before? I’m in dire need of help.

Here’s what we don’t know:

  • which render engine we’re talking about (I’d guess Cycles, but then again: Why do I have to guess?)
  • your render settings
  • the material/node setups
  • the lighting setup
  • your scene layout (scale might be an issue?)
  • the render result you’re getting now (screenshot?)

Please try to help people to help you by providing the necessary information. And always supply a simplified scene file with any support question.

If you’re using Cycles, why not use a lightly (ha!) emitting material for the camera and a much brighter one for the other rays? I could show you what I mean, but since I’m not even sure you’re using Cycles…

Hi Yes I have done this. I have a film on the Finished works Forum called burning my boats which had exactly this issue with a camp-fire. I placed a point light in the centre of where the fire would go. I used a noise modifier in the animation graph editor to modulate the colour of the light and a separate noise modifier for the brightness of the light. This created the flickery lighting need for the scene. The fire was rendered separately and composited onto the final scene. I used cycles.