Hia, JayEff. You have one problem with lighting. You try to illuminate the whole scene very uniformly. This takes all the mood out of the picture. Here is how I normally try to lighten my scenes: (take a look on the internet for lighting tutorial, they help a lot)
I start with the main-light, meaning the light which will give the mayor mood for this image. In your case this should be IMHO the red light in the lamp. (btw: Make it more read btw and less rose. Should look better) Now just render this one and try to get something you like (especially try to lighten everything the lamp should lighten up, like e.g. also the backwall, which now is not lighted by the lamp, because you used a spot-lamp which only is directed on giga.) This might mean, that you have to use two spotlamps (one also directed in the opposite direction to lighten up the wall). Render with only these two lamps till it looks good. (try to modify the distance-parameter and the brightness.) Don’t be disappointed if giga is not really good visible with this lighting. Most of the shadows will be way to dark. But thats ok at this stage. The mood I am thinking of, is some sort of romantic nights lighting.
OK, now for the details: (btw: take a look at my mission to mars thread in the finished section, there you can see one inbetween for this image where the shadows are quite too dark!). Most of the shadows should now be black, so no details of giga should be visible. This is bad. But, the wall in front of giga, meaning, the wall behind the camera would reflect light from the lamp back onto giga. Not very much, but enough to lighten up the shadows. So, add a lamp to the left, and a little behind and above the camera to lighten up the shadows. Now be careful. First: Use a color for this lamp you would image the wall would reflect (based on the color of the wall) and second: don’t make this lamp to bright. If you do, the effect of the red lamp will disappear, because you can’t see the color of the red lamp any more. Try till it looks good. This is your fill light.
Now giga should look quite good, but still a little “flat”. She is the main-part of the picture, so you should be able to tell her apart from the background. To do this, add a (again rather dark) lamp to the right of the picture. Rather far away. This lamp could be a little blue. Think about this lamp as e.g. light coming from out the of window of this room. Moon, or something like this. Again, this lamp shouldn’t be to bright, or the effect of the main-light will vanish. Just a lamp to get some lighting on the brink of the modelled objects. Again, change till you like it. Don’t turn off specularity on this lamp, IMHO. But experiment. This is your back-light.
Search the internet for three-point-lighting. There you will find the basics about this way to light models. Normally works great as a basis for a better lighting. After you have inserted these three light: main-light, fill-light and back-light, your model normally already looks great. But as always, most pictures can be improved if you add further lights (very dark lights!) into the picture to highlight important parts of the image. But always be sure, that none of the newly added lights are too bright, or you will kill the effect of the main light.
OK. Nuff said. Wow. I hope, this helps. Looking forward to an update. Don’t be disappointed. Lighting is (like modelling) a work of art. I still most of the time don’t get the effect I like to have. But work on. Lighting can kill an object, even if it is a great mesh! And with good lighting even a bad modell can look great.
