I been working on a weapons room and I been trying to get a type of lighting like in the matrix so that it will look futuristic, but so far I can’t do it.
Here is the best that I came up with:
http://img389.imageshack.us/my.php?image=11hourshm0.jpg
I also can’t get rid of the black lines on the shelves. Recalculating verts didn’t work.
You need really bright area lights with a tint of green
also, AOand soft shadowwill help a lot
A futuristic room is usually very well lit, so increasing the lights energy will help, too.
Urgh. Not good.
Start by putting some kind of basic light in there … you can use “ambient light,” in my humble … that will ensure that all areas of the scene are adequately lit. This light should provide the minimum amount of light that you need to see in the darkest shadow so that no areas of the frame are opaque.
Next, decide how you want to lead the viewer’s eye, instantly, through the scene. What do you want to emphasize? Probably the weapons. Secondarily the racks.
Review, now, where you want to put the camera. I don’t think you want to park it where it is. Try to position the camera for the strongest dramatic impact. If there is anything in-frame that is not clearly pushing the desired impact forward, get rid of it.
Now, perhaps, try some strong highlight spots on each weapon. Experiment with colors such as a bold yellow. Look at a color-wheel and select the color opposite to yellow. Position this, perhaps low and below the camera, as a fill-light. Or use two fills with colors placed at one-third intervals around the wheel. Where the lighting is “white,” let the white come from the fact that colors have added-up to white. (If you look in a real room, no light-source is truly “white.”)
Every now and then, pull an image and look at it in the “Histogram” tool of PhotoShop or Gimp. You don’t want to see “opaque black” nor “blown-out white.” You want to see a roughly bell-shaped density curve in all channels as well as in the aggregate.
To get a really strong impact you’re going to need to think about some set-decorating, as in the colors and textures that you apply to various surfaces. Keep that color-wheel right in front of you at all times.
It may seem strange, but a really good scene conveys a certain emotional tension just by being there. Maybe it conveys “ready-and-willing power against evil.” Or maybe it conveys that these weapons will be used to commit evil. Maybe it conveys that these weapons are tools at the viewer’s easy and able command; maybe it conveys that the weapons are more powerful than, and thus menacing to, the viewer. Be alert for these subtle cinematographic clues, because your eye is looking for them, and their absence can be why a scene feels “flat, dull, and uninteresting.”