I watched a Youtube tutorial which makes a bread, so I made one.
I found I don’t know how to setup a scene with interior lighting style. I often use sky texture or HDRI lighting which usually do some simple test, but not whole artwork.
I just learn that it can place some blocks to make shadow to produce interesting lighting, but my lighting is still very bright. (sky texture)
I don’t think you can work on lighting without working on composition. Look for examples. just google “food photos”.
I like how the light comes from the left with the gobos/blockers. But yes, overall lighting it´s a bit to strong for an indoor scene. You just use a HDRI for lighting? Maybe you could reduce it´s strength or add more contrast to it to lower the indirect light parts of the HDRI. You could also test to use more blockers, but this time to block indirect light from the HDRI a bit.
What I meant was that I don’t know how to do with interior lighting. So, I used sky texture. The scene I created had three (translucent) curtains and one open side. Sunlight streamed directly in from the open side(the back of the camera), I placed some blocks. This scene is illogical.
All 3D model are made by myself (I measured and made them), these are the only few items that are suitable to be placed together.
I used sky texture. (But I often use HDRI lighting to correct the colors of my materials, mainly albedo)
If I use sky texture, I will set the strength 1.0 as a base. I like using “real” unit (length and light power…), so my method which lower the brightness is adjusting exposure(color management).
I don’t think it’s possible to start thinking about lighting, when you don’t have a scene. I mean, your goal is to make the image nice, right? So what is a nice image? You have to have some composition of stuff in it.
I would start with thinking about what it should communicate. What is the purpose of the image? What is it? What is it supposed to show? Is it a product ad?.. What’s most important in it? Is it the food or is it the table? What’s the context? What is it related to?
Like for example if it’s a product photo of the table, then that’s what should be visible, the food is just something to add to show how the table can be used. It’s also good to show some context - that you can have it at home, inside some interior…
Here is something similar I googled. That’s an image of a product. It’s rotated in a way we are used to seeing products, the table is clearly the center of attention, it’s very clearly visible and it has some context around it. And it has some nice lighting. The lighting could be better, but you start thinking about it when you already have a scene, a sort of idea of an image, some sort of composition. Your image looks like a viewport screenshot when you were working with it and the view just happened to be what it happened to be. The table is not visible clearly, nor is the food, the table is in one random corner of the image and there is a strong color and tone contrast triangle that grabs attention for no reason at all:
The view angle is such so that the table is not clearly all visible. That’s not the best angle to show it from. The food is not visible either. I don’t even see what it is - is it a loaf of bread or some kind of sandwich or a burger, or something? I cannot see it, I just see the top of it… I cannot see what it is on the bottom shelf either. You should make everything extremely obvious.
If there is something in the shot, you should see what it is clearly, if you cannot see it, then why have it at all, just remove it completely. You sometimes want to make stuff mysterious. This is not the case! No reason for that.
You tried to remind me of some elements.
This proves that your thinking in this area is far ahead of mine, because I haven’t even thought about refining these things yet. What you’re describing is more like creating a picture, while I’m thinking, I’ve made several 3D models before, what can I do with them?
I don’t have the main idea of a picture.
The same objects, I rendered another image and arrange:
They pushed the food carts to the patients inside in the corner.
But you tell me remove the tea pot on the bottom shelf of my first image is a good idea. I can imagine the picture is much cleaner.
Yeah. You can make a picture with them 
That’s an issue. It doesn’t need to be complicated. You can make it as simple as you like. But even with simple things, first things should be first. A visual idea is first even if it’s not complicated. It might be easier when you think about it. Like if the idea is just to show the model of the cart, then keeping that in mind while deciding things might be helpful and asking yourself questions like “do I see its full form from this side?” “what is nice about this object? Is that aspect which is nice clearly shown?” And so on… It’s not a revolutionary secret idea, but just a task to physically do while working. You may have various goals, like to communicate certain mood, certain lighting or to exaggerate certain feature and you may have multiple goals sometimes and it’s helpful to actually ask yourself about things. Does this do what I want? Does it contradict some other idea?.. Do I see the mood or style I wanted in the image? …and so on. Things to ask yourself are basically what you should learn about image composition. All those artistic “rules” and stuff they teach in art schools. You could watch some tutorials about composition in general for painting, photography other art forms if you find it hard to know what exactly you should worry about to make it look nice. Lighting is used for that. Like for example you can control contrast or colors with lighting, you can make lines with shadows… Anyway lighting is a tool for making an image. You should probably have an idea of a picture first, then use lighting as one of the tools to reach your goals you have with it.
No. That’s not really what I said. My point was to consider if it’s visible and clear enough. Sometimes it’s hard to place some nice looking thing in a shot and it sometimes happens that it’s better to remove it than to have it visible but not clear or nice looking. I would consider if I can place it in a nicer position or if I can adjust the view so it’s nicely visible, only if that fails, you can always change or remove things. It’s a lot nicer in your second image. The issue with the second image is that the subject is kind of small and hard to see in the context of the whole area of the image.
If you zoomed in, it’s clearer already:
But in order to make a nice image, you have to consider a whole lot more things probably. Composition, colors, lighting in terms of mood, lighting in terms of it revealing the forms of the objects and depth, spacial balance, all sorts of contrasts(color, tone, shape, size… there are many kinds of contrasts…) lines that lead the viewers eyes, density of detail, surface textures and so on and so on.
Sorry, I went to bed early yesterday and had work this morning.
Thank you. I like having someone guide me.
I just pick one I like from many photos and paintings, and then try to think… Can I do something like this? Is this my idea?
I think even controlling how to mimic certain contrasts or colors isn’t easy for me. This is just a guess based on my limited tried, because the results are always different. This topic, after watching a tutorial, I realized that starting from certain “techniques” might lead to different directions and allow me to learn more.
Yeah, I think that’s a good idea. Not necessarily one, more is fine too. I think this can be helpful. You can see multiple things in multiple places and combine them, adjust, change them to fit your situation. I think that’s a great way to create things. I think this is sort of creative process we all use one way or another. You can see sort of lighting you like, composition you might be able to use, colors, contrast or any other different aspects of the image. That’s great. getting inspired by things is pretty much the only way to create in my view. How else?
You can also learn some “rules” that exist in things like lighting and composition. There are so many… I am afraid to start talking specifically about that 
There are books, videos, courses about all that. I think then you pic a few goals what you want to do and ask yourself about that while working. Like(for one single example out of infinity) you place some light in the scene and ask yourself “do I see enough depth?” “What can I do to make the object more 3d?”
Like this lighting is flat:
This has more depth:
That’s because I lit it with smaller light sources and added some rim lights.
There are loads of tricks and techniques and you choose some based on what your goals are. Questions related to the goals you have are helpful while working.
Last week I tried to imitate these two pictures and create similar lighting.
I found that the albedo of such monkey material is high (maybe 80 ~ 90%). I know few materials reflect that much light.
hello !
I second what Martin is explaining, you have good 3D skills, and your models are clean. But when it comes to making an image, the camera position is kinda rushed, and it’s a bit similar with lighting here.
When you work on a procedural material each node settings and decision is carefully crafted, and it’s the same when making an image. Camera, lights, and object placement they have a huge impact on the result. Therefore you can have an amazing object completely ruined by bad photography work.
To practice that you can try to take an essential asset (if you have blender 5.2) of a face and try to light that like a studio portrait :
Consider every decision important, camera position, focal length, then for lighting ambient light and craft each light so you have something that looks good.
You can learn about 3 point lighting to get started, it’s an over-abused technique but to get you started it’s already going to be an improvement !
Dont worry about the head material, something like plaster will do great !
This is a video that explain what we want to do here, this can help to see what to look for !
Practice on portraits, doesn’t need to be extra fancy just something good, and then you’ll be able to apply that to different subjects. There is a lot to be said on camera and object placement as well but it’s hard to fit all that here !
I think it would help you to watch some tutorials on lighting in general. I don’t want to say there are “rules” in this, but various techniques that are known to work for some things exist and it’s helpful to know them. Like traditional “3 point lighting”. There are many examples, I googled one quickly, I have no idea what this is, but look at the image:
There are hundreds of variations, but only these 3 ways to light something already can do a lot(they obviously get combined in a shot though). Like look at the one called back light here. I call that rim light. If you google it, you find many examples
So, anyway, that one gives you pretty much the outline of the object, and an outline helps you see the form clearly. You will obviously not be able to light everything this way cleanly in your scenes, but even in a more busy scene you can make sure there is some light behind the thing you are trying to light and it lights the side this way exaggerating the outline of the object, or part of it. So that’s one thing you can use anywhere. And I also have them in my example:
And it makes the object’s depth to be more apparent. In other cases you might not want that of course, or you might not want that strong contrast and darker shadows… Anyway, I am just touching the surface of this all with one example of those rim lights. There are loads and loads of things like this that you can learn about, that’s why I recommend watching some tutorials about that.
I received a lot of gifts, but I’ll have to look at them slowly tomorrow or the day after. I have job (arranging bicycles), and I get up very early every day.
There is a lot of cool examples here Martin ! It’s really a masterclass in light and composition !
I think Back Lighting is the overall lighting scenario, rim light is more the function of a particular light source.
This is back lit even though there isn’t any rims :
This is using a rim light, but the overall lighting scheme here is side lighting.
I am worried that we are showing too little, there are really good tutorials and courses out there that show and tell a whole lot more. I think what I am trying to say is that it’s worth looking into the subject more. A lot of good material is not for CG but for things like painting, photography, cinematography and so on. I think it’s worth using the resources available. And lighting is fun and interesting.
I guess from my own experience I think it’s important to have a purpose with lighting, some goal. Or multiple goals - even better. That helps me. For me it was difficult to understand learning lighting. So there is some tutorial telling me I can use this and that… so what? But then when there is a specific purpose I kind of instantly get it(and then the question is only how much time can I spend doing this, because it will never end ). Like for example to exaggerate something or to make something grab attention, take the attention away from something less important, to form a certain mood and so on. Sometimes one might want dark kind of mood and strong contrast, sometimes the goal is light and calm mood, sometimes light and vivid sometimes cosy, sometimes vibrant sometimes the goal is to show some specific thing in some way and so on and so on. And then when you have some goal in mind you need to think of things to do to reach it and then all those things that you can learn in the tutorials or art school classes start to matter. I guess personally I was missing the purpose part for a long time in the past. Maybe it’s just me. 
But I think this might be a common thing when starting and not knowing what to do. I think it all comes to visual communication and the fact that communication is about saying something and that you sort of have to have something to say in an image. And also the things you “say” visually differ from the things you say verbally. You can “talk” about the forms and moods and shapes and feelings visually the way words just don’t work. Maybe I’m getting too philosophical here…
Well ! On the overall it’s a very broad subject I think if we manage to point to something worth looking into then it’s up to people to follow that path. But I see what you mean, there is some much even cooler stuff on that path !
I agree that a purpose for an image is missing in many artwork where some part are good but the overall result still lack interest. This helps tremendously to have a focus and make sure every intentions goes in the same direction.
Here it’s possible since it’s about presenting some food, it’s possible to build upon that idea.
In the meantime, before that a lot can be done by just making stuff readable, adding some visual hierarchy to elements in the image. So even if you don’t have much of a story elements it’s possible to make something neutral but pleasing to look at !
I think it really depends on how people like to approach things, forcing story elements a bit too literally can sometime block people or lead them outside of the main scope. I think it’s not always an easy notion to grasp. And if that’s the case for someone, just focusing on readability and balance of elements can be what makes it click !
Just to clarify. I don’t mean it in a way like some “higher” purpose. I don’t think it has to be something really meaningful. The important thing is that it should be there. Simple, casual, funny, silly, serious - whatever. Just something, anything. An image is always visual communication. It should say something. Doesn’t have to be something deep, just something, anything at all. That’s what I meant.
Like this simple product photo:
What does it say? I read as something like “Hey it’s a little table that has wheels. It’s neat, there is a cake on it. Tasty, refreshing, fresh, pleasure, satisfaction, clean, new, light and happy, alive, comfortable, practical, smart. Enjoy life, be happy, buy the table, it’s gonna be awesome.” Not the deepest artistic meaning… But visual communication is very clear.
Yeah I totally get what you mean ! It’s just some people overthink the story / communication part !
I think what are you communicating visually is actually a better way to put it for beginners rather than what’s the story you’re telling…
Personally I had issue with that way of putting things until I understand better what is the point here !
This is an rendering I imitated a photograph:
I like your point about controlling on lights, object placement, camera…
I know this is a matter of artistic expression.
Watch the introduce video…of course, I know the meanings of some items related to light. For example: “direct light, light attenuation, diffuse light, highlight…”.
I just experimented a bit with the portrait:
(this one is an imitation of a photograph lighting.)
(I found I created rim light in this one, so I stopped. I think the complexity of the model itself is also closely related to the aesthetics of the result.)
Hey ! sorry for the late reply ! that’s much better than what you did before with the suzanne head ! There are more stuff to learn obviously and I’ll try to give you more hints later ! Anyway it’s probably that sometime you might rush the framing and lighting and it shows but if you put more thoughts and energy the result is already much better !
