Hi All,
I’ve been using blender to convert between different type of 3d formats for technical models. The lighting, however as been tricky and I was wondering if there was any sort of auto-light feature or auto-placement of light sources feature. I’m really just looking to “turn the lights on” for the file I export without manually lighting it. Doesn’t matter if the lighting isn’t aesthetically impressive, I just want the model to be visible.
Thanks for any thoughts. 
Moved from “General Forums > Blender and CG Discussions” to “Support > Lighting and Rendering”
For blender internal renderer some options
1 - Add a simple sun lamp
2 - Add a simple sun lamp and in World panel enable Environment Lighting with energy about 0.2 and set to White
3 - No lamps, in World panel enable Environment Lighting with energy of 1, set to white, with Gather set to Approximate
4 - No lamp, add a HDRi texture to to the world, set to influence Horizon, set Environment Lighting to Sky Texture, Gather set to Raytrace. Slower render but can give better results including reflections
Save the option you prefer as your startup default file, drop in an object and press render
Attached a couple of images using options 3 and 4. Neither use any lamps in the scene
I cant speak for cycles, as I don’t use it often , but for blender internal, try baking ambient occlusion, and indirect illumination, onto the models textures. It wont look great, but it should make things a little better. you can find tutorials for this all over google…
The issue is, what are you exporting to ?
If its maya you could just add a single hemi type lamp with about 0.8 “power”…
alternatively you could just add the lamps… it doesn’t take too long and its really easy to do…
a tip: press ALT+D to make a linked duplicate of a lamp, then when you change the lamp settings, all of the linked duplicates will share the new settings,
damn i was ninja’d
