Lighting in Lumion - Mastering Lumion 3D - page 132

Exterior lighting with the Weather menu
Remarkably, the position of the sun in the sky has a great impact on the whole
scene. Take, for example, the golden hour, which is used in photography and
cinematography; this is the period after sunrise or before sunset during which
daylight is redder and softer. The reason why this particular time of day is so
famous is because the Sun produces a soft, diffused light that is much more
pleasant in contrast to the midday Sun.
We also have the sweet light or blue hour, which is the period of twilight every
morning/evening and because of the Sun being below the horizon, the indirect
sunlight takes on a predominantly blue hue.
However, why are we mentioning this here? Because now we are moving from
a technical area to a more artistic stage where the choices we make are neither
right nor wrong. There isn't any magic number that will create a beautiful
visualization. Instead, we need to have a basic knowledge of how photography
and cinematography work in order to create something pleasant and attractive to
the viewer. Getting back to the golden and blue hour, it is here where we can start
creating a similar lighting and run away from the common midday harsh light and
shadow. However, before seeing how we can do this, let's have a quick look at the
Photo and Movie modes.
Photo and Movie modes - a very quick
introduction
Why are we talking about the Photo and Movie modes in this chapter? The reason is
because we will start using more of these modes to enhance our scene. For example,
what we will see in the next topic can also be accomplished in these modes. What
are the benefits? The greatest benefit is the opportunity to keyframe the settings used
in one shot, but this is something that we are going to cover in the next chapters,
particularly Chapter 9 , Animation Techniques .
To give an example, let's say we create two images and one needs to be at sunset
and the other one earlier in the morning. If we only use the Weather menu, it means
we have to change the settings every time we need to create an image, but using the
Photo or Movie mode effects, we can easily switch from one setting to another.
With this in mind, we will cover a few aspects in the Build mode, but eventually,
we will jump to the Photo or Movie mode, where we have more control over the
settings and final output.