Lighting - Blender Master Class: A Hands-on Guide to Modeling, Sculpting, Materials, and Rendering - page 220

The Fill Light
The next light—the fill light —is placed opposite the
key light, usually illuminating the subject from
the other side and generally adding some subtle
light to the shadows cast by the key light. Because
I wanted the Bat Creature to have really dark shad-
ows, I set the intensity of the fill light to 0.5 and its
distance to 6. I set its color to a reddish hue to con-
trast with the blue key light. The effect of the fill
light is shown in Figure 13-12.

* While the fill light usually comes from the opposite

side of a subject, I placed the fill light to the character's
right (camera left) because the Bat Creature's left wing
(camera right) shields the body.

The Back Light
The back light (sometimes called a rim light ) lights
a subject from behind, usually adding a subtle
highlight around the edges of a subject on one
side. This light was especially important for the Bat
Creature because it provided scattered back light-
ing through the wings and ears. I set its intensity
high (to 10) and its distance to 10 to give the light
enough brightness to shine through the wings (see
Figure 13-13). Together, the key, fill, and back lights
produce the final lighting, as shown in Figure 13-14.

Figure 13-12: The fill light adds subtle illumination to
the shadows.

Positioning the Lights
Positioning the three lights involves thinking about
what aspects of your model you want to light and
where you want the light to come from and then
exercising a bit of trial and error. To help with the
process and to get quicker feedback on how your
lights look (without having to render each time),
use Blender's GLSL shading mode to see how your
lights will look in real time in the 3D Viewport (see
Figure 13-15). This works particularly well for spot
lamps as GLSL also supports buffered shadows,
meaning the GLSL preview will look pretty close to
your final renders. Turn on this shading mode by
going to the 3D Viewport header and setting the
shading to Text u red . Then, look in the Properties
region under Display and set the shading type to
GLSL (press N to bring up the properties region
in the 3D Viewport). You can then move your lights
around as you please and get instant feedback on
how they look.

Figure 13-13: The back light provides highlights around
the outline of the character (that is, on the shoulders
and the back of the head). In this case, it also scatters
light through the wings and ears.