Lighting An Interior Scene With a Glowlight in Strata 3D

Download the .s3d file here (Stuffit, file, only 31kb)

Notice the soft shadows, caustics, and smooth surfaces? The color dispersion, with minimal color bleeding? No traditional lights.. this scene is totally lit with the glow panel in the light fixture. Even the ambiant light has been turned off.

With the improvements made to Strata in version 3.9 and above, it is now feaisble to light an interior scene using a single light panel, with no artifacting, in a reasonable time. The above Cornell Box image was ren rendered in less than 18 minutes on my P4 3.0.

The key to using this technique lies in two areas: the “glow” material, and the radiosity render settings, which I have left in tact in the file, so if you open the file in Strata 3D Pro, and go to the Render dialoque box, you should see the settings in tact, just as I left them for you.

Try rendering the scene with these settings, and see how long it takes you. Additonally, you can save these settings as a “Custom” render setting, so you can recall it for use in another project, as well.

[3D Tutorials]
[Glowlight]

Current list of LCGuy Mini-Tutorials for
Ulead PhotoImpact and/or Strata 3D Pro:

Files for download:

Hair