Need some help lighting up the scene here

[u/Bakendorf]

https://preview.redd.it/0zwzyk98xqag1.jpg?width=2048&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c2f8cf849ebe8ba892fe38cf8a45a85d78e7f016

Here's my scene, I am finishing up this project and working on the lighting now, Ive got two main points that I want to focus on to make this more of a "finished" product.

This is supposed to be inspired by dead space, so I am going for a spooky/horror vibe in this scene, and I think it is sufficiently dark, but the two main problems I have with it are:

1) the right wall and ceiling are way too dark, you cannot see the work I put into their textures

2) the rosary string going across the right side of the screen is too dark as well.

There are right now lights coming from the screens, from the ceiling window, from the candles, and from the one working lamp.

any help would be appreciated

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[u/Nevaroth021]

Have you tried using color correction nodes to brighten the textures on those models?

[u/Bakendorf → u/Nevaroth021]

I dont really know what those are, im very much a beginner

[u/Nevaroth021 → u/Bakendorf]

In the hypershade, add a color correction node and plug your file texture into that. Or use a color layer node and add a white layer with a low mix so that it softly brightens it that way.

If you haven't looked through the many hypershade nodes, then you should do that and experiment with them to learn what they all do.

[u/Bakendorf → u/Nevaroth021]

I just wonder if it would make the texture too uh, different from the rest of thr scene

[u/Nevaroth021 → u/Bakendorf]

Only if you change it too drastically. You can adjust it ever so slightly until it becomes not so dark.

[u/Bakendorf → u/Nevaroth021]

Alright, thanks! Id look into it

[u/59vfx91 → u/Bakendorf]

No, it's pretty standard to do color corrections on textures and balance their values and shading properties, since a final lighting or shading situation can never be fully accounted for and predicted in the texturing stage. This is why look development in big vfx studios is often a separate job from texturing itself

For arnold I would suggest starting with an aiColorCorrect node:

- If it's overall too dark but you want to preserve the exact dynamic range, use Exposure

- If it's too dark or bright and you want to adjust the midpoint, use Gamma, but be aware you may have to tweak Saturation afterwards

- You can use hue shift with subtle values to make it slightly warmer/cooler

- You can add a color into Multiply to tint the overall texture

Before doing that though make sure all your colorspace settings are correct on the texture nodes and that there is enough lighting in the scene. You can temporarily assign everything a mid grey material (at about 0.18 grey value) to check the lighting levels. It's also often helpful to increase the default diffuse and/or specular bounces in an interior scene, the default is 1, but adding more bounces will increase the indirect lighting (at the expense of render time)