In this post, I will share some tips to help improve your lighting for interior renderings when working with Rhino and Enscape.
Achieving good lighting in an interior rendering can be tricky, especially at the absence of exterior daylight. When working with Rhino, Enscape does not have its own built-in lights so we have to rely on Rhino lights instead. There are a few different options that we can choose from and each of them behaves differently from the other. You can experiment with each of them to get the desired effect.
Here are 3 easy tips to help ensure good lighting in your interior renderings.
1. Make sure you have adequate lighting
This is probably the most important thing to pay attention to. Oftentimes, our interior lighting doesn’t look good simply because we don’t have adequate lighting. This is especially crucial when we are working with scenes that don’t receive exterior sunlight to help illuminate the interior space. So spend the time adding sufficient lights to your Rhino model to see the best lighting results in Enscape.
2. Use Enscape global artificial light dial to control your lights
When adjusting the brightness and overall look of my Rhino lights, I prefer to leave their Rhino settings at their default after placing them. Instead, I use the Enscape global Artificial Light Brightness setting to adjust how bright they are. This is important to determine how strong or soft you need your lights to be. This is not where we determine the overall brightness/exposure of the scene. Rather, we are focusing on the artificial lights’ behavior in the scene i.e. what kind of shadows we want them to cast (harsh or soft), how strong of a contrast we want between the light and shadow areas in our scene, etc.
3. Use Enscape global exposure dial to adjust final exposure
Once you have the artificial lights setting where you like it, evaluate your scene and see if it’s over-exposed or under-exposed. Your scene may be under-exposed if you opted for lower artificial light brightness in the previous setting, or over-exposed if you went for higher light brightness. The final step is to simply adjust the Enscape global Exposure setting to get the appropriate exposure that you’re looking for.
