Full transcript
0:00light groups is an amazing feature that
0:02was added to the official blender 3.2 it
0:05allows you to completely change the look
0:07of your rendering after it's finished
0:09you can now save the light sources into
0:11layers and then change their colors and
0:14brightness in this video i'll guide you
0:16through step by step how to do this in
0:18blender so let's jump right into it
0:22i'll be using one of the blender
0:24interior scenes that's available in my
0:26store check out the link in the video
0:27description if you're interested and if
0:29you want to know how to achieve this
0:31rendering quality in blender i've
0:33recently created the art of rendering
0:35master class it will teach you
0:37everything that i've learned over the
0:39past 10 years working as a blender
0:41artist how to achieve the photorealistic
0:43look what is a correct composition how
0:46to get the right feedback and
0:48self-improve all those questions and
0:50many many more are answered in the
0:52master class but now enough with the
0:54plug and let's get back into blender
0:58so step one is creating a light group
1:02and we do this by clicking this icon
1:04here
1:05and under the passes we have the light
1:07groups so we can add
1:09multiple groups to our scenes and we can
1:12also rename them
1:14so this is the group layout i would like
1:16to use in my scene and i would like to
1:19control those lamps individually that's
1:21why i've created this many groups so all
1:24have to do right now is to select an
1:26object like this
1:28go to the object properties and under
1:30the shading settings here we can select
1:33the light group so i'm going to add this
1:35lamp to the first group here
1:38this one
1:39to
1:40this group
1:41now i'm also going to add the kitchen
1:43cabinet to an individual group and i
1:46also have those emissive details like
1:48the oven so i've created a separate
1:51group for this as well
1:53i also have the area lamps in my scene
1:56so let's add them to the groups as well
1:59we select the lamp and again under the
2:02shading light groups i'm just selecting
2:04the area category and the third
2:07last step is adding the sky the
2:10environment to a group so to do this we
2:13click this red icon here and
2:16same story under the settings light
2:18group
2:19we select the environment so i think
2:23now you can see why it's important to
2:25name those groups properly because
2:27otherwise you won't be able to
2:29figure it out where you've put
2:31those lamps and now it's much easier to
2:34control it so all you have to do right
2:37now is to render your image and after
2:39it's done here in the compositing
2:41settings you'll be able to adjust the
2:43lights however before we do that there
2:45are few tips i would like to give you
2:48tip number one is enabling the denoising
2:51data so we do this here
2:54under the passes and data and go to the
2:56denoising data
2:57we do this because when working in the
3:00compositor
3:02the image with the adjusted lights will
3:05be very noisy so
3:07in order to denoise it to the best
3:09possible quality we have to enable those
3:12settings here
3:14and speaking of noise this is tip number
3:16two it's easier to go from the dark
3:18image to the brighter one um instead of
3:21going from the bright one like this to
3:24the night scene it's of course possible
3:26and i'm gonna show you how to do this
3:27but before you render your image i
3:30suggest boosting the strength
3:32of some of the lamps at least 10 times i
3:35mean it doesn't have to be of course 10
3:37times
3:39in every single scene it really depends
3:42on the
3:43environment but as you can see i've
3:46boosted the strength of those lamps 10
3:48times and nothing really changed in the
3:50image and that's because of the multiple
3:53important sample settings i'm not going
3:55to get into those right now i've created
3:57a whole video about it which should be
3:59linked somewhere in the screen but now
4:02with everything set up all we have to do
4:04is to render the image and once it's
4:07done we will jump into the compositor
4:09and i'm going to show you how to combine
4:11everything together
4:14now if you have never used blender
4:16compositor i kind of get it but don't
4:18worry it's really not that hard it works
4:20exactly the same as the
4:23material setup in cycles so when you go
4:26to the compositing
4:28you should see something more or less
4:30like this
4:31so here on the left you can see
4:34the kitchen
4:35lamp details environment the names we've
4:38set up here in the
4:41light group
4:42they are displayed here as well so again
4:45this allows us to easier navigate
4:48through the file through the rendering
4:49and you might be tempted to start
4:52setting up things right away but i
4:55strongly
4:56recommend
4:58saving the rendering results right now
5:01because right now if you close blender
5:03or it crashes for any reason the
5:05rendering result you were waiting for
5:07will be lost and you you will have to
5:09re-render everything again so there is
5:12actually no point in this setup if we
5:15have to re-render
5:16the back image every time we quit
5:19blender but there is a solution to that
5:22and a solution is
5:25using the
5:27open xr multi-layer file format here
5:31so instead of saving to jpeg or png
5:34select the open xr multi-layer
5:36file format
5:38name the image
5:40any way you want
5:43and this file format stores all the data
5:46that you just rendered in blender in
5:49fact we will close blender right now
5:51launch it again load the file so i can
5:53show you the entire compositing setup
5:56from scratch
5:57so after relaunching blender let's go to
5:59the compositing
6:01and let's enable
6:03this use node settings here now i'm
6:05going to press shift a
6:07and select the image input here
6:11i'm going to load the image that i've
6:13saved in the previous step
6:17and you can see it shows here but before
6:20we continue we have to go to the layer
6:22settings here and choose the view layer
6:25and now you can see everything that was
6:27visible
6:28after rendering the image is now visible
6:31here again so i can delete this
6:34node
6:36i can connect them just for the sake of
6:38it here but the most common node we are
6:41going to use here in the compositor is
6:43the output and the viewer node which
6:47allows us to preview
6:48whatever we plug in
6:51so you can see now when i press ctrl
6:54spacebar we can go to the full screen
6:56and
6:57v
6:58and alt v
6:59to zoom in zoom out so you can see after
7:03plugging in different inputs to the
7:05viewer node we now see
7:08the different light groups rendered and
7:11saved in the file
7:13so let's now start combining the groups
7:15i'm gonna start with the environment and
7:17the area lamps
7:19in order to mix them together i'm gonna
7:21press shift a go to the color and choose
7:24the mix node this is another
7:27most commonly used node in the
7:30compositor so if i
7:33add those two inputs here and connect
7:36them with the viewer you can see we get
7:38this result however i'm going to use a
7:40different mix method here and it's going
7:44to be the add
7:46so now
7:48when i copy the viewer node and plug it
7:51in here this is the raw rendering result
7:54we get from blender
7:56you can see
7:58that we have almost everything except of
8:00the light sources like this kitchen
8:03element here
8:04this highlight from the lamp
8:08so we can start adding them or we can
8:10play around with the environment itself
8:12a little bit
8:14the easiest adjustment you can do is
8:17adding the color
8:19and the exposure node and when i just
8:21drag and drop it on one of the links you
8:23can see it highlights
8:24so
8:26let's drop it on the environment
8:29and now when i reduce the exposure you
8:31can see
8:33it completely eliminates this light
8:36source and if i increase it we
8:39get much more light and you can also see
8:42we are getting some of the noise
8:44introduced to the scene that's why we
8:46also have those denoising passes here
8:49from the denoiser data
8:51past that was one of my tips to to
8:54include because we're going to use those
8:56later to denoise the image so
8:58let's revert it and if you would like to
9:01unplug this node just hold the alt key
9:04and drag it out from the link
9:07so as you can see i already combined
9:09those two lamps together so this is how
9:11they look like
9:13and now let's add them to the
9:15environment
9:16so all we have to do is duplicate this
9:18node again
9:20and just plug them here
9:22and now you can see well actually you
9:25can't see let's make them more visible
9:27i'm gonna use this exposure node and
9:30drag and drop it here instead of
9:32using those two links i'm gonna use them
9:34combined and now with this viewer node
9:37selected i'm gonna reduce it so now you
9:39can see we are dimming the
9:43environment and area lamps and making
9:45the
9:46those lamps from from the lights those
9:49light sources more visible i'm going to
9:51copy this exposure node again and drop
9:53it here but now i'm going to increase
9:55its value so you can see
9:58now those lights become more visible and
10:01we can start playing around and
10:03readjusting the scene but what if you
10:06would like to add some color
10:08to those
10:09lamps or light sources well we
10:12duplicate this node again by pressing
10:14shift d and we change
10:17uh
10:17the mode here to multiply
10:19and now with the multiply selected uh
10:22you have to
10:23pay attention to those little dots here
10:25we need to
10:28put our image source to the bottom dot
10:32here and use the upper one as a color
10:34source so now when i start adding let's
10:36say i add this bluish color you can see
10:39it influences
10:41the environment
10:44so in the meantime my node setup became
10:47a little bit larger and that's because
10:49i've added the remaining light sources
10:52to our mix so you can see with this
10:54exposure
10:56node i'm able to control the kitchen
10:58light that we have here if i go
11:02to just minus 10 it disappears
11:04completely so let's use the value of
11:06zero and with this note i'm able to
11:08control
11:09the oven light
11:13which
11:14introduces a lot of noise
11:16unfortunately but yeah this is uh how it
11:20goes when we go from the bright scene to
11:22the darker one because this is our input
11:25image so still i think it's really
11:28impressive how far you can push it just
11:31with those few notes without
11:32re-rendering and re-lighting the scene
11:35um let's just
11:37change the light here to something
11:39warmer
11:41maybe increase it
11:43and one last thing i would like to show
11:45you is
11:47adjusting those two lights independently
11:49so
11:50at the very beginning i've mixed them
11:52together so now when i use this exposure
11:55slider here
11:57both of those lamps become brighter but
12:00if i would like to
12:02adjust
12:03this lamp only
12:05if i remember correctly it was the lamp
12:080 two
12:09so let's yeah it's definitely this lamp
12:12so let's use this note here and simply
12:16um make it brighter if necessary
12:20so the image now looks nice but it's
12:23still full of noise as you can see
12:26and to fix this
12:28all we have to do
12:29is pressing shift a
12:32going to filter
12:34and choosing the denoise
12:37with the denoise node added
12:40let's move it here to the starting tree
12:44and
12:46we connect the noising albedo with this
12:49input here the albedo input the
12:51denoising normal with the normal
12:55and then we move the entire
12:58setup here
13:00and we just plug it into
13:02the final add node here and add it to
13:05the viewer so it's going to take a few
13:07seconds to compute
13:09but the end result
13:13should look pretty pretty good in my
13:14opinion it might not be suitable for
13:17animation but i think for the still
13:19image it's pretty pretty right maybe we
13:22could reduce some of the noise here to
13:25do this you would need to re-render the
13:27scene and add more rendering samples but
13:31as
13:32at least for the preview and let's say
13:34the test how the scene could look like
13:36this looks pretty well
13:38and i think again if we compare it with
13:41the starting result this this is really
13:43impressive uh how far you can take it
13:48if you would like to continue with color
13:50correction
13:51of this image again i've created another
13:54tutorial on that
13:56actually many tutorials they are linked
13:58in the
14:00screen right now but if you would like
14:02to continue uh i just suggest
14:05unplugging the denoise node
14:07uh and keeping it for the final result
14:10so
14:10now let's say we can use the
14:13color balance node
14:14um
14:17rework the light a little bit maybe
14:19brighten the scene
14:21increase the contrast
14:23and once it's done once we are happy
14:26with the result then i would reconnect
14:28the denoiser here i like using the
14:30denoise before the color correction not
14:33after it so
14:35don't plug it in
14:37here
14:38i just use it this way i think it gives
14:40you the better results
14:42um and for the final adjustments
14:46remember you can always use the color
14:47correction settings here so for the
14:49exposure
14:51for
14:52the contrast
14:54um
14:55yeah
14:56these work pretty well you also have the
14:58curves here that allow you to
15:01uh adjust the individual channels of the
15:03image so if you don't if you think it's
15:05too reddish you can just switch to the
15:07reddish channel
15:09uh sorry to the red channel not the
15:10reddish channel and just
15:13well drag it down a little bit
15:16to make it look better
15:19so thank you guys for watching if you
15:21enjoyed this video i really appreciate
15:23if you subscribe to my channel and if
15:24you want to make better renderings check
15:26out my art of rendering master class you
15:29will learn that making good renderings
15:31is not about talent but following a
15:34step-by-step process that always works
15:36and what took me years to understand you
15:39can now learn in a few days if you're
15:41really motivated so thanks again and see
15:45you in another one bye bye