Environment Lighting

It's fair to say lighting has been a bit of a struggle!!! However, over the course of 5 days I'm finally satisfied with it! Below shows my progression and problems from start to finish.

This is how it started ... not my finest work! I'm not even going to explain what this is, except the sun looks as if I added it in Paint!!

 

Moving on ....

 

Progressing without the environment and sun I lighted the set with a series of 'soft' spot lights to create a 'warmth'.

However, I need to include the sun and an environment so I restarted the lights from scratch and added a directional light, area light and a few spot lights. The main problem encountered was the shadows casted by the tree paint effects. Below is a diagrams explaining which settings created the effects. It was a mixture of these settings and the conflicted lighting causing several types of shadows.  

Changing the settings on the paint effects allowed them to cast a soft, realistic shadow, but altered the quality of the trees, hence when rendering I'd have to render on two different layers and then over lay the trees onto the correct shadow cast. I experimented with this and found the final images a little 'clunky' so I restarted the lighting for the last time.

 

The settings below gave a soft shadow, but not 100% realistic shadow castings. On artistic purposes I pursued with this lighting and shadow settings. I was concerned about the tree that is closest to the house, as when the shadow was cast the washing line looked like it was floating!! Hence, I created a poly tree under the paint effect one to cast a shadow. Below the diagram shows the settings for the final lighting.   

Final Lighting Renders



 

Below is a colour test for the environment shader.