Redshift Studio Lighting 01 - Product Shot Tutorial with Vincent Schwenk

Hi Everyone! I'm super excited to share this tutorial collaboration with Vincent Schwenk! In Vincent's latest Patreon tutorials, he tackles modeling and lighting a beauty product shot. I take a low-key lighting approach and walk through how I'd set up the lighting for this shot as though we were in photo studio.
Thanks so much to Vincent for the collaboration!
-Vincent Schwenk's Info-
Patreon: / vincentschwenk
Website: vincentschwenk.de/
Instagram: / vincentschwenk

[@jangrashei1752]

The light spec becoming smaller the less spread it has, is realistic. This is since the less spread a light has, the smaller amount of the light's surface will hit a specific place on the object. Hope that makes sense.

[@igobyzak]

Yeah, looking more into it I think it's mostly realistic. I do wonder about the shape of the light though. A long skinny area light with very little spread has a small circular reflection. I would think a strip box with deep grid would have a skinnier reflection, but still maintain the general shape of the softbox. I could be wrong though, as the angle of reflection is getting cut down. Not sure.

[@jangrashei1752]

@@igobyzak i think that's correct too. It helps me make sense of it by visualising the area light as an array of for example 10x10 lines (rays) going straight out of it (0 spread). And if you start adding spread, each line will diverge into more lines forming a conical shape with the pointy end still on the area light surface. The higher the spread, the bigger the cones, meaning more cones (circles basically) will overlap, which finally means a bigger area of the light will be visible for a given place on the surface of the subject. And, regarding the "always-circular shape", when raising the cone size radius, it's natural that the shape becomes circular since only rays closest in proximity to the cone hitting directly at where the spec lands, will be visible. You can visualize this in c4d by cloning up an array of 100x100 circles, scale them up substantially, and then drag-select in the middle of one and see what shape your selected objects make. And spread does spread the rays in a conical shape, you can test this by making a square area light just above a flat ground and observing the shape of the light on the ground as you adjust the spread. It will look more round than like a blurred square. Another way of thinking of it, is that a 0 spread is the equivalent of a real-life grid that goes all the way from the light and all the way over to the subject hitting him in the face! This would make a specific spot on the subject's face only "see" the light coming from a single one of these "grid tunnels".

[@igobyzak]

@@jangrashei1752 Yeah, I think with the spread all the way to 0 would be like a small tunnel from the light to the object. But I feel like the reflection goes to a perfect circle so fast! Like with medium/low spread, the reflection is a small dot. I'm not sure if I can post links in the comments here, but here is a link to a quick test I did in RS where I set a light with a low spread, rendered, then turned the spread all the way back up and modeled a quick box grid for the area light. I adjusted the depth of the grid to replicate the softness of the light falloff of the previous render. In this case, I can still see the general shape of the light in the reflection, just smaller and more narrow, which is what I would expect. Thoughts on this? drive.google.com/drive/folders/11vqvin-MQz7aI1Fi-d87PWFitv91fm-w?usp=sharing Also, the shadows with the modeled grid are more of what I would expect; softer in the length of the light.

[@jangrashei1752]

@@igobyzak hmm interesting, and thanks for taking the time to do some tests. Do you have a picture of what the modelled grid looks like? I'd have to think some more and maybe try some things myself, but can't till Monday. I think it might have to do with the shape and size of the grid or how many tunnels there are, or it could of course be that you are right; that something is off.

[@igobyzak]

@@jangrashei1752 That is such a great point, so I did some more tests and you are 100% correct! It had not occurred to me that the density and shape of the grid would contribute to the effect, and it turns out I had made a grid then scaled it length wise to better match the shape of my long area light. Well that made each "grid" tunnel a rectangle instead of a square and of course that helped to get the effect I was seeing in the link above. Remaking the grid to be a collection of perfect square "tunnels" results in what Redshift is giving us with the spread turned down. Thanks so so much for commenting on this and explaining! Super helpful!!

[@AlexPaleczny]

That's easily one of the best lighting tutorials on yt.

[@igobyzak]

Oh wow thanks so much, Alex!!

[@wesselvanwegen9203]

Completely agree on this. It's so nice. Audio quality great, lots of great tips and everything well explained. Cant wait for more!

[@peterreibel8631]

Have to chime in with Alex and Wessel. The connection to real world photography helps understanding light so much!

[@PanewsONE]

I love how carefully and thoughtfully you place all of these. Makes me realize how stupid my own approach to lighting is. I don't really know what the problem is when I'm lighting something other than that it has to be lit somehow. I get the sense that this is a topic someone could spend ages on and your experience and professionalism really shines through. Thanks for sharing your knowledge and for creating content for people like me who are fairly new to this. It's interesting to watch someone who knows what they're doing work. Very much appreciated

[@igobyzak]

Thanks so much!

[@animhaxx]

Thanks man this is awesome. I mean what's better than learning lighting from a photographer

[@igobyzak]

Glad you found it helpful! Thanks for watching!

[@captainkimme1336]

This is super helpful and fun to watch. Please do more of these!

[@eyadgr]

never thought so many lights can be used in a scene like that, learned tons of tricks from this, awesome tutorial, thank you!

[@mezzer458]

Really really good tutorial! Enjoyed seeing you process so much and learnt a lot!

[@bogscave]

The gobo on the area light is pure gold, I always thought that you can use gobos only in spot lights 🤣🤣🤣

[@guilhermeguimaraes3863]

I'm so happy that you're back Saving this tutorial for later

[@user-kk7hm5rz6g]

This tutorial is really great, and I learned a lot. Super thank you!

[@kierangfinch5123]

Super interesting breakdown + lots of simple yet highly effective tips - Thanks!

[@tropo100]

This is the best "lighting for still life" tutorial, by far. Is pretty close to a real still-life photoshoot.

[@jellsart]

Music for my eyes ! Thank you so much

[@user-pe8jr3nr6k]

Wonderful tutorial！Helps me understand the basic but most important lighting principles! Now I know the reason why every light shuold be put in that place.

[@ya-fenglu3767]

Definitely need you on the Patreon!!!

[@thomascollier7754]

i_go_by_bob_ross really enjoy how you explain your process.

[@milatsumay4853]

photography background for sure =)

[@user-if6ml5yy7d]

Best lighting tutorial forever

[@igobyzak]

Thanks so much!!

[@jackeyq2444]

I like this very much and hope to publish more similar lighting tutorials soon!

[@dbmd_uk]

Fantastic tutorial! Many thanks!

[@darrynrogers204]

Great tutorial Zak. I see now that I've been too conservative with how many lights I've been using. I like how you get in and tweak all the tiny details with tonnes of little lights. The reason that the shader graph adjusted both the lights at 1:23 is that the shader graph is stored in a material. That same material is applied to both of the lights.

[@sarkeruddin5783]

Excellent lighting tutorial. Thanks for sharing

[@Brandonbraun]

squint test is a great idea!!

[@MaksChernykh]

Thanks a lot! This is really good tutorial with comments. Keep doing this :)

[@igornilsen1649]

Brilliant!

[@murphyuriaguereka4360]

Thank you for the lesson.

[@igobyzak]

Thanks for watching!

[@brunomoncada9658]

This is gold! Thank you for sharing.

[@igobyzak]

Thanks so much!

[@gustavoprete8898]

amazing explain about lighting! I was learn important tips that I didnt know! Thaaanks!

[@user-gj6xi6hl3w]

Firstly, thank you for sharing this valuable learning resource; it's a treasure for beginners! I'm considering using this in animation, but I'm unsure how the light interactions and object and camera movements may differ. I suspect the workflow would change considerably. Could you perhaps create a tutorial on this? Or do you have other resources you'd recommend? Thank you once again for sharing, and I appreciate any advice on this topic in advance!

[@monicas5593]

Thank you for all this insight into lighting. Certainly makes me rethink how I do my own. Very inspiring and much appreciated from us still starting out and learning

[@igobyzak]

Thanks so much!

[@griff_again]

So good. Would love a portrait version of this with a good model of a face.

[@matistaa]

Thanks a lot for another great tutorial! Great content.

[@igobyzak]

Thanks for checking it out!

[@RogerKilimanjaro]

love the patience and dedication to light properly. I never take enough time to do that.

[@igobyzak]

Thanks so much for watching! I rarely go this in depth for my personal renders but thought it would be nice to show a complete 180 from just using an HDRI.

[@halloo20halloo]

Custom AOV, really useful. Thank you!

[@tiagocardoso4434]

Awesome tut!!!!

[@MarioSundays]

Brilliant tut! Tks!

[@375pantone]

Very useful and cool tutorial! thanks for sharing,

[@bm6298]

the best lighting tutorial around, this helped me out a ton! thank you!

[@igobyzak]

Thanks for watching! Glad it helped!

[@manlok497]

Best lighting tutorial I have watched in KZbin. Hope that there will be more in future

[@igobyzak]

Thank you! More are in the works; stay tuned!

[@bcrbdb]

This is the BEST product lighting tutorial I have ever seen. With a lot of great tips in C4D+Redshift on lighting in general that can be applied not only to product shots. Amazing!

[@igobyzak]

Thanks so much!!

[@batlabat1754]

It's the best lighting tutorial I watched so far, thank you so much !

[@vitoboox]

For suuure

[@tomholmes6396]

This was insanely helpful with so many tips and tricks I didn't know before. Thank you for sharing your skills!

[@igobyzak]

Thanks so much! Glad you found it helpful!

[@bdm4614]

excellent! thank you!

[@eddy4719]

Best Tutorial on Lighting I have ever seen. Instant Sub. Thank you!!

[@igobyzak]

Thanks so much! And thanks for the sub!

[@meghnabose4552]

I've unknowingly watched and absolutely loved all your tutorials without knowing it was from the same person as they were hasty last minute searches. This tutorial really had me, so while subscribing I was like damn, I've watched almost all your stuff, makes so much sense that such quality content came from the same source. I have tried reading books and watched so many tutorials on lighting but none reveal the thought process that could go behind it. Best tutorial, so much respect.

[@igobyzak]

Ah thank you so much!! Thanks for the kind words and for watching!

[@bharat5194]

Very useful! Please do more videos on product lighting & animation in C4D

[@Brandonbraun]

killer video thank you

[@user-oh4ye2yl9b]

That`s help me a lot!Thank you !really useful!

[@astrongwater8027]

Excellent

[@aaa-mt3tz]

Hi, agree with everyone else this tutorial is fantastic! Tremendously helpful tips I always use now, especially the light-as-camera trick for positioning. One thing I'd like to add is for the gobo light, instead of using a texture in an area light, putting a shader graph on a spot light gives easier control. With that, you can add a ramp btwn your texture & Light Color node to control its brightness or color, and control shadow softness (which gets disabled if using texture on area light). I'm not sure if it works for video input, though.

[@mitch4248]

Hey, can you maybe give some more insights or a link to a tutorial? Would be awesome, can't get it to work unfortunately and can't really find something about this technique. Thanks in advance, Mitch

[@glacies1356]

Thank you for this amazing Tutorial! You could use a "Protection" Tag, so you won't move your light by accident. Saves a lot of nerves. And if you did not know already CTRL + SHIFT + Z is just for undoing camera steps.

[@oriolysmedia]

Ive watched 30 minutes and I had to pause it to tell you that youre amazing , its like youre passing your artistic eyes to us which is very difficult to do in a tutorial, everyone can learn something cool about Cinema 4D but making the right choices to make it look pretty is a journey that can take a lot of effort , analyzing why you're moving or scaling the lights is pure gold, thanks again. Would love to see a tutorial of lighting laptops or speakers in a a dark interior scene in the future.

[@igobyzak]

Thanks so much!!

[@finalresult3d]

This is awesome! It makes me want to redo all my lighting tutorials haha. Subscribed!

[@igobyzak]

Thanks so much!!

[@gjb7966]

amazing, zak! thanks a lot for doing and sharing this!

[@igobyzak]

Thanks for watching!!

[@INIGOINCHAURRAGA]

thanks for this.

[@GameSuperStyle]

Thx very much! Realy nice

[@mookjin2611]

That's great. It was a good content for me thanx bro

[@primal1585]

21:01 bro my heart stopped,that was a good scene,and im your 1000 like

[@Ehiliem]

Very insightful

[@friedpixels]

Great eye and setup, great watch.

[@igobyzak]

Thanks so much!

[@CIX66]

Impressive, thanks for all of this

[@igobyzak]

Thanks for watching!

[@yaroslavkozlitin6869]

That's amazing! Thank you very much! It's helped me a lot :) Currently I'm using an Arnold Render, but these technics is also works, I think, in any render engine. Peace.

[@ibiktimirow]

Wow this is outstanding tutorial, I watched only 10 minutes now, but want to appreciate your work on this video. It's awesome, thanks man I think this is my first time when I actually see how to configure lighting.

[@igobyzak]

Thanks for watching!

[@buivantai3256]

Big thank bro

[@brainmint3363]

Thank you so much !

[@scheerlon]

You are really the Bob Ross of CG Lighting. Helped lighting my little project. Love the amount of control Redshifts giving you. Do you mind if I link you when I post it on Instagram? :)

[@igobyzak]

Ha! That's very kind of you to say! I love Bob Ross. Thanks for watching, and yeah, tag me. I'd love to see what you're working on.

[@lukehallmedia]

Thank you so much for this

[@igobyzak]

Thanks for watching!

[@leeelile6465]

amazingly

[@karpikvisuals]

Quality content, very nice!

[@igobyzak]

Thanks so much!

[@BlenderPhysics]

Just earned a subscriber! :)

[@mikkelmelby]

damn! nice tutorial, the skills show!

[@igobyzak]

Thanks so much!

[@philippepetitpas1883]

Really nice thank you !!! Where did you find the texture for the light ?

[@shuppiexd679]

Hi! Great work-through. And greater commentary. Very helpful. Do you ever utilize "normalize intensity" on area lights? I find that when trying to emulate large soft boxes, the results are a bit more expected.

[@igobyzak]

Thanks so much!! I usually don't mess with Normalize Intensity, but maybe I should!

[@SnnDah]

Amazing tutorial! Thank you for giving such an in-depth look into your whole lighting process. I've been looking for (animated) light gobo maps for a while and I didn't really find anything convincing. Any directions on good resource pages where to get something similar you use in this video at 02:50?

[@igobyzak]

Thanks so much! Yeah not too many resources out there that I've found so I just recorded my own on my cell phone. I just cranked the contrast in After Effects so I had areas of pure black and pure white.

[@babaallerbabas3194]

thank u 4 sharring your knowledge

[@igobyzak]

Thanks for watching!

[@babaallerbabas3194]

@@igobyzak another question, what was your redshift render settings 2 this ? :)

[@user-fw8tw9wt3y]

Where can I get the source of the sequence at 4:00? And thank you so much for the perfect lecture. It was a great help.

[@vosko3d]

Thanks for so cool tut, it's long but with a for of details, btw your viewport react so fast on this scene, which GPU you use?

[@igobyzak]

Thanks for watching! Yeah, it's a long one. I think at the time of the recording I was using a 1080ti and a 2080ti, but I did speed up the video where I could to keep the length of the tutorial down.

[@eddieresquivel3544]

MUCHO NIVEL, LO HACES VER TAN FACIL. SORPRENDENTE MASTER

[@igobyzak]

Ah thanks so much!

[@AshkonMedalla]

Amazing tutorial!!! I want this tutorial for Octane :(

[@igobyzak]

Thanks so much! I'm not too familiar with Octane, but I think most things here can be translated over. I think the light linking is a bit different in Octane as I think it uses light groups for including and excluding lights from objects.

[@everydayhero3610]

Regarding the foil overexposure, wouldn't a smaller IOR do the trick too, since a lower value thins out the reflected light but doesn't affect roughness?

[@igobyzak]

Yeah definitely. That's the nice thing about working in 3D is we can change anything and everything. I really tried to focus on only lighting here though and tried to keep it tied to the way one would go about lighting a setup like this in the real world.

[@dangarbatovski6157]

Sculpting with light

[@deborahpalti1950]

I thought it was recommended not to use so many lights, that way the render would be super heavy. Is it ok to do it like this? is it the only way to use these amount of lights?

[@igobyzak]

Yeah, I think it's always a balancing act between realism and render time. Lots of high resolution textures, high resolution meshes, displacement, lots of lights, etc all add render time but also add to the realism of the render. We just have to find what works best for the project.

[@kostasmal6587]

genius

[@igobyzak]

Thanks so much!

[@atomboi2028]

Hey, where did those wood planks come from? Were they imported from megascans?

[@igobyzak]

I think they're Quixel assets.

[@tropo100]

54:55 angle of reflection equals angle of incidence

[@robmorissette7586]

There is a very good book called Light Science and Magic for anyone that wants to learn more about real-world lighting fundamentals.

[@igobyzak]

Yes!! Light Science and Magic is a fantastic resource. Can't recommend it enough!

[@dnch]

amazing stuff..and i dont even use C4D

[@igobyzak]

Thanks! Yeah hopefully there's some good general lighting info in there that anyone can use regardless of 3D program and renderer.

[@ikbo]

Do I have this right that there is no solo light option in redshift!? Seeing you manually activate and de-active lights just to solo is making me wonder...

[@igobyzak]

I don't know if a way to quickly solo a light, other than the EJ Hassenfratz plugin Light Solo

[@ikbo]

@@igobyzak puzzled by the lack of this basic but essential feature. Would love to see something equivalent to Arnold's light manager - super handy tool..

[@unclestone7681]

wo HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

[@myzhong]

你好 能否上传一下工程文件练习

[@xrossfader]

The amount of wealth in this is ridiculous...

[@igobyzak]

Thanks, Lukasz!

[@Pepper-uz6vg]

33:48

[@medupemokone8503]

I always feel like with RedShift we are always trying to fake things whereas with Arnold things relate more to how it would be in a real world studio

[@sdfaasf7574]

One big trouble with this render: if you want work with Redshift your must firstable bot to much expensive video cards

[@trevionli]

cool,学习到很多。希望有天能看懂英文，不用自动翻译。

[@belabako8045]

You did a great job at lighting the products but I feel that the background could have been a little brighter and less interesting. Also the composition is not so great, I would have put the small flat object in front of the tubes. All in all, great job, maybe a bit of overkill on the detail work and less attention to the overall image in my opinion.

[@ryanpwm]

THE LID! ( kzbin.info/www/bejne/rqPLnJl3eaqng7c )

[@lorry5657]

The resolution is too low, it is a bit difficult to watch😂

[@HuyLe2607]

Probably you are too early =)) Need to wait a little bit for the video to process

[@igobyzak]

Yeah, sorry about that. KZbin seemed to take a long time processing the HD version.

[@lorry5657]

​@@HuyLe2607 thanks

[@lorry5657]

@@igobyzak Thank you for your hard work👍💖