Light values aren't making sense

Hi,

I haven’t seen any documentation that discusses how you should calibrate lights and materials in order to work “like real life” with the various post processing steps of tone mapping, auto-iris, etc.

For example, I’ve set up a simple seen with a single white 1700 lumen point light (which should be equivalent to a 100W lightbulb) and no other lights, but I can’t get an auto exposure that gives a reasonable look to the light in the room while also making the rest of the scene go to black in the distance. There seems to be some low level of light given to everything in the scene. The only way I can get a more “realistic” interaction is to set the light to something like 17000 lumens which allows me to shut down the exposure making the unlit stuff look almost black (though not totally black).

Are there any rules of thumb in texture/material creation plus interacting with lighting settings to generate scenes that look right with a given number of lumens? I would like to be able to place several 100W bulbs in a room and get close to the expected look of what would happen in the real world.

Thanks!

Remove all your lights and fix the right problem. Why those non lighted areas are not pitch black.

I found the light from above!

In World Settings -> Lightmass Settings -> Environment Intensity

Wow there are so many settings everywhere. :slight_smile: