Lighting Tests

From the start I already knew that I wanted a dark scene so my lighting tests were about trying to get the most out of the light from the carousel, making sure it did reflect off the cobbled street and parts of the closest houses to make the scene fully work.

I started off with an area light in the top of the carousel as I knew most of the light source would be from the lights in the carousel roof but this is just too dark, you cannot see anything else in the scene, barely seeing the horses here.

I tried out a directional light as well as lowering the area light intensity but now the cobbles seem evenly lighted and thats not how it would be unless there was more than the light source of the carousel.

This was a bit better, from moving the directional light and lowering the intensity but again the carousel is not lit up enough.

Managed to get some lighting reflecting off the houses in this one by adding another directional light round the back of the carousel.

Added a spotlight on the edge of the carousel to try and get more light round the front of the horses and onto the cobbles.

Added some fog to the spotlight to soften the sharpness of it and also played with the cone size to try and light up more of the cobbles.

Added some more spotlights around the carousel and rotated the direction of them so as not to expose too much of the cobbles to light but these spotlights are too solid, its obvious they aren't from the lightbulbs.

Got the spotlights to gather a bit so they look like they are coming from all over the carousel but still wasn't happy with the light on the houses.

Adjusted the spotlights and directional lights some more, caught some light on the lower brickwork of the houses at last and the horses are illuminated better.