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title: "The Hunted Lighting"
canonical: "https://rmanwiki-27.pixar.com/space/RU/567083091/The%20Hunted%20Lighting"
format: markdown
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> ℹ️ **Basic Environment**
The main environment light I used was a ramp texture applied to a PxrDomeLight. This provided an initial night sky fill light.
Making a 32-bit EXR file in Photoshop of your ramp is the best way to do this. You can also add an extra moon or sunlight source to the ramp. If you choose not to add a strong light source to the ramp texture itself, you can replicate moon or sun lighting in RenderMan using a PxrDistantLight or a PxrRectLight ot PxrDiscLight.
The choice really comes down to the mood, palette, and lighting references you are trying to match. Creating a ramp from a lighting or mood reference is a good way to make your initial ramp.
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> ℹ️ **UFO Beams**
When making UFO beams, there are two essential factors.
The first is the light beam itself, and for this, I used a PxrDiscLight.
The second very important factor for beams is the environmental fog volume. Without this volume, you’ll see the emitted light, but not see any beams. I created a volume VDB in Houdini and used this as the volume, with a PxrVolume shader attached. Adjusting the Primary Anisotropy to a value higher than 0 also improves the appearance of the beams. I used a value of 0.7
Both these elements rely on each other to give you an intense UFO beam (and any other beams for that matter)
In the image above, you can see that I started with three beams (per the reference I was working from), but in the final image, I decided to use only one.
So, the main UFO beam light itself is a PxrDiscLight.
I wanted to have sharp beams of ‘rays’, so I made the size of the light relatively small. I had to balance the size of the light just enough to achieve sharpness in the beams, whilst keeping the beam big enough so that it felt like the UFO above was large.
I added an IES profile to the light to add extra shape.
I then used a PxrBarnFilter to control the cone shape of the light, and a PxrRodFilter to block light from spilling too far into the scene. I just wanted one beam that didn’t spill out too far.
> ℹ️ Tip: You can also add a cookie image via a PxrCookieLightFilter to your beams to add even more visual shape, especially if the beams light onto some geometry.
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> ℹ️ **Headlights / Search Lights**
The headlights consist of three lights.
The first is a tiny PxrSphereLight as the bulb source inside the headlight housing.
The second is a PxrDiscLight to create the main headlight beams. I added an IES profile to the headlight to create more shaping, and a PxrBarnDoorFilter to direct the beams a little further.
To finish the effect of the headlight glass itself, I turned them into Mesh Lights with a very low intensity.
With these two main lights and the mesh light in place, I could lookdev the headlights to create the look I was going for.
