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title: "Bakery Lighting"
canonical: "https://rmanwiki-27.pixar.com/space/RU/657227944/Bakery%20Lighting"
format: markdown
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### Lighting

The two main goals of lighting are to appeal to emotions and tell a story.

Indeed, it's through the choice of lights, their orientation and color/temperature that we create an atmosphere that evokes emotions and senses. In this case, the idea was to create a warm sunrise atmosphere that would highlight the delights offered by the bakery. The orange colors of the intense sunlight penetrate the front windows, revealing the scent of warm breads and sweet, crunchy, melt-in-the-mouth textures. A feast for the eyes and the imagination!

I used three types of lights in this set. The main light source or key light, is achieved with a PxrDistantLight, which has the particularity of not losing energy with distance and providing parallel shadows, like the sun.

![french-bakery-sun.jpg](media://56ed8394-0262-476c-8be4-9e508fc98d8f)


The sun's orange hue and high intensity give structure to the set, guiding the viewer's eye and supporting the narrative. Slightly tilted downwards, the PxrDistantLight offers elongated shadows that help compose the image and reinforce perspective. As the scene is rich in elements, they can also be used to extinguish certain areas, simplifying the reading of the image.

The fill light is characterized by its bluish tint, representing the sky's indirect illumination, and is achieved with a PxrDomeLight. This avoids pitch black shadows and brings a vibrant glow to the shaded parts of the set. For sampling efficiency, PxrPortalLights direct light importance is used, and they are placed at the opening of the windows.

![french-bakery-sky.jpg](media://8143b2f3-ff31-4f34-b0ba-9c1bde55c54d)


For added control, I attached a PxrIntMultLightFilter to the PxrDomeLight to reduce its exposure on the windows, as the reflection on the glass was too strong and burnt out the image, disrupting the visibility of the pastries. Three PxrRectLights were placed in the maya scene. Two acted as bounce lights at the points of impact of the sun, and one was placed behind the door to evoke the presence of a baker working behind the door.

Finally, a PxrVolume connected to a box primitive, provides a diffuse atmosphere corresponding to the golden hour. This volume is light linked to the sun light, to avoid making it too bright with other light sources.

![french-bakery-fog.jpg](media://2d6f4351-1e24-4afb-8ddd-502f66f3f5a6)

> 📝 Tip: The outdoor set dress was used as the basis for the shadows. I removed some of the meshes from this facade and replaced them with off-camera planes to build shadows that would modify the image.


![french-bakery-blockers.jpg](media://1c6adbfa-1f6e-4fdf-a4d5-2015848b2dc0)


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