Sauron ~ Illuminata: Lighting for the Millenium Dragon

Welcome to my light sets for the Millenium Dragon.

Ive tried to create 7 sets of lights here that I have used in the various pieces of art containing the Millenium Dragon in my portfolio.

Ill list each light set below and explain the thoughts and principles behind them.


So onto the lights:

Flaming: 2 infinite, 1 spotlight: Well this one should be pretty self explanatory...It designed for a pose or render where the big scaly beats is belching forth flaming doom upon some poor hapless creature! The two coloured lights are purely here to allow for flames and flame light to illuminate the main body of the dragon, with the infinite source lighting the body with flame glow and the spotlight lighting the mouth. The thing to note here is that the spotlight is parented to the dragons jaw! Move his head and the light will follow. This should make it easier to set up flames and lighting. The other infinite source is purely to add backlighting to your scene or the rest of the dragon.

Reptilian: 1 spotlight, 1 infinite light: a simple but effective light setup. The infinite light is a coloured ligtsource to enhance your dragons overall colouring. By default its a very pale green. change it to suit your dragons texture map, head for pastel shades of the same colour of your texture map. So a gold dragon should have a pastel yelow or orange light. The Spotlight is a highlight backlight. It will pick out the bumpmapping of your dragon and also provide suitable lighting for the rest of the scene.

Scaly: 1 infinite light: Purely designed to pick out the excellant bumpmapping on the dragon default textures. The grey light source will neither enhance nor detract from your texture mapping but should allow you to build more lights into your scene whilst getting the best effect from your bump mapping.

Shadowed: 1 spotlight: When your dragon is crawling from his cave to reap furious anger and doom upon the hapless unfortunate people who woke him, this is the light source to use! One single white spotlight, parented to the dragons head, allows for the very scary and powerful render of the dragon. The spotlight will move with the dragons head to whichever pose you chose and should supply just enough lighting to pick out details further back in your scene to enhane the effect of the beast crawling from the darkness.

Soaring: 3 infinite lights, (2 coloured): A light set for those times when your dragon is winging his way across the heavens in glorious sunlight. 2 coloured infinite lights provide a sky and a sun colour to the lighting whilst the neutral light picks out detail on the dragon skin mapping and allows for lighting of specific sreas of interest. Change the 2 coloured lights to suit your backdrop scene, trying to keep the colours withi the area of pastel shades in order to not overlight the scene and create harsh colouring tha would look unnatural. Standard: 1 infinite, 1 spotlight: A basic light set for a test render or a clean crisp render of the dragon. Both lights are neutral coloured and are placed to provide maximum lighting to the dragon whilst still allowing the bumpmapping to show clearly and plainly. To add mood to the render adjust one of the lights further to one side to provide more shadowing to the render.

Wrathful: 2 infinite lights, (1 coloured): Another very simple light set for your renders but also one ofthe most powerful when set correctly. The neutral light source is dsesigned and placed to provide contrast and backlighting to your dragon. The coloured source is "mood" lighting and should be used to add edge highlights to your model to add effect and drama to your scene. Think about changing the coloured light source to suit your overall mood for the dragon, ie: red for anger, pale yellow for sleepy etc


Well there ya go...7 light sets that hopefully will set you up on the right course (in my humble opinion) to a wonderful render of the Millenium Dragon. Ive tried to think of most situations that i have rendered the beast in and then provided lights for those renders. I hope you find them useful, if only as a starting point for your own lighting. Remember they are not the definitive lighting, change them and play with them andthey will provide a powerful and easy first few steps on the road to lighting the Dragon and getting some powerful and strong renders from the model!

Enjoy!