This tutorial demonstrates some methods of night rendering in Rhino (no Photoshop techniques are involved). Night renderings can be used as complements for perspective renderings in presentation. The architecture model in the tutorial is Winton Guest House.
- Surface as light source
1.1 Draw a surface and “Split” with the building walls, only keep the interior part of the surface. The surface is going to be used as the light source in the room.
1.2 Add a Octane Material and name it Light 1. Change the Node Type to Diffuse, so the Emission (light) options can be adjusted.
1.3 Set the Emission Node Type to Black Body Emission. Adjust different options such as Texture, Power, Temperature, etc. in order to get the best light effect. Then under the Properties panel of the surface, set the Assign material by Light 1.
2. Light fixture as light source
2.1 As the first step of this technique, build a light fixture such as a light bulb and move it to the proper location in the room.
2.2 Add another Octane Material and name it Light 2, adjust emission options as the steps above. Then apply the Light 2 material to the light bulb object.
2.3 In the Texture option of Emission, we can adjust the color of the light to show the diversity of light conditions in different rooms.
3. Poster board as light source
The key step of this technique is change Node Type of Emission Texture fro RGB Color to RGB Image. Download a fancy movie or commercial poster from Google Image, and choose it as the image on the wall. Then adjust Emission options to get the best effect (the power of the light shouldn’t be too strong so the content of the board can be seen).
4. Octane Render and export
Set a proper perspective view and save it in the Named Views. Open View Port under OctaneRender panel, set the resolution to a higher number. Wait until Samples/Pixel over 500 to export the final image.
