Thanks Backstept! I'm sorry I missed your request and even though I am late, ask and it shall be given! :lol:
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Ignoring the lights on the model itself (shown in a kind of red-orange) the lights for the scene have been glued together as an object for this demonstration (white).
One infinite light placed near the Engineering hull, one spotlight on the underside of the primary hull and three EXTREMELY weak local lights separated by a few degrees in the front (round, star-like lights).
The brightest light is the infinite light. All the lights have a fall-off and the infinite light has Linear Falloff With Distance.
The spotlight (cone) has a serious fuzzy edge to it. You can do this in trueSpace by grabbing that green circle in the center of the light and bringing it closer to the center, making the green circle smaller. Unfortunately if you use a lot of these that overlap, you get an interference pattern in TrueSpace 3 or 4 but I only have one in this scene so it was not a problem.
The "innovation" for me at least was the three local lights close together and all very weak but varying in height and distribution. The final image only had to hold up to DVD resolution so I only used three lights. For a larger render, say a desktop background, I would probably increase the number of lights to at least 5 and drop the brightness of all of them. For anything else like a poster or a banner, I'd probably go to 10 lights with almost a nonexistent brightness.
Here is why: Each light creates a shadow of its own. If the lights are weak enough and you place several of them next to each other and SLIGHTLY vary the position of the lights, you start to cast multiple weak shadows and the area where each light overlaps gets a little brighter. This give the effect of fall-off and almost a radiosity since it will look like bounce is occurring from the surrounding area. This will create a more gradual falloff that is closer to reality than any single light.
The three local lights and the spot light use Squared Falloff With Distance for steeper shadows and all the lights have the shadows toggled on for ray tracing.
You will notice when you do this that there are faintly defined multiple shadows still visible on your final image. Remember to render larger than the final desired size and pull the image into Photoshop or whatever is your favorite image manipulation program. Blur the image by some small amount such as 0.5-0.7 pixels and this should blur the shadow edges a little more evenly.
Reduce your image to the final size you desire and detail will pop back into the image but your shadows should be almost smudged together. If not, re-render and increase the number of local lights, reducing their brightness (it's cumulative) and spacing them closer together.
I hope this makes sense. If not, let me know and I will put together a tutorial.
Thanks for the interest!
Enterprise In Orbit, Pre-CBS Digital restoration of Effects
