Opacity plane to filter light falling on object?

[MikeSJ]

I have a scene set up just the way I want. The lighting on 95% of the scene is perfect, but I have a couple of spots on my model where I'd like to tone down the brightness a little. Editing the HDRI/adding/moving/editing pins etc. makes too much of an overall impact on the scene, so I'd rather leave that alone.

Does anyone know if there's a way that I could position a plane over the object in my scene in question, and use it to "shade" some of the light hitting it, but have some control over the amount of light that filters through the plane, a sort of opacity control? Or is there a better way to do it?

[INNEO_MWo]

If you use the HDRI editor, you can add a pin above the area. Set the blend mode of the pin to alpha and turn the brightness near zero. You'll darken that area of the HDR.

[MikeSJ]

Thanks for the tip. I'll give that a try shortly.

[INNEO_MWo]

Thanks for the tip. I'll give that a try shortly.

Hope that helps.
Post your solution if it works. So other users can search and find it, if someone has similar questions.

Or ask if you need an example (and post your current KS version)


Cheers
Marco

[mattjgerard]

"Negative FIll" is what the lighting guys I used to work with called it.

Don't forget about the ability to do a little photoshop work on your image too. I've lost hours and hours trying to get the perfect image out of KS, only to figure out that the fix took only 10 minutes in photoshop. I'm in a production environment so that is a big deal to me, I know some people prefer to push KS to the limits and get the perfect image right out of it, and that's great. I'd probably do that on personal work, but in production time is king.