Lighting issue

[mrmunchies]

Hello all, I'm still fairly new to KS, and while I think it's a great program, I find it hard to grasp seemingly simple things. I've read through the KS8 manual which explains what settings do, but not always how to use these settings. I've been reverse-engineering steps by looking at screenshots that forum members have uploaded. I also try to find YouTube tutorials, and I've been going through a bunch of the webinars provided by KS, but some things still puzzle me. I've also reached out to KS reg. training, but as I'm based in Australia, I don't have much hope they provide official training here. I echo mattjgerard's thread ("Request for training") here to a degree; maybe it's just me, but why isn't there a comprehensive course/manual about HOW to use KS? Step by step tutorials seem to exist for all other software; I don't fully understand how people with advanced KS skills got to where they are - did you guys just experiment for days/weeks on end? I don't have that kind of time, and that seems like an inefficient way to learn the software.

What I would love some help with, is the basic lighting test I attached. I have KS8 and I really liked the spotlight feature that the KS team was showing off in a YouTube video (starts at 54 minute mark, link to video below), but I can't get the same results no matter what I try. I can't even get a simple spotlight to generate any light at all. This is extremely frustrating as I don't know what I'm doing wrong. I also tried following the steps in the KS8 manual about adding a sphere and dragging a light onto it, but still no result from my end. It'd be great if I could download that particular KS test scene with working spotlights, but I can't seem to find it anywhere.

Is there anybody out here who'd be kind enough to look at my scene and change the settings so it works? Or perhaps send me a very basic lighting scene that I can learn from?

Thanks in advance

Link to video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uk3jNNEPk9E

[INNEO_MWo]

I do understand that looking at a start and the first steps can be a challenge.
The scene you mentioned in the webinar (I did not seen it yet) from Dries can be opened from the scene folder.
As a user since the early KeyShot versions (and hypershot before) I can give an advice. As a German phrase tells "standing walking running", the advice is: first learn the basics of the material, the material graph and light.
Dries' scene is very complex and contains an interesting assemble of nodes in the material graph. It combines nice light in a scattered medium. And the bloom of the image styles does the finish. It is a great example but hard to explain (with writing this text on a mobile phone) all the details and necessary steps. And are you sure that you can adopt these to other scenes?
Just watch the KeyShot 6 and 7 basic tutorials and look into the same scenes. Luxion stored the most of them. Then recreate this to a similar scene. After successfully steps look to the next. Additional watch some tutorials from Will Gibbons and Esben Oxholm and share/discuss your results in this forum. And in a few weeks you become a skilled user. I am sure that everybody of us goes this way.
Just have fun!

Hope that helps

Cheers
Marco (adv. KeyShot Trainer)

[mrmunchies]

Hello Marco, I appreciate your response and I get that I have to walk before I run. I guess I'll have to look into KS6 & KS7 basic tutorials and see if that gets me what I need. Note that I already purchased Esben's course. It was helpful in quite a few ways, but I'm still stuck when it comes to the scene I attached to my post. If you have a moment and you aren't on your cell phone, is it possible you have a quick look at the scene to see what I did wrong? It's a simple spotlight on a sphere, but for some reason it's not emitting any light.

Thanks in advance

[INNEO_MWo]

Hello Mr. Munchies.


I tweaked your scene a bit and added a sphere with as a scattering media to show the light.
The few things I've noticed:
- the scene units were set to (m)eter. That causes a long distance for the light to travel and 820 lumen isn't enough. So I increased that value.
- to notice some surrounding light, I created a new environment with a simple dark color (not black!, cause black = 0% light = no light)
- a sphere for the scattering works quite well, just like the environment, so I matched both in size.


all other details can be seen in the attached package.


Hope that helps


Cheers
Marco

[mrmunchies]

Hello Marco, this is really great; I can now compare my scene to your scene, and find out what I did wrong. It's also super helpful that you highlighted a few things you noticed about my scene. Since my original post, I've gone through 2 KeyShot webinars, and there's a quite a few good tips and tricks I picked up along the way. I will recreate the scenes from the webinar to make sure I fully understand what the presenter was talking about.

I can't thank you enough for your help; people like you (and others on this forum who've helped me in the past) are essential in overcoming design obstacles, and I appreciate your help very much! So again, many thanks for taking out the time to assist me, and I'll pick apart your scene this weekend which I'm sure will help my lift my game.

Thanks!

[INNEO_MWo]

I am happy to help with this. We all gone this road a few days ago.


Have fun!


Cheers
Marco