Let There Be Light

Lighting is perhaps the most important aspect of any 3D render. Just like a poorly lit photograph, a 3D scene without proper lighting will fail to meet the expectations of clients and colleagues. MAXON CINEMA 4D offers a complete array of gaffer's tools so you can make your scene outshine the competition.

Nine different types of light and four different shadow calculations provide the basis for an extraordinarily powerful lighting system. An abundance of additional parameters allows you to adjust color, brightness, falloff and other properties.

You can adjust the density and color of each light's shadows, and create visible or volumetric lights with noise patterns that appear in the light cone. A wide variety of options allow you to create tons of different lens flare effects. You can even cheat reality by including or excluding particular objects from the effect of each light.

It is also possible to assign an Area Light any shape in order to give your scene optimal lighting. In addition, falloff is now calculated more realistically. Lights possess settings such as contrast, lens reflexes, shadow color, and volumetric light and noise, among others, that can be edited for each light individually.