Lights are a very important part of rendering a scene. They define object visibility, color, and set the mood. Sketchfab supports two kinds of lighting: Real-time dynamic lights and Environmental lights.
Light tools are available in 3D Settings:
- From your model, go to 3D Settings or add "/edit" to the end of any model URL.
- Select the Lighting panel in the top left.
Only the model's author can access 3D Settings. Edits you make will not change your original file, they will only affect viewing on Sketchfab.
Lights will only have an effect when shading is set to Default (see Scene settings).
For 3D scans and models with baked lighting, we recommend you to set Shading to Shadeless and not use lights.
Real-time Dynamic Lights
Real-time dynamic lights simulate different kinds of lights sources. They let you precisely control how your model is lit.
Lighting Presets
The easiest way to have a good lighting is to choose among the available presets. There are currently 6 presets that cover different kinds of moods and styles.
Click Load Lighting Preset and select one of the available presets.
Manual Setup
There can be up to 3 lights per scene, which is usually enough for sophisticated lighting setups such as the classic 3-point lighting.
The light list shows you the type of light for each slot and lets you turn them on or off. Click a light slot to open its properties. Hover on a light slot and click Move to center to move the light to the center of scene and reset its direction.
Choose None to remove the light completely.
Directional
The directional light simulates the light emitted by the sun.
- The light is infinite.
- Only the direction counts; changing the position of the light will not change the lighting.
You can adjust:
- Color
- Intensity
- Direction
- Attached to camera
- Shadows
Point
Point lights simulate small sources of lights, such as light bulbs.
- It is positioned in space; its position affects the lighting
- Light is emitted in all directions.
- Light becomes less intense farther away from the source.
You can adjust:
- Position
- Color
- Intensity
- Falloff (how far the light reaches)
Spot
The spot light is similar to a theater spot light or a desk lamp. It projects light as a circle.
- It is positioned in space; its position and rotation affect the lighting.
- Light becomes less intense farther away from the source.
You can adjust:
- Position
- Direction
- Color
- Intensity
- Falloff (how far the light reaches)
- Angle (how large is the circle)
- Softness (how soft is the edge of the circle)
- Shadows
Hemispheric (“Hemi”)
Hemispheric light simulates the effect of an overcast sky with light bouncing on the ground. It is similar to the directional light.
- The light is infinite.
- Only the direction counts; changing the position of the light will not change the lighting.
You can adjust:
- "Sky" color and intensity
- "Ground reflection" color and intensity
- Direction
- Attached to camera
Importing Lights
Sketchfab can import up to 3 lights from Blender and FBX files.
Attached to camera
Directional and Hemispheric lights can be attached to the camera, making the lighting consistent whatever the point of view. For example, if the light is set to come from the top right corner of the screen, it will always come from this corner when you move around the model. Backlights (or rim lights) usually work best when attached to the camera. However, lights attached to the camera hurt rendering performance.
Shadows
Direction and Spot lights in the Lighting editor can be set to cast real-time shadows on your models.
Enable Cast shadows to activate this option and tweak the Shadows bias value to get the best result for your model: change it so you get the least amount of noise, while the shadows are still "connected" to your objects.
Due to their nature, real-time shadows may look different from rendered shadows. If you need high-resolution shadows, blurred shadows, etc., you should consider baking them.
Ground Shadows
The Ground Shadows feature allows you to automatically add a ground plane under a model without creating it yourself before uploading.
Shadow Catcher
The Shadow Catcher option places a plane under the model for casting shadows from real-time lights.
- Opacity defines the intensity/transparency of the shadows on the plane.
- Border Fade removes the hard edges of the plane to allow shadows to fade to transparent.
- Height defines the vertical position of the plane between 1 and -1 world height; 0 sets it at the bottom of the model.
- Size defines the horizontal scale of the plane.
Here's an example of the real-time Shadow Catcher in action:
Baked AO
The Baked AO option bakes an ambient occlusion texture onto the ground plane. It will take about 10 seconds to prepare the baked texture each time you adjust settings.
- Opacity defines the intensity/transparency of the shadows on the plane.
- Border Fade removes the hard edges of the plane to allow shadows to fade to transparent.
- Height defines the vertical position of the plane between 1 and -1 world height; 0 sets it at the bottom of the model.
- Shadow diffusion defines how sharp or blurry the baked shadow is.
Here's an example of the Baked AO shadow:
Environmental Lighting
Environments offer a 360° panorama background for your models, and will affect lighting and reflections.
Classic Rendering
When using Classic mode, the environment is useful for ambient lighting and emulating reflections and mirrored surfaces.
PBR Rendering
Environmental lighting is very important in PBR mode. It creates realistic lighting and reflections.
Environment Settings
- Choose an environment from the drop-down menu.
- Import your own with the Import Environment HDR button.
- Use the Orientation slider to rotate the environment itself around the scene's z-axis.
- Use the Brightness slider to change the background's reflections and ambient light brightness.
Control the background's brightness and blur level, or turn it off completely, in Scene settings.
Our default environments are provided by HDRLabs thanks to Christian Bloch, as well as hdrmaps.com.
Importing environments
Pro members and above can import custom environments in 3D Settings.
- We support .HDR and .EXR formats
- The maximum file size is 50MB
- The maximum resolution is 2048px × 1024px (Larger images will be downsized)
- There is no limit to the number of environments you can import
The process for creating your own HDR environment is explained in The HDRI Handbook 2.0.
Here are some websites that offer free environments:
- http://gl.ict.usc.edu/Data/HighResProbes/
- http://hdrmaps.com/freebies
- http://www.hdri-hub.com/hdrishop/freesamples
- http://dativ.at/lightprobes/
- http://noemotionhdrs.net/
- http://www.hdrlabs.com/sibl/archive.html
- http://hdri-skies.com
- http://adaptivesamples.com/category/hdr-panos/
- http://www.maximeroz.com/hdri-free-pack
- https://www.eisklotz.com/products/hdri/
- https://hdrihaven.com/
Saving
Once you've made your adjustments, including position and orientation, be sure to update your model's thumbnail image and default position with Save View and/or save your changes with Save Settings. You can return to your model by clicking either the model's name or Exit.
Also see:
Comments
10 comments
This is really nice stuff! :-)
Great job!!
How do you load your own environments though?
I'm also wondering how to change the environment with my own panoramas. How do you do that? Is it possible?
@cognition @gunnar - We just released this feature!
Hi @James
Could you please update this lighting help page to explain how the environnement is casting shadows ?
It seams that the shadows are casted from an arbitrary directional light not in relation with the HDRI map content.
See in the exemple below where there is not directional highligt in the map but still a spot light is generating light and shadows from one direction.
https://sketchfab.com/models/e39555d3242a4c48a3bb4d3bf98b651b
Regards
Fred
Hi Fred,
I believe the shadows are cast by a point of the highest brightness in the HDR image. Looking at that model, your environment is more or less uniform, so the highlight/shadow seems arbitrary.
If you look at other environments in the list, you can see the brightest point is marked in the thumbnail.
I am trying to upload a 360 environment, but it's taking forever and still "Processing your environment". How long does this take? I am going on 15 minutes for a 29 mb file, is this normal?
Hi there,
Sorry about that! It's a known issue that environment processing is really slow at the moment. We have some improvements planned, but it going to be a while before we can implement them because they will depend on some other infrastructure improvements coming later this year.
In the meantime, the environments should finish processing eventually, and you'll find them available in the dropdown.
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