Neon Lights effect using Light Painting style

I remember some time ago, I was into photography because I wanted to understand how to make realistic 3d rendering. I wanted to achieve a kind of quality that will give someone a second on whether the image is a 3d rendered image or an actual photograph.

While watching Youtube videos about photography, the consistent advice that I get is that photography is all about the “light”. Obviously, the absence of light would mean that a photo will turn out to be a pitch-black image or an entry frame. In photography, lighting is quite simple depending on the tools that you have and the knowledge that you know about good lighting. If you are able to understand light then you can expect a good result on your photos.

In 3d rendering, “lighting” is also the fundamental element in rendering. Without any form of lighting in a 3d scene will render it into something not apprehendable. A pitch-black image with nothing on it. The process of modeling or setting-up the lighting in a 3d scene is fairly simple. The real trouble is on the software’s algorithm to compute the effect of light on the scene.

The 3d software has to compute every bounce of light onto every surface of all 3d elements. The difficulty in the rendering process is exponential. To put it simply, every time you add a light to a 3d scene the computation gets harder for the software. And I was able to prove it in today’s 3d artwork.

I was experimenting on a certain photographic style, the Light Painting technique. The principle is similar to the Long-Exposure technique.

So, my goal is to replicate a Light-painting photo using a 3d software (3DSmax). The modeling of the shapes of the painted light is simply done using lines & shapes. The assigning of lighting materials is simple as well, I just choose the color & intensity.

As I hit the render button, that’s when I realize that I made a very complicated setup to render. It took the software for about 10 hours to render this image.

It’s funny how terrible it is to replicate in 3d since this picture could be done in minutes by an experienced photographer.

I also edited another version of it, a basic color variation.

Here are the scene overviews:

Well, with all that trouble that this single 3d image has given me I’m guessing that this might be the last Light-painting 3d rendered image that I will make.

Until next time, thanks, folks!