Image Based Lights

Quick reference

• 00:04 Hey everyone.
• 00:04 One of my favorite revamped features of Photoshop CS6.
• 00:08 If you can't tell by some of my previous videos, is 3D.
• 00:11 It's fast, it's powerful, and it's full of new features.
• 00:15 But there are a few features that some users just have no idea what they do.
• 00:19 Such as image based lights.
• 00:21 Let's take a look at how image base lights or
• 00:23 IBLs, can drastically improve your images.
• 00:27 In short, using an image base light, adds a real life environment to your scene.
• 00:31 Which really helps add realism to the end result.
• 00:34 Let's take a look at how this works.
• 00:36 With your 3D layer active, select your environment within the 3D panel.
• 00:40 Once you have the environment properties visible in your Properties panel,
• 00:43 you should notice the IBL option towards the top of the panel.
• 00:47 This is where we can add or create an image based light.
• 00:50 Clicking on the folder icon to the right will allow us to create a new texture or
• 00:55 load in a texture.
• 00:56 For this example, as we want the pool balls to appear as if they are in a bar or
• 00:59 a pub, let's go ahead and load in an image of a lounge.
• 01:03 When the image had been loaded in,
• 01:04 you should clearly see your selected image fill the entire canvas.
• 01:08 It's essentially wrapping itself around a 360 degree virtual scene.
• 01:13 This way all sides of your 3D objects will benefit from the IBL.
• 01:17 And don't worry if you lose the ability to see the layers that were behind your
• 01:20 3D objects.
• 01:21 Once you switch away from your environment properties,
• 01:23 you'll regain that visibility again.
• 01:25 You may also notice that there's a sphere in the middle of your document.
• 01:29 This is the image based lights handle.
• 01:31 Just like you can rotate a standard light, you can also rotate an IBL,
• 01:35 just in case you want a certain area of the image displayed in the reflections.
• 01:39 The important thing to note,
• 01:41 is that your image will look much more realistic when rendered.
• 01:44 Because rendering a scene like this can take up to 20 minutes,
• 01:47 here's what the completed Render, after we add an IBL looks like.
• 01:50 You can definitely see if we compare it to what we had before and what we have now,
• 01:54 it looks a lot more realistic because we now have an environment.
• 01:58 Now, well, sometimes assigning an image as an IBL may be enough, but
• 02:01 if you fancy stronger reflections, here's a neat tip you may wanna try.
• 02:05 Back in the Environment properties, click on the folder icon and
• 02:08 choose the Edit Texture option.
• 02:10 This will allow us to create faux light boxes.
• 02:13 Which is really gonna add nice strong reflections on your objects.
• 02:17 Once you have the texture open go ahead and
• 02:19 place solid white objects to act as your light boxes.
• 02:22 In this case, I chose to use white circles to act as overhead lights.
• 02:27 Now once the light boxes are in place, save the texture using your Cmd or
• 02:30 Ctrl+S shortcut key to update your 3D document.
• 02:34 Once you render your new scene,
• 02:35 you should now see the new reflections that you added.
• 02:37 So if you're looking to add a little bit more realism to your 3D
• 02:40 scene in Photoshop,
• 02:41 definitely consider using an IBL to take your projects to the next level.

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