Founder of Fabric Studios in London, Mark Zawila creates striking images for large and small companies, ad agencies and designers. He combines 3D, graphic illustration and photography to make imagery that helps sell products and brands. He has created work for companies such as Chivas Regal, Johnnie Walker, Delta Airlines, Sony, Sky, Miller, St.Stefanus, Yoo, Alison at Home and many more.
Mark was invited to beta test HDR Light Studio 8. He uses Cinema 4D with Redshift and Arnold render. At the end of his beta testing, we asked Mark some questions about his experience with HDR Light Studio.
How does lighting with HDR Light Studio 8 compare to lighting using native lights in your 3D software?
Coming from a product photography background and being used to having a range of lights and modifiers to hand, I always found it frustrating trying to achieve similar lighting results using the lights available in 3D software. When lighting a watch, car, or jewelry, for example, 3D lights always looked flat and lacked realism, no matter how physically accurate the materials were.
Using HDR Light Studio makes it easy to achieve accurate, real-world lighting that is fully customizable by utilizing the realism and accuracy of HDR image-based lighting, with an incredibly easy-to-use UI.
Additionally, when trying to light highly detailed products that require complex lighting rigs, moving around 3D lights is a 'clumsy' and time-consuming process. One of the most exciting features of HDR Light Studio is 'LightPaint'. It's just a matter of clicking and dragging on the area of the object that you want to illuminate to precisely position the light. This actually makes lighting a joy and a very instinctive and creative process.
One of my favorite things about HDR Light Studio is the option to turn any light into an 'area light'. The light then acts like a standard 3D light with an HDR image mapped onto it, which works independently of the main HDRI map and can be positioned 'up close' to the subject using the smart dolly slider.
