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Light Your Environment

Last updated on Aug 9, 2021

Learn the basics of lighting your environment in Medium.

Medium lets you set up both ambient and directional lighting for your environment. You can also modify surface material of your sculpt/ Also, the material type and attributes like Diffuse Light to define how lights in the scene
affect the sculpt.

When you first start sculpting, Medium uses a default spot light and a default ambient light to illuminate your work. You can add more lights to your scene (both spot lights and point lights), or convert them from one type to another.

Set Up the Default Ambient Lighting

The Sun brightness, Sun color, IBL brightness, and IBL Texture in your scene determine characteristics of the default ambient light (the Sun) and you can set it using the Settings:

Pull the Support hand thumbstick backward.
Select the World node on the Scene Graph.
Select Settings on the Action menu.

Position Lights in Your Scene

When you start sculpting in Medium, your sculpt is lit with a single default spotlight which you can position wherever you like in your scene. Changing the position of the spotlight can dramatically affect the visual characteristics of your sculpt:

lighting-scene-1 — Example lighting scenario A.

lighting-scene-2 — Example lighting scenario B.

lighting-scene-3 — Example lighting scenario C.

To change a light’s position:

Pull the Support hand thumbstick backward (to open the Scene Graph).
Look up until you see the light object.
Select the light object with your Tool hand.

Select the light with your Tool hand.
Squeeze the Grip button on your support hand and move the light object.
Release the Grip button when the light object is in the position you want.

You can also use the Transform menu to position a light.

Note:

If you want a light (or set of lights) to move in unison with your sculpt, you should restructure them under your sculpt object in the Scene Graph. See Scene Graph: Restructuring Elements in Your Scene.

Change a Light’s Attributes

To modify the characteristics of a light:

Pull the Support hand thumbstick backward (to open the Scene Graph).
Look up until you see the light object.
Select the light object with your Tool hand.
Select the Settings icon on the Action menu.

Depending on, whether you are manipulating a spotlight or a point light, you’ll see one of the following menus:

Spotlight settings.

Point light settings.