Welcome to my Little CharLI and VP spotlight tutorial I will be going over a few things I have learned since starting Virtual Photography in the hopes I can help out people unfamiliar with CharLI and want to learn how to light there model, make characters look at each other and how to use AMM to help get that perfect shot.
I'm not an expert but I have improved alot since I starting using these simple tips I will share with you.
Here is what CharLi looks like when you open it, it may seem a little overwhelming at first but once you get used to what does what, its prety simple to use
I'm going to be sharing how I use spotlights in this tutorial so don't worry about the other lights for now.
first of all I usually only use a single, or a set of 4 or 8 spotlights in my shots, you can use more of course.
this is what the spotlights look like, they are in two parts, the main spotlight mesh, this is the physical spotlight that emits the light, and the pink triangle (Pin) this gives you an indication of there height for reference, this is useful when you are getting your lights in position as you can physically see them to get them in the right spot.
Here you have your radius, this is how close the spotlights are to your model,
your rotation this does as it says and rotates your lights around your model,
your intensity is how bright your lights are. each as two sliders, the top is subtle the bottom will be more extreme.
For example with radius if I use the top slider it moves the lights further away but only a little, if I use the bottom slider it will move them even further away. be careful as you can push them so far away light no longer hits your model or they disappear through walls. so its a little trail and error.
Here you have colour, position and angle
colour - is self explanatory, you can use the red, green and blue sliders to change the colour of your lights, it can be a bit of trail and error to get the colour you want
Position - you can adjust your lights position in the X, Y and Z axis i.e to the left, right or up or down.
Angles - tilt you lights to the left, right or up or down
Ok now we know the basics of what does what.
There is more stuff you can adjust but I'm still learning so we will only be covering what I use and know which is the basics
When you first spawn in spot lights, they will likely be to close to your model and the light will be a little too bright, so once you spawn them in we can make a few quick adjustment to there radius and light intensity to make that lighting a little less harsh.
See how much better this looks already? a good tip I follow is to lower your exposure in Photomode down, then bring up lights with CharLi so you have a better control of the light on your model.
multiple spotlights spawn in a ring around your model, if you want to use different colour lights ect, I usually converge my lights so they are closer together then rotate them to one side of the model.
Once I have my coloured lights in position I duplicate them, this duplicates all settings from light intensity, radius, colour ect, then I use the rotate function to bring the duplicate lights to the other side of the model and adjust my colours.
here I have made the left lights pink and the right lights a pale blue. looks kind of cool right?
I noticed when having lights on either side, the middle of her face was not lit so I added a single spotlight in front to give her face some light. I also zoomed in using the FOV slider in Photomode. you can zoom with the scroll wheel but this can result in some distortion like making her head look bigger than her body at some angles. using the FOV slider gives you much better quality and far less distortion.
Once you are happy with your lights positions you may find the lights are in the way when trying to get your shot as at some angles the lights will be in the shot blocking your model. to solve this you can hide the mesh and pin we talked about earlier with these icons here. this will hide the lights while still lighting your model. giving you more freedom to get that perfect angle.
you know when you click look at camera in Photomode the body twists with the head, spoiling some poses and causing clipping ect. well with AMM you can make it so only the eyes look or only the head does.
using AMM if you head to tools, then either target your replacer or V then toggle if you want just the head to tilt to look at camera or just the eyes.
Here I have toggled just eyes so now Raven will track me with just her eyes rather than rotating her torso and head as well. if you want to swap to just the head, open AMM select just the head. then close AMM you will need to then toggle the look at camera of and on for it to change.
Another thing to bare in mind is when and if you decide to change the rotation or position of your model in Photomode. your lights will follow V so sometimes this can change your lighting. you may need to adjust rotation ect to get them back where you want them so bare that in mind if you adjust your models position after you have your lights in place.
simply use the tabs at the top to select each light and make any adjustments you need to get your lights back where you want them. un toggle hide mesh or pin if you hid them to make it easier to see where they are when making adjustments then you can re hide them when your done.
Lets say you have a replacer spawned and you want your characters to look at eachother. this can be done using the look at camera feature with a little help from AMM
open AMM and go to tools, now depending on who you want to look at who will decide who to target. in this example I will show both. first I will target Raven (V) and select head only for look at camera. then close AMM. I will rotate the camera to the other side of my replacers head then select V and look at camera. then open AMM and target V. then open Target tools and you should have an option to freeze target.
once you freeze the target close AMM and you will see her head will stay in position and is now looking at Goro
Bare in mind once you freeze a target this way you can not unfreeze despite that being a button, If u change pose while frozen it can get pretty cursed pretty quick. its a pain in the ass. some poses you can swap to without it getting to cursed but again its trail and error. if you need to change pose ect you will have to exit Photomode and re-enter it to unfreeze it can be prety time consuming. if there is away around this I'm unaware of it currently feel free to share if you know.
Here I repeated the look at camera trick with Goro so now my models are looking at each other yay
another thing to bare in mind with CharLi is the lights focus on V so you will notice here Goro is not as well lit as Raven. Spawning more lights and adjusting there position with X, Y and Z will come in handy here. it can take some experimenting though.
Here I have added additional lights and positioned them on Goro so he now has light to.
Here we have taken a photo after doing all our adjustments to lights, there position and making our models look at each other. sometimes there will be an error where it will go darker then you want when you hit space to take your shot. I think its called auto exposure error or something basicaly its the game being poopy its annoying but sometimes unavoidable so you may need to keep adjusting your lights and taking shots until the game behaves.
One final thing I like to do when tweaking my shots in photoshop. I usually adjust exposure. offset and contrast to make the pic really pop
Here I have adjusted the offset up a little and tweaked the contrast up a little. it really softens blacks and the light and makes the pic look better in my opinion.
And there you have it. all the tips and tricks I have learned while doing Virtual Photography. I hope this helps peeps out that want to get into VP.
If you have any questions regarding anything I have said my Asks are always open. I'm happy to talk you through stuff if you need some help. I'm also willing to do screen share discord calls to help you follow along or show you in real time how to do stuff if your interested in something like that drop me a DM.
🚫 Do Not Re-Upload/Edit My Shots/Art Without My Permission🚫
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