aka fill lights or ambient light but yeah, they p much look like colored shadows in a sense and the term differs depending on the use of light and scene's setting (e.g. place, time of the day, etc)


without vs with colored shadows

you just use a bunch of no-shadow lights in SFM and point it at the dark parts

𝒘 𝒉 𝒂 𝒕

i'm assuming you have at least some basic knowledge of SFM like how to spawn models, pose, spawn lights, etc.....otherwise, heres a walkthrough

okay, you spawn a light in the animation set editor


then you disable the shadows







okay you got your shadowless light, now...where do you put it? that's what the next part is about






how to turn this (dont mind the badly rendered shadows, i paintover those, just focus on the lights)






into this



that outcome actually has 4 lights to make up the colored shadow (or i guess "ambient light" in this case because im trying to emulate the lighting of a room during daytime and has large open windows)

i'll show you the settings and placement for each light in this part

all these 4 shadowless lights have these settings







and these is where they are placed

im just showing here what the viewports look like, it has no fill lights yet



for the first one, i usually start with by putting the light under the subject to fake some bounce light coming from the floor




as you see from the previous shot, there are still some dark parts like on the elbow, pants and shadows casted by the hand and torso. I placed the 2nd fill light where i think it will light up those parts which is in the general opposite position of the 1st fill light (above the subject)




seems good?.....for you, maybe *sniff* maybe, for me? NOPE (you can stop reading if you want, the following are just my nitpicks and ａｒｔｉｓｔｉｃ ｌｉｂｅｒｔｉｅｓ)



i still see some dark parts, FILL ALL OF THE SHADOWS. In the previous shot, I can still see a gradient of shadows, and i dont like that in certain cases, in this case, im trying to "flatten" the shadow by diminishing said gradient.... so im gonna dupe another of that fill light and place it on the left side of the subject because thats where the 1st and 2nd fill lights cant reach




this one has the same thought as the above wall of words




okay this last light is more of faking SSS (subsurface scatter, google it. too lazy to google? just put your hands in front of a strong light, you'll see the edges of your fingers look reddish/orange-ish....still too lazy to do that? well that is a mystery that we will take to our graves then, goodbye) i'll prolly talk about this in another badly written guide, but yeah, it generally has the same settings except for the light color which is red orange etc etc, in another guide, like i said

now?

lets go practice lighting

========================


that's basically my thought process when making colored shadows/ fill lights/ ambient light

𝚗𝚘 𝚋𝚕𝚊𝚌𝚔 𝚜𝚑𝚊𝚍𝚘𝚠𝚜 𝚊𝚕𝚕𝚘𝚠𝚎𝚍

uhhh...another tip would be emulating the lighting of the environment, lets say your subject is strolling on the first day of spring, sunny, snow on the ground are just starting to melt and that snow is reflecting the sun light, so the shadows on the subject shouldnt be really dark. Take that one armed medic poster i showed in the first part, hes filled up with orange/red shadows, because hes in the desert in a scorching day, and the sun is reflecting off of the cliff walls and sand

this colored shadow thing is just a stylistic choice tho

comment if you're confused, i'd be happy to clear things up when i can

also, im not a guide maker main and im just doing this because im bored and wanted to throw something in my weekly routine of poster/drawing/model making

if this helped you then...


if not, well...