Playing around with these different light sources to really nail the atmosphere I wanted – using an IES profile for the table lamp gives me this much more authentic light pattern than default spots would. I love how it creates these natural falloff patterns and catches the edges of furniture in ways that feel real instead of that typical game-engine uniformity.
I experimented with the lamp’s intensity and falloff settings in order to get that perfect balance. I wanted to illuminate what needed to be shown while still maintaining deep shadows in the corners of the room.
Working with multiple light sources turned out to be key to getting the exact mood right. I’ve got the IES-driven table lamp doing the heavy lifting for that main warm glow, then I’m using that rectangle light with the channel isolation for the bed sheets, and there’s this subtle ambient light that just helps soften those completely black areas without ruining the darkness. It’s like painting with light – each source adds its own little contribution to the final look.
Working with light channels proved really crucial for achieving that subtle illumination I needed for the bedsheets. I set up a rectangle light at the top of the scene. By assigning this light to channel 1 and setting the bedsheet material to only receive light from that channel, I managed to only illuminate what I wanted to have lit up.
I spent a while getting these subsurface values just right for the bed sheets -I wanted that subtle translucent quality you get with real fabric. The Mean Free Path Distance at 1.5 and World Unit Scale at 0.1 create that initial scatter effect, while the transmission settings (Extinction Scale 1.0, Normal Scale 0.08) control how light penetrates the material. That Scattering Distribution at 0.93 spreads the effect through the fabric, and I’m using a Dual Specular setup with different roughness values (0.75 and 1.0) to get two distinct specular responses that blend together at 0.85 in the Lobe Mix. Those pinkish tones in the Surface Albedo and Mean Free Path Color give me that warm, slightly translucent quality you see in real bedsheets when light hits them.