Welcome to my Lighting 101 tutorial. This tutorial will cover the basics of turning a drab, well-posed screenshot, into an exciting and fresh, well posed screenshot.
We will be lighting this pose (totally not inspired/copied off one of the backgrounds in Gmod 13!)

Now this screenshot is clearly too dark, and the lighting around is too warm. We want this screenshot to be sad and foreboding-we may make use of shadows to further implement these feelings.
We want to utilise cold blue light in order to create a negative atmosphere, but we don't want it too bright, as that will ruin the mood as well.

In the background you can see a wall hanging light. We want to change this into a blue light.
To do this, select the Light tool and change the radius to anumber around 500. If needed, increase or decrease. I suggest not choosing a straight blue, but more a colour with a bit of white or black (move the selector thing in the colour selector to around to the edges except the top left, basically).
You should end up with an effect something like this.

It already looks a lot better, but there is no light on the actual subject of the picture (the crying rebel).
Select the lamp tool. Choose a wide Field of View so that it can cover a wider area, or vice versa. Whatever you feel suits your scene. I suggest sticking with the default 'flashlight01' lamp overlay or the 'soft flashlight'. However, the other effects can come in handy. Using 'caustics' on water is a prime example.

For mine, I will move the lamp to be in front of the rebel (off to the side of the camera). This way, you can't see the lamp, and it will light both the wall and the rebel.

A great feature of the Source engine is dynamic shadows. Source is getting on a bit, but some of the new engines of today don't have dynamic shadowing features.
To utilise this, place a Lamp looking at where you want the shadows to be. Now, move an object that you want shadowed in front of the lamp. Move the prop/s around until the shadow is in the right location.

For a stronger shadow, use a brighter lamp.

Now that you have lit your screenshot it should look more alive and easy to understand. The colours of the lights should have set a mood, which is vital in all poses and scenebuilds.
Without further adieu, here is the finished product:



Thanks for reading, I hope you have learnt something and will use my tips well.

Try to avoid higher brightness settings if you aren't using a low FOV. It often looks really bad.

Are your shadows low-res? Go here: http://facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=1112981

The effect lighting 'props' don't actually light anything up. They are opaque and give the illusion of light because they give a white hue to anything that passes through them. I will speak more on these if I do an Advanced Scenebuilding tutorial.

If you are posing outdoors (on maps that support it), the Sun Entity with the Sunrays post-process gives off light, and the sky editor can change the atmosphere as well.

If the lighting doesn't look right to you, it probably isn't right. Be patient and adjust it. If you can't think straight, save and come back later. [/b] [/u]

I'll leave you with these!







If you want, check out my two other guides!

http://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=121097403

http://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=122048066