[Thomas]

Part Three: setting-up the lighting.

To light our scene, we will use a single light source, which will simulate the light emitted by the flame of the candle. Note that by default, Carrara has created a "Distant Light" (as shown on the previous snapshot), that we will turn into a "Bulb" type light source, and that we will position above the wick.

Since we are in the light parameters, let's change the light falloff, by modifying its brightness: from 400 inches by default to 40 inches, and its falloff range that we'll set to approx. 50%. The result will be a light that will not illuminate very far and that will fall off progressively. A first render with the defined light parameters.

As you can see, the shadow of the candle that is projected by the light on the floor is very sharp, and does not look very natural. In the Properties Panel of the Bulb light source, on the "Effects" tab, we will check "Enable Soft Shadows" (using the default parameters). Just do another render: it looks much better already! Soft Shadows on.

The last detail to tweak: if we look at the previous render, we can see that the plane and the black environment background are not perfectly blended. This is due to the ambient light of Carrara, set by default to 20%. We just need to suppress it. Let's click on "Scene" in the Scene Tree, and then open the "Ambient" pull-down menu by clicking in the small triangle to the left of the title. Let's then input the "Brightness" value to 0 (zero). Our lighting is now ready. Ambient light deactivated. In most scenes, it's better to set this value to zero.