I think the best way to explain my point is to show a practical example, so I’ve set up a scene that we’re going to build together. The goal is to end up with something like this:

So let’s get started. Here’s what we currently have:

I’ve gone ahead and added some basic environment lighting. This can be done in many ways, from adding an HDRI to adding light sources based on an existing scene. While I won’t go over what I did in detail, I will introduce a fundamental law in environment lighting (and lighting in general):

We don’t really have much lighting right now, just from the environment, so let’s think about what type of story we want to tell. Clearly the character is thinking about something, maybe while out in the city on a sidewalk.

With that, let’s add a streetlamp:

Looks decent, and we could leave it like that, but I want to make the light a bit more… streetlamp-ish, so let’s use an IES texture.

IES textures are textures that represent light falloff. They’re an amazing tool, and honestly I think they make a good replacement for spot lamps, but that’s just me.

Once we add an IES texture and change the brightness, we get something like this:

Good start, let’s move on.

Sculpting With Light

Now we could leave it like this, but it’s not that interesting. One particular skill in lighting is “sculpting” the outline of your subject with light.

For this example, we’re going to completely separate the character from the background, but you could also partially leave a subject in darkness. Again, it all goes back to storytelling, and the type of story you want to tell!

Let’s first add an area light to highlight one of the edges of the head:

Well, that didn’t make that much of a difference, and that’s because of a feature area lights have called “Beam Spread”

By default, it’s set to 180, which is extremely diffuse. Let’s reduce that:

Now let’s add some extra lights to highlight the left arm/shoulder:

Now this is getting boring, it’s all one color. This is supposed to be a city with a lot of neon lights, so let’s add another one (remember The Off Camera Law?):

Yeah, that doesn’t look good, it just looks like something from the background. What if we turn it into an area light?

A bit too powerful, and reducing the strength doesn’t seem to help. What if we make it a small point light and use it to sculpt out another part of the head?

Still no, is there any other way to add a second col- OH, kick light:

Let’s reduce the strength and add a pink one for some extra variation:

Alright, we’re getting somewhere!

We Need More ✨ Style ✨

Obviously since this is 3D, we can do whatever we want. In fact, alongside the Off Camera Law, there’s another law in 3D:

So let’s add a rim light:

Of course, we have some volumetrics in the scene (maybe you noticed earlier) so we need to disable volumetrics for this light:

Now I want to tweak this further, but I want this light to only affect the subject. Sadly, Blender doesn’t have light linking (seriously, why?), so we’re going to need to isolate this light on its own. Luckily, I have a light manager add-on (you can find them easily), so I can just do that with a single click:

Looks mostly ok, we just need some rim lighting for the head:

Let’s change the color too, maybe blue?

Nah, red?

Not feeling it, pink?

Looks fine, let’s introduce everything else:

Perfect, just need to adjust some of the rim lighting because that right arm is looking weird:

I think we’re done!