our hole is an awesome hole

We've all been there: 50M gil burning white hot in your pocket when a set of Fallen Angel Wings pop in the market board, its siren's call luring you. Now you're utterly fashionable, but regrettably with barely half a mil Gil to your name. What to do?

Well, do not give to despair, my glamorous friend! You can actually build a perfect black background studio to show off your feathery acquisition.

You'll need:

1 x FC Room, or an Apartment

3 x White Screens

1-2 x platforms of your choice

4-5 Soot Black dyes

1 - Setup

Place your White Screens in parallel, in order to completely cover a wall. (This will give you some leeway with angles and point light placement.)

Make sure you leave a considerable gap, of maybe half the length of the base of a White Screen. This is important, as you'll see very soon.

Place the objects you'll use as platforms in front and center of the white panel line, making sure it overlaps with the middle panel. This is where you'll stand: In the example below I floated two Combed Wool Rugs, but any contiguous platform will do (think tables, half-partitions, etc.)

Dye all the objects with Soot Black. No need for the expensive stuff.

Now let's reduce the ambient light, setting it to zero; we'll use only GPose lighting for shots.

2 - What's the catch?

Well, you see - most partitions, like the Blank Riviera partition, have a collision box set around them. If a camera touches it, its path is altered so it doesn't go behind the partition.

White Screens, however, do NOT have a collision box - so you can move your camera behind the partitions, and place your light sources there.

Here's how it looks in gpose - notice how the camera just goes through the partition:

Amazing, right? So the trick is to place light sources behind the panels, in the gap between the back of the panels and the wall; this way, the light won't hit the front surfaces.

The final result is a shot with a perfect pitch-black background, where rim lights can be applied with very intense results:

You can place Type-1 light points in front can offer very gentle illumination, while not hitting the background panels:

Another possible setup is to move the character away from the background, and place the light sources around it:

That'll result in shots like this one:

You can also place a point light between the character and the background, to create a halo effect:

You can also use the Halo effect to create ambiance:

The opportunities for dramatic lighting are endless.

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