Blender – (Cycles vrs Blender render) – Default light strenght parameter value

[Ronald Vermeij]

Hello All
I’m currently learning the art of lighting in Blender. I’m trying to make sense of the following parameter:

 
Default Blender scene, Default Blender light-source (point), Blender Render engine
Its Energy parameter = 1 <one>

Default Blender scene, Default Blender light-source (point), Cycles Render engine
Its Energy parameter = 100 <hunderd>

My questions:
A – Why does the exact same light source (situated inside the exact same default scene)
have different values in Blender Render and Cylces render?

B – What kind/type of  energy is regulated by it? (in which amounts / units?)

C – Does this value represent any science”-based light-strenght parameter like:
– https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_intensity
– https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lux
or….  is this just a randomly chosen render-algoritm input value with which one has to fiddle around with until  one gets the light right, through the process of trail, watch render output and error and try again?

D – Where can I find more background information about both Blender rendering processes?

[Jonathan Lampel]

Here’s an article that does a better job of explaining Cycles lighting values than I can: https://blendergrid.com/news/cycles-physically-correct-brightness

Usually though I just use whatever looks best artistically, using a histogram and the filmic false color as my guides. 

[Ronald Vermeij]

Wauw.. This was exactly what I was looking for!
Cycles light info blendered with the right kind of lux-science-facts.

Thanks for the reference to this article and the BlenderGrid website!

[Thibaut Bourbon]

@jlampel I’m wondering: can you use a histogram while tweaking the light (i.e in the viewport) ? Or do you need to render first and check the histogram then ?

[Author]

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