#cg lighting

[lorddemolatron]

Back on JP FFBE and this happens CG lighting mine im on shock

[noodlehouse]

Don’t mind me. I’m just posting my finals LOL

Here is my Lighting final!! I modeled all the props using maya, and rendered using arnold!! This class was super fun!

[nestorprado]

Go Physically-based or Go Home

Needless to say I’ve been always pushing physically based rendering ever since it became feasible for “normal” workstations to handle it in a decent maner. 

In the last 3 years (aprox.) it has always been something that has been given more and more thought and talk. I guess Solid Angle’s mainstream presentation of the Arnold Renderer really started making people take sides on what was the right path to take. Basically when ray-tracing was reborn and people were faced with it's advantages once again.

During years it was as if there was two sides: Renderman (and renderman-like) rendering engines and "Ray-tracers" (biased or unbiased). But it finally seems as if that is going to be a thing of the past. 

Pixar used GI in their Monsters University Feature as well as their short film The Blue Umbrella. Last year they came out with RMS 4.0 and RPS 17.0 that had major changes in terms of new rendering techniques aimed at physically plausible rendering as they like to call it. And just today they were announcing the new RPS 18.0 with improvements like:

RenderMan Pro Server 18.0 is the next in an ongoing series of rapid functional releases of Pixar's core rendering technology. Important innovations, enhancements, and new features include:

Path tracing 

Accelerated re-rendering

Geometric Area Lights

Enhanced volumes

Beam diffusion subsurface scattering

Also these articles also confirm some of my reasoning:

Throwing shade: how Pixar changed the way light works for 'Monsters University': Inside the studio's new Global Illumination system

"What if we made these lights just work?" - DOP Jean-Claude Kalache

Instead of building reflections and shadows manually, why not do it automatically every time an artist placed a light source? "It was as if every time you took a photograph, you built a new camera," Kalache says. "It takes away from the art of taking a picture. We wanted to stop being engineers and be artists." 

http://www.theverge.com/2013/6/21/4446606/how-pixar-changed-the-way-light-works-for-monsters-university

Monsters University: rendering physically based monsters

(Christophe Hery on difference between old approaches in RPS 16.0 and the new approches with RPS 17.0)

As sometimes under the previous setups, there were hundreds of lights in a shot, “[...] it made the communication between lighters [...] much more complicated and everyone had to relearn each time by simply turning lights on and off and seeing the effect they were having,” 

http://www.fxguide.com/featured/monsters-university-rendering-physically-based-monsters/

Finally some personal rant in case anyone is still reading :D

As a CG Lighting Artist I’m interested in LIGHTING not glitch-solving or cheating. Although it inevitably comes with the job it’s nice to be able to more and more focus on the ART of Lighting. And the only way that can happen is shifting to a physically-based paradigm.

The Art of CG-Lighting has to change from being able to recreate what light really does in the real world, to working with light as a real cinematographer or DP would. There lies the true essence of lighting.

So seeing all this gets me a little more excited about working with Renderman again in new projects!

more @ nestorprado.com 

[nestorprado]

Book recommendation: Light for Visual Artists by Richard Yot

Today I’m going to give a book recommendation for anyone who is into lighting being for fine arts, photography or CG. Light for Visual Artists by Richard Yot

Like 3 years ago when I was starting to get serious about becoming a CG Lighter I tried to find as many resources as I could through the internet. Books, blogs, anything really. There are a lot of resources but most of them seem to touch on lighting from a very fixed perspective: photography manuals, lighting for films and tv, or lighting for CG...

I remember I stumbled upon this artist's website: Itchy Animation by Richard Yot. In his tutorial section he had created these great Chapters about lighting in general and for digital artists.

It was a really clear, straightforward and to the point resource, with simple schematics of all different types of light, shadows and such. And I read through all of it at the time. I even made it into a little document that I carried around for reference.

At that time he had a note saying that he would turn this into a book in the future and that it would be more complete and so-forth. I had it in my Amazon Wishlist for years and I never got around to getting it. So my surprise was today when I found it on my doorstep as a gift given to me because of the “Diada de Sant Jordi” (Gràcies Inés!)

What I think that makes this book a good companion for anyone who wants to learn more about lighting or just to brush up on some concepts is that it is very easy and well structured, and the whole content is original made by Richard Yot, which I think is amazing. All the little diagrams, renders and pictures are Richard’s and that gives it that special almost “handcrafted” feel to it.

Diagrams of different types and qualities of light.

Exercises for beginners with original diagrams and artwork.

So I would recommend going to his site and checking out the resource and if you like it and want a extended version just buy it. And if you want to check out his work on Behance: behance.net/richardyot

Well! That is all for now! I have a lot of things that I want to write about but only in time when I can talk a little more about them! (I can only say it involves a very important space ship ... :D )

[nestorprado]

It's nice to read something that gives you assurance on your beliefs, and when it comes to CG lighting... I couldn't agree with this interview more...

I always try to stress this to people that I talk about this too and although it might seem obvious, people who are beginning to learn this art form aren't fully aware of what they are really learning. It's not about how this program works or what hacks I have to do to light an egg to match it to a live action one. It's a lot more than that. And learning the tools that closely and more accurately mimic the behavior is a must, but in any case it is only the beginning.... 

Some quotes from the article that might make you interested in reading it:

[...] is there a difference between the way live-action DPs approach lighting and what we do in the computer?

(On the question: what do you look for in a lighter?) 

For full CG, I’d look for good artistic sensibility along with the technical skills you look for in any lighter.

Pixar’s Jeremy Vickery told me that he’d like to get to the point where he could recruit people with a background in cinematography or illustration, not CG software.

I could not agree with this more:

Lighting workflow wants to mimic live-action cinematography more closely. Fewer CG cheats will be required, and you will want to constrain yourself to what’s possible on a real set. In other words, you won’t want to place your area light underneath the floor and turn shadows off: that sort of thing. 

So it was refreshing to read this article and I hope you find it useful as well.

[theconspec-blog-blog]

This past weekend I had the awesome opportunity to participate in Cut and Paste 2011. I competed in the 3d round where I had 20 minutes to create an image based on the theme of "My Playground". I chose to create a hamster cage to infer the "primal" similarities between humans and animals (thats my story and I'm sticking to it!). This image was created using Maya 2012 and Mental Ray.

[theconspec-blog-blog]

Rendered out a small time lapse animation of the light moving in the scene.