Any tips on lighting this animation?

[Andrew W]

I like the rim lights, but I think it's much too brightly front lit. I'd move your key light around to light more from the left, which would cast more interesting shadows across the face as well as "modelling" the face a bit better. I'd also look at adding a low intensity blue tinted fill light 90 degrees around from the key and tilted up to light the underside of his face a bit. Perhaps tint the key light a yellowish colour.

If I may suggest 2 movies (both black and white) I would suggest Night of The Hunter photographed by Stanley Cortez and The Third Man shot by Robert Krasker both of which feature beautiful, very directional lighting.

Godd luck

Andrew

[jeremybirn]

Yeah, what he said. Good start, but sliding the key to get some directionality is the first step. In the rendered torso, head, or limbs, look for a "gradient" from light to dark to define their roundness.

The telephone gets lost. Maybe some of the rim could glint off it, or maybe if that becomes his shadow side add some green fill from its screen or keypad onto him.

Eyes and mouth interior both seem to be glowing. Get your key light angle worked out first of course, but take a careful look to make sure there isn't an unshadowing light or something.

Rim lighting is a stylistic choice, not a rule. If you have a character that's supposed to a be a robot (not something really translucent), and you're against a black background and don't need any help making him pop against the set, there's no law you need lots of rim light on both sides. There are places (screen right arm frame 250) where the rims get hyper and become more like a key, maybe a shadow is broken or missing to allow that. You could use a rim to either help the directionality on the key side, or make the shadow side pop against the black after you slide the key, but there's no law you need to keep both. Maybe you'll end up losing the key side rim and just adding a kicker that wraps a bit more but doesn't hit white on the key side, or put a specular light or reflection there to get some highlights out of that shader.

-jeremy

[playmesumch00ns]

What they said. At the very end, where the hand comes toward the camera there's a very strange rim effect on his fingers, like a halo. Perhaps just restrict the rim to one side and lower the key and fill to make them more menacing

[daminator]

Excellent! Thanks for the advice. I've never spent much time looking into lighting as it's animation that rocks my boat, but it's great to get some tips from you guys.

Here's the before and after from the comments I've read so far. Am I going in the right direction? Anything to change?

And would you do anything with the background, or leave it as it is?

Thanks again .. here are the images ...

before
http://www.daminator.com/images/before.jpg

after
http://www.daminator.com/images/after.jpg

[jeremybirn]

Hmmm... Not really getting better yet, still looks very flat and frontally lit - could you hide all your other lights, and show us the image lit only from the Key light?

-jeremy

[daminator]

Sure. Here are my Key and Fill lights:

Key
http://www.daminator.com/images/key.jpg

Fill
http://www.daminator.com/images/fill.jpg

The eyes have some self illumination. Hope that's not too much of a cardinal sin.

[jeremybirn]

Thanks, you could slide the key light further around to the left side and backwards, make it about 2x brighter (it should be much brighter than the fill), and make sure it is self-shadowing correctly. The rim light should be moved to the screen-left side as well to help the directionality - we'll see if you need another rim light later, for now move it. Once you have the rim on the screen-left side, you might un-link it from the screen right arm, so it's only on the left, and also make sure it is self-shadowing. The self-illumination on the eyes would be OK if it were 10% as bright, it's just too flat now.

The fill light should not be too bright. Maybe a little fill light is needed, but keep it dim and don't give it exactly the same color as the key. Also, please mention what software are you using, and whether you can set the amount of specular and diffuse from a light as a percentage or if it is a boolean.

-jeremy

[Andrew W]

Additionally I think with the adjustment you'll start to see much more interesting shadowing happening over the character. He's a lovely model to cast great shadows.

Slightly OT but I've noticed a trend amongst animators to always light their characters too much, just so we can see every lovingly placed key-frame. Don't be afraid of the dark! ;)

To try and convince you to be daring below are three images culled from a Google images search for "film noir". Maybe they are a little extreme for what you want, but see how aggressive you can be with the key light and shadow and still be able to "read" the detail?

http://www.angelfire.com/oh2/writer/widmarkcigarettelarge.jpg

http://www.moderntimes.com/palace/noir_image/hire.jpg

http://www.westworld.com/~mmw/rm/images/gun.gif

Good luck

Andrew

[daminator]

Thanks guys. Here's the latest version based on your suggestions. I hope I'm following your instructions correctly.

http://www.daminator.com/images/update.jpg

I've put the eye 'self illumination down to 10 (from 50) .. but they seem a little lost now.

The fill isn't the same colour as the key. The Key is a yellow tint and the fill is blue.

I'm using 3D Studio Max and I have no idea if it can do the things you asked Jeremy, but I'm guessing it can :)

And Andrew, I will not doubt fall into the category of lighting to show the animation rather than looking nice. This piece is for a competition for the 10 second club and I may even get marks against me for having nice lighting, but if it looks good on my show reel, that's all I'm bothered about.

Damian

[jeremybirn]

You might try raising the key higher, so there's more shadow under his head/nose and between body sections. Then use exclusive lighting or light linking to take the rim light coming from screen left completely off the screen-right arm (his left arm doesn't need the armpit rim, that ball joint seems to be glowing for no reason - I hope this doesn't mean the mouth interior glows when it's opened, too...)

The eyes are too symetrical: try darkening the self illumination on his left eye, and make the highlight brighter on his right eye. The main highlights should be more on the key (screen left) side on both eyes.

Try to get more specularity on the key side, he's looking too perfectly dry and diffuse; this might be a shader (material) problem. The eye material and texture needs a tweak as well - maybe more steel-gray or metalic looking, or really anything less like an attempt at a human eye, if you know what I mean.

-jeremy

[daminator]

Hello again, here's the latest version ...

http://www.daminator.com/images/update2.jpg

I've raised the key light and brought the fill light down below. I had them the other way around originally to try and get a creepy under lighting effect to go with the sinister sound file, but I'm happy to move things around if this is better.

I excluded his left (screen right) arm and hands from the back light.

I was scared of loosing the readability of his eyes, so I made a duplicate of the key, excluded his eyes from the original, included them in the new one and made the new 'eye-key' a bit brighter.

I increased the fill light very slightly because, again, I'm scared of loosing readability of it all. This is going to be rendered at 320x240 for the competition, and all they judge is the quality of character animation, so I want it to look as nice as I can for my own satisfaction, but don't want to have the thing too dark to see what I've animated.

That's exactly what Andrew was saying animators are like .. I'm so transparent :-)

Do you think I should add some sort of simple gradient to the background or anything to bring it out more, or is that just the paranoid, floodlight inclined animator in my fighting to get out?

I've played with the secularity of the main textures, but I'm not too hot with texturing either, so don't know how well that's gone.

Thanks again for all the feedback! I have to do the final render in a day or two, so it's great having people who know what they're talking about helping me out on the bits that I don't have a clue about. Lets me spend more time getting the animation its self right.

Cheers

Damian

[daminator]

Here's a render of the animation with the current light settings (apart from the green lights around the phone as I haven't attached them yet .. they are just set on that one test frame I'm using at the moment).

Full animation (http://www.daminator.com/anim/wip/10sec84.mpg) 1.4 Mb

The flickering you see is just due to the shadow map sizes being too low (I hope).

It looks to me like I need more light on the right hand side .. especially on the first section as he walks in. But what do I know, I'm just an animator worried about losing his lip sync :-)

[Andrew W]

I think you need to add more of the rim back on the right. Now we can't see the phone (though the greenish glow from the buttons is nice). If you look at the photos I posted though they are highly contrasty and contain a lot of black you can always read the important bits of the image.

Take a look at the top photo especially. There you've got two key lights almost, ie the right side rim is quite dominant. you might try this approach on your character, it might help define the screen right arm and phone a bit (plus show off your animation better ;) ). Be careful not to cast two crossing shadows on the character if you do this, as it's ugly. Take that top photo for reference of light placement, and intensity.

I'm not sure about the specularity you've added. It's made him look a little plasticy, whereas I quite liked the texturing before. If you want to add some spec, I'd suggest turning the roughness up a bit to widen the highlights. He's a bit snooker-ball spec at the moment.

I don't know if this will help you but here's a couple of tuts that might help you conceptually with your light placement.

http://www.3drender.com/light/3point.html

which is Jeremy Birn's basic lighting tut,

www.andrew-whitehurst.net.3point.html

which is mine. I took the idea of using oranges as the models from what I think is the best book on cinematic lighting - "Painting with Light" by John Alton who was a great film noir cinematographer (T-Men amongst others). If you can find a copy of that I think it will prove invaluable.

Hope this helps and doesn't confuse.

All the best with the final render, if you're setting it off today.

Andrew

[jeremybirn]

I think you're almost there, but your fears are right: you're losing too much of the animation.

There's two ways to fix the lack of contrast on screen right: add a little fill light or kicker on the screen right side, or add some kind of background. If you add a background, keep it really subtle and add a little pool of light behind him, screen right, but leave it almost black on the left. If you add some fill light on the screen right, that could be a place for the low angle or creepy color. Either way: yes, the arm should "read" in your final output - I'm glad you lost that opposite-side rim that appeared to be shining right through him, but now you still need to define his profile somehow.

Also remember: he's moving through space during the shot. If you want to change the lighting in a particular area, such as adding a rim around where the hand comes close to the camera, it's OK to add an extra light there without having it hit him everywhere.

-jeremy

[daminator]

Thanks a lot you two. I'm enjoying playing with the lighting so much that I'm not spending the time I need to get the animation right. Got to be doing my final render soon and I'm sat playing around as though I've not got a list of animation fixes in front of me :-)

I've tried to keep you both happy. I have added a background, and a more subtle back light hitting the right that is a similar colour to the background image.

Do you think I've done too much? Is it looking ok?

I'm posting three images to show the light at various stages.

I also added a slight glow to the most highlighted areas.

http://www.daminator.com/images/update3-f40.jpg
http://www.daminator.com/images/update3-f204.jpg
http://www.daminator.com/images/update3-f278.jpg

[lazzhar]

I think your doing a good job.
While I look to your last composition, the red of BG attracts my eyes a lot and push the character back. I think you have to desaturate the red or change it to blue cuz it gives better depth to the comp.

Good luck.

[jeremybirn]

I like how the chest/torso area shows up. Good lighting, texture, definition - that's an example for the rest of him.

Get rid of (or greatly reduce and soften) the shadow from the nose onto the left arm. You can do this by making two copies of your key light, one exclusively linked to the nose, the other to the rest of him.

The background doesn't work now. Maybe you need to make the eyes and background match and share the same color scheme. Maybe you need to make the fill lights more red to match the background. Maybe you just need to make it less pure in hue and less saturated.

-jeremy

[Andrew W]

Lighting definitely a lot better. I still feel he's a bit too speccy, or the spec high-light is too tight.

I too have reservations about the red background. i like the patterning and fall-off, but you should consider a blue or more muted hue - anything that doesn't leap out at you.

I'm also thinking a little more rim on the right will help define the arm and phone a bit better.

You're so nearly there.

One last thing, if you're going to use a coloured back-drop try and have a bit of that reflected in the eyes. Consider adding a single light a little above the camera and linked exclusively to the eyes too. This eyelight should add just a little sparkle to the eyes which will make the character seem more alive. You'd be amazed what a difference this makes. You want to aim for a tight, very hot spec highlight on the eye. this is a lighting trick which actually makes a big difference to the animation - it really does add life to the character.

Take a look at this familiar face (well, eye) and see what I mean.

http://www.echonews.com/750/images/monsters_inc_mike.jpg

You're doing great, you only need a few little tweaks and you've got a great piece of lighting. But concentrate on your animation if time is tight. Don't get distracted by the non-essential work (unless we can tempt you ito the land of the TDs that is....)

Good luck.

Andrew

[daminator]

Thanks everyone.

I rendered the animation last night with those settings to test it out ...

Latest anim (http://www.daminator.com/anim/wip/10sec90.mpg)

I think I over did the glow highlight thing. I'll try turning it down, but may be better just taking it off. It doesn't look very subtle at the moment.

I'm not sure why I should stop the face casting shadows on the arm. Doesn't it look better to have the lights acting as they should rather than not having shadows where they should be?

Not sure what to do with back ground. Could try making it a blue tint like the first fill light and change the colour of the added right hand back light, or could just try desaturating it as it is. I'm running out of time to spend much time playing around as I have to get the animation nailed as a priority.

Thanks again! :)

[jeremybirn]

These threads are fun - perhaps lighters who take notes all day like giving them at night? Now that you've got a basic look, the important things to check are that the facial anim reads, the eye highlights work, and there's nothing distracting going on throughout the clip that would pull people's eyes away from the animation.

If too much shadow map cheating makes you nervous (pulling nose shadow off arm), think about a little fill light and/or a slightly softer key shadow to make that transition back into black in the arm less distracting - right now that "dancing shadow" on the arm is sometimes more eye-catching than the facial animation (we're looking at the flashing arm on "old friend for dinner"), but if it weren't so crisp and black it might not be a problem. If you did split the nose out into a separate light, it would just be the nose sections, not the head, and they could still be self shadowing, but that shadow just wouldn't hit the arm - to viewers this cheat should just look as if you had a different key light angle and the nose shadow missed the arm.

Just tweak in your compositing program or photoshop to see what you like for the background: red has the 'evil' thing going for it (although I'd desaturate a bit if you stick with red), blue ties together the color scheme and helps the robot pop in the foreground more (but not too bright a blue), gray and black would be more 'film noire' - do a few quick comps and decide for yourself, as long as it's not distracting I'm sure there's more than one "right" answer.

In the middle of the shot when he steps forwards and turns towards camera, that looks good and reads well. Maybe, in the rear of the set, a little kick of light is needed on the face, to make him visible in the first half of the shot, before he steps forward. If you're going to leave a colored backdrop there, then that could motivate a little glint of light onto the dark side of his nose as well.

-jeremy

[daminator]

Thanks again

This is a render from a few changes I made before I'd read everything. Hopefully it's getting closer now. Is the background ok or too bright or saturated?

New (http://www.daminator.com/anim/wip/10sec96.mpg)

I see what you mean about the shadow on the arm Jeremy. I'll get to that if I have time.

Thanks for the tip on the eyes Andrew. I think I messed up a bit as they look to bright again now (all self illumination has been taken off, just too direct with the light maybe), but I like the highlight. I'll play with the eye texture again if I have time so that I can bring the tone back down without loosing the sparkle.

I intensified the glowing eyes thing at the end, but I may take that out. Looks a bit cheesy for a clip like this .. maybe?

That glint in the eye really helps keep the eye direction. The darting eye movements I've added don't work too well I don't think, but I'll try modifying them and if they still don't look right I'll take them out.

And I'd better double check when the deadline is :-)

[Ergi]

>>>These threads are fun - perhaps lighters who take notes all day like giving them at night?<<<

Its the funniest things i have heard all day.

good luck with the anim damian

[Andrew W]

You can read everything you need to now without losing the drama in the lighting - which is very good.

It's hard to tell on my soundless not too good mediaplayer (I suffer for using Linux at work I tell you) but you could make the eye highlight a wee bit hotter, or it could be that the mpeg codec and my computer are conspiring to hide the detail from me.

Personally I'm still not so fond of the spec. I'm guessing you like it? OK fair enough.

You must be about to (or already have) pressed the magic render button so good luck with your competition. Take a look at your new render compared to that in your first post and see how much better you've made it. You should be very proud - great stuff.

All the best

Andrew

[daminator]

Hi Andrew

The only reason I haven't changed the spec yet is because you and Jeremy didn't seem to be in agreement about that, but you were on most other things, so I thought I'd fix the things that definitely needed changing before getting to the things that were a matter of taste.

I've got a few hours left for last minute stuff before the final render though, so I'll tone it down for you a bit.

As for the shadow on the left arm .. do you think that just lowering the density on the shadows in that area will work? (that's to Andrew and Jeremy .. or anyone else who's reading).

Here's the latest render .. mainly animation changes, but the eyes are different too .. do they look ok or have I over done them?

update (http://www.daminator.com/anim/wip/10sec100.mpg)

Again, thanks for everyones help .. this has been a very education thread for me :)

[stew]

Thanks for this thread - I found it very interesting to see the lights develop in the scene. I'm also trying to improve my lighting and I think I learnt a few things here.

[Andrew W]

I like this latest version best of all, I approve of the toned down spec. The only thing I'd maybe suggest changing would be to make the self illumination of the eyes a little less, let the light in the scene light them and I'd think about making the eye light spec tighter, but the intensity is good. If you can, maybe just set your eye-light to affect the spec, so it doesn't affect the diffuse level of the eyes. This way you can control all the elements of the eyes seperately.

I'd look at changing the shadow density, or adding (dare I say it) another fill light. It could do with a little something. If you add a light that illuminates that arm you will get better modelling of the shapes than you would by just tweaking the shadow colour.

Good stuff, glad I was able to help a little.

Andrew

[daminator]

Hi Stew .. glad you've learnt a few things from these experts too.

Andrew .. Do you mean that you like the spec in the last render? Because I haven't changed it yet :) Or did you just mean that you approve of me toning it down a little now?

There's no self illumination on the eyes any more, so maybe I should tone down the lighting on those a little.

For the arm shadow problem .. if I add another fill, would it only light the arm, or the whole scene? And should it be blue like the other fills or a yellow colour like the key? And I assume the the fill would be coming from screen left?

Thanks again!!!

[Andrew W]

Yeah, I meant have a look at the spec now if you can..only if you have time. The main thing I think is to make the eye-light only affect the specular of the corneas, not the diffuse at all. That's where I suspect your getting the extra illumination from.

As to the extra fill light, I'd make it only illuminate the arm, and I'd probably make it blue and from left and underneath a bit I think - as if it were some kind of bounce off the floor or something. It just needs lifting and modelling just a little.

You're so nearly there. this is looking very good, and it adds to your animation!

Best

Andrew

[daminator]

Thanks again Andrew.

I finished my animation tweaks and spent another couple of hours with the lighting. For my own gratification, here are the before and after pictures together.

http://www.daminator.com/images/before.jpg
http://www.daminator.com/images/update4.jpg

I'm sure it could be improved, but I'm damn happy with that! I'm about to hit the render button for the competition, but I almost don't care how I do in it now. I've learnt so much about lighting this last few days that the little project would have been more than worth while even if I'd never placed a key frame.

Thanks again for everyone's advice. I'm so glad I posted here for lighting suggestions now :)

I'll post the final animation when it's rendered.

[Andrew W]

That's great work. You should be pleased. The eyes look fab now, and it's a big improvement that you have that little bit more detail on the left arm. Really good.

A

[daminator]

Thanks Andrew,

I am very pleased. Hope my animation of worthy of the lighting :)

Here's the link to the final render ..

Submitted (http://www.daminator.com/anim/wip/dam-2-04.mpg)

[lazzhar]

Waw, the eyes are nice, too organic though, but honestly very nice job.
Good luck.

[jeremybirn]

Looks great, congratulations! I hope you can keep all the intermediate versions on-line, so that other people can read through this thread and follow your project's development. For your demo reel, you might extend your animation by one frame, so that you have a stronger last frame without the motion blur.

Cheers,

-jeremy

[daminator]

Good idea

Cheers Jeremy and thanks for all the help!

I was very happy with how the eyes came out too lazzhar. I don't have a problem with them looking too organic, just happy that they look nice and read well.

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