QuantumBoy
07-05-2006, 09:01 AM
I picked up this DVD from Gnomon the other day and I just have to say that this is an excellent disk to add to your collection if you are looking into significantly speeding up your lighting workflow when it comes to environmental lighting and rendering.
I have just started to get into creating more complex lighting set-ups for my scenes and Tim' Jones' video has an easy conversational style in his explanation of some pretty neat concepts.
Light rigs
From a sample environment scene he shows how to create the optimal setup for a daylight scene first by using a simple three point light system, then to a light dome for the sun light (key), then finally to vray area lighting rigs. In each instance he would stress how important it is to balance quality versus speed and resources. A GI solution using a vray area light might make the render look absolutely beautiful but if the shot took 7 min. to render instead of 50 sec. for a scanline renderer and times that by how many frames you send to the farm for completion it might not be worth it.
Rendering Passes
This is where I think where the real "a ha!" momoents came for me. Granted, I have a limited background in compositing but he went through step-by-step to how to set up the different comp passes for ultimate control in Digital Fusion: the key light, fill light, bounce, practical source lighting for night shots, reflections, etc.
He uses a technique where you render out the lighting as rla's (or you could easily use HDR images) and control the lighting of each layer in comp for the ultimate control of the scene instead of re-rendering and tweaking each light in the scene over and over. After getting to the lighting that you want in DF you calculate the info from the composited layers and start to match the original lights in the 3d program to what you have tweaked in the comp and then you are able to render a final pass.
I honestly think they you don't really need to know/have the DF compositor program (and 3dmax Vray for the renders) to get the same results. You could easily use something like Shake or even After Effects (even though that'll be tougher since it's not node based) and a good renderer.
Night-time lighting
Pretty good step-by-step following of how to set up the shot with almost the exact same textures/materials (including the sky material) and lights in the daylight scene with just some color/intensity tweaks and some extra practical lights.
Sunset Lighting
Same as above except dealing with a sunset setting. What I really through what was neat was how easy it was for him to start "riffing" off the comp to get some other effects or lighting pretty easily in the scene so fast: lighting glows that make the mountains look like they are glowing with back light, adding a simple ground fog that almost makes it look like it could be used as a z-depth map, going back to the daylight scene and creating some fake sun rays casting into the scene.
IMO: overall a great purchase for me. :)
jLA
I have just started to get into creating more complex lighting set-ups for my scenes and Tim' Jones' video has an easy conversational style in his explanation of some pretty neat concepts.
Light rigs
From a sample environment scene he shows how to create the optimal setup for a daylight scene first by using a simple three point light system, then to a light dome for the sun light (key), then finally to vray area lighting rigs. In each instance he would stress how important it is to balance quality versus speed and resources. A GI solution using a vray area light might make the render look absolutely beautiful but if the shot took 7 min. to render instead of 50 sec. for a scanline renderer and times that by how many frames you send to the farm for completion it might not be worth it.
Rendering Passes
This is where I think where the real "a ha!" momoents came for me. Granted, I have a limited background in compositing but he went through step-by-step to how to set up the different comp passes for ultimate control in Digital Fusion: the key light, fill light, bounce, practical source lighting for night shots, reflections, etc.
He uses a technique where you render out the lighting as rla's (or you could easily use HDR images) and control the lighting of each layer in comp for the ultimate control of the scene instead of re-rendering and tweaking each light in the scene over and over. After getting to the lighting that you want in DF you calculate the info from the composited layers and start to match the original lights in the 3d program to what you have tweaked in the comp and then you are able to render a final pass.
I honestly think they you don't really need to know/have the DF compositor program (and 3dmax Vray for the renders) to get the same results. You could easily use something like Shake or even After Effects (even though that'll be tougher since it's not node based) and a good renderer.
Night-time lighting
Pretty good step-by-step following of how to set up the shot with almost the exact same textures/materials (including the sky material) and lights in the daylight scene with just some color/intensity tweaks and some extra practical lights.
Sunset Lighting
Same as above except dealing with a sunset setting. What I really through what was neat was how easy it was for him to start "riffing" off the comp to get some other effects or lighting pretty easily in the scene so fast: lighting glows that make the mountains look like they are glowing with back light, adding a simple ground fog that almost makes it look like it could be used as a z-depth map, going back to the daylight scene and creating some fake sun rays casting into the scene.
IMO: overall a great purchase for me. :)
jLA