Lighting Setup for Texturing?

[EricChadwick]

Depends on how you use the character. When attempting photo-realism, in most cases the shaders are tailored to each lighting setup, as well as the lights being tailored to each character in that lighting situation.

However, just for texturing alone, it helps to avoid illumination altogether, so you can easily see all areas of the model. When it comes to a whole shader... specularity, bump, reflection, etc.... that should be done with the lighting you wish to use for the actual rendered scene.

The opinions of one guy.

[tonygib]

posm: hmm, ok interesting, basically that leads to doing a complete lighting set-up first and then texturing.

Anyone else? where for out thou Leigh?

[tonygib]

So, what gives guys. Either no one out there knows, or those that do aren't talking :rolleyes:

[Slater]

My way of working, take it or leave it.

First I do a basic light setup, dont get too worried about the placement or light color yet...as long as you can see what your texturing. Then I do all my texture work until I am satisfied. Then I tweak the materials and lights together to get the final look that I want.

Hope this helps.

[Riddlaz]

When making shaders what I normally do is make a brighter setup and often times use lightracer but just use a lower ray sample such as 100 and the rendering time wont really make a difference and you will get more of an evenly illuminated object and lightracer is also a plus if your using diffusion maps, than I make sure that specular highlights are rather dominant in the light setup as well that way you get a better idea if you need to make changes to your settings or specular maps and not always but when making an object that has noticeable translucency effects such as human skin, leaves or other organic objects I also enable shadows to make sure that the translucency effects show up properly in shadow areas since I fake these effects using mostly shadow/light falloffs with combinations of luminosity, translucency and self-illumination attributes.

Laters,
Riddlaz C.

[illuxon]

hey guys i was also looking out for the answer to this one coz the last scene i was making i had to texture a lot of stuff b4 actually putting it into the scene. so the effect of the lighting wasnt that apparent on the textures.

Tamseel Alvi

[tonygib]

cool, thanks for that guys. While you all have a slightly different approach, I think in a nut shell, you are all basically saying the same thing. In that you do at least a basic lighting setup first and then adjust and tweak the materials/maps and lightings for the final effect.

Riddlaz, I have noticed that the light tracer can give a much different look to the render compared to normal lights (I guess we are both using max 5). I assume this means that you use the light tracer for both the initial creation of materials, etc and for the final rendering as well?

[leigh]

Originally posted by tonygib
Anyone else? where for out thou Leigh?

I'd love to help, but I totally suck at lighting :cry:

I am still in the process of learning it :) It's a deeply complex and involved art of its own :D

I think the really important thing is to ensure that the model is really well lit, so that you can see all the details of what you are working on :)
Although I guess this is pretty obvious... So it's probably not much help.

I am currently learning about lighting from stuff that I am finding on the internet - you should look for some Siggraph papers on the subject - I find those a great help :)

[tonygib]

hay Leigh, welcome back, or has it just seamed that you have been missing for a while lately :)

Yeah, I have been getting a whole bunch of lighting information, its a complete extra side to 3D.

Which was really my question, the lighting can have such a large effect on how the textures look, it just made me wonder what to use when doing all the painting in PS, etc.

For example max has its default lighting when you start modelling etc and will use that for rendering unless you add your own lights. I was basically wondering if thats what one would use to make all the textures and materials as a sort of baseline and then create a full lighting set-up around those materials, with very minor tweaks.

Though from what I have read so far, it seams one should set-up a general well-lit scene that is something like how the character will the rendered. And of course use the renderer thats going to be used for final output.

PS Happy valentines day btw :love:

[EricChadwick]

IMO Max's default headlamp-style lighting sucks, not only for materials but also for modeling. The other default lighting option, with 2 lights, is a little better, but still not great. Better to roll your own, at least four lights, arrayed around the model. Play around with it until you get something usable. You might try a decent lighting setup to see the contours and silhouette of your model as you work. A little color helps too, but not much. Soft yellow main light, with two soft blue and one red fill lights. Completely up to the artist though, whatever floats your boat.

[leigh]

Ideally, your textures should look good, no matter what kind of lighting environment you place them into.

I think that what works best when setting up textures is a studio lighting setup.

You can read about that here --> really cool Siggraph papers on Lighting and other highly useful info (PDF format) (http://www.siggraph.org/education/materials/ siggraph_courses/s96_course30.pdf) ;)

I found this stuff really informative, and found it an immense help in first starting to learn about lighting setups :)

By the way, I haven't been away, just been a bit busy to post as much as I would like to....

[tonygib]

posm: yeah I have been starting to go donw those lines, played around a bit trying to get a setup that seams to work, will have to fiddle with it a bit more.

leigh: thanks, I'll download it and check it out, and I guess its a small welcome back then :)

[Stroker]

I've only done a handful of fully textured objects/characters (compared to some folks around here). When I do sit down to paint textures, I totally disregard lighting. Why? Because a surface will have certain properties regardless of the lighting. The specular colours of an object isn't going to change as the lighting changes.

I paint them "blind" as my mind's eye sees them.

Once I get the maps roughed, I do test renders with lights all over the place. Well, not at once, but I move lights all over the place across several renders. Maybe use two omni lights for one render, then a single spot light for another. Then I can go back and work on coordinating the textures together better. You know, fill in some of the smaller details.

Lately I've been using an average of 4 maps minimum per object. I'm really digging it because the "feel" or "character" of the object can change so dramatically with the lighting (not neccessarily a bad thing). Not too long ago I blindly painted a knife with 6 maps and not only does it hold up under extremely different lighting conditions, but watching the surface subtlely change as the light(s) move in an animation is phenomenal.

I disregard lighting when painting textures. Sounds like I'm the black sheep on this one.

PS. Thanks for the link, Leigh.

[tonygib]

Stroker: ok thanks for that, always nice to know that some do things differently.

By blind, I assume you mean just in photoshop, ie you pick your colours in PS as you want them, bit like a Web Page, etc and then try a bit of lighting/rendering and what go back and change the texture if something isn't right or tweak the lighting till you get how you wanted it to look as it appears in PS?

[Riddlaz]

Well strocker lighting setups does not really matter when your painting the textures but like you mentioned it does come into play when your making test renders simply because the default lighting setups don’t suffice because they don’t show proper spec nor diffuse and the results in your fully lit renders maybe entirely different than what your initial test renders look like but like leigh mentioned ideally what you try to make are textures that look good under any lighting situation/environment or at least without having to make drastic changes to the materials but personally what I find that needs changes after a drastic change in a lighting setup are the translucency/luminosity/self-illumination maps. If you want your 3d material to stay true to life as the color of your texture than you have to learn how to make proper use of diffusion so lighting does not change the color or over saturate your colors as much.

Laters,
Riddlaz C.

[EricChadwick]

In my experience, texturing and materials completely depend on how the model is to be used. Is this a standard WIP gray GI scene? Is it going to be in a torch-lit dungeon scene, a sunlit clearing in the forest, a rainy neon-studded night?

I do most my diffuse texture work with no lighting whatsoever, completely full-bright. Once they look decent there, they'll look great in most any lighting setup. In 3ds max this is Self-Illumination at 100%, with 0 Specular.

But the other material settings like Bump, Specular, Reflection, etc. all depend heavily on the lighting in my experience, so I start them once I have the scene lighting roughed out. Not finsihed lighting, but at least close to the concept.

If the character is seen in many different settings through the animation, and if I have time in the budget, I try to tweak settings to get it to look best in each scene, as long as the look doesn't break continuity.

Ultimately what this means to me is it is best to have a clear concept or storyboard outlining how this character is going to be used, then design according to that. Also has a big imapct on texture resolution... how close does the camera ever get? How close to which parts? The face? The foot?

Sometimes it helps to make a "hero" foot or whichever part needs a particular closeup, so you don't have an ultra-high-res foot in all the rest of your regular shots.

Anyhow, stuff I've had to learn working on game intros. Here's one of them...

Mechwarrior 3 game intro (3.5 MB Quicktime)
http://www.ericchadwick.com/portfolio/html/chadwick_mech3_cinematic.html

[Riddlaz]

posm, I never tought of using an 100 percent illuminated material when testing the colors and the diffuse, it sounds like a very good technique i'll be sure to give it a try next time, thanks for the insight :thumbsup:.

Laters,
Riddlaz C.

[tonygib]

thanks guys, it took a bit of time but slowly we are getting some good info on all this.

Yes, using a 100% Self-Illumination is something thats really worth looking at, will have to try some tests, etc But as others have said and what I expected, some lighting set-up and a good idea of how the character is going to be used and in what environment is really needed.

posm, if I read you right, even in different scene's (Lighting) your base colour (diffuse) texture isn't changed, you would just tweak the materials for the new conditions, mostly for Bump, Specular, Reflection, etc ?


Riddlaz: you said "ideally what you try to make are textures that look good under any lighting situation/environment or at least without having to make drastic changes to the materials"

and I guess that's what I was wondering about, since we all agree that the default lighting isn't that great, yet one would won't to do test renders to "see" how the textures are starting to turn out, my main question was really what starting point does one use, ie Lights/renderer/Photoshop/material editor, etc in order to create textures that look good under any lighting situation/environment.

And yes I think we now have a number of good starting points listed in this thread for just that, so is there anything else, like a magic bullet max scene or what ever app, thats setup just right for initial texture creation, just merge, scale to fit and get painting.

Of course like almost everything in 3D, there is never just a single answer :)

[Stroker]

Yes, by "blind" I mean just in PhotoShop.

When it comes to lighting, I've only done one full-blown scene. (I dredged it up out of my archives and started working on it again just for kicks.) The lights in this scene are by the numbers. That is, I used mainly Far Attenuation with the light going only as far as I want them to. For example, the over-head light doesn't light the corners of the room. The two candles shed a soft light all the way across the room. Sure, it's a bit dark, but it's a dark piece.

I imagine if I ever get into more serious scenes, I'll take the same approach. Rather than rely on extra lights for those dark corners and what-not, I'll probably rely more on photometrics. I have no idea if this is a good idea, but finding out if half the fun.

[mohh]

Try this tutorial here: Texture Building (http://www.newtek.com/products/lightwave/tutorials/surface/texture_building/texture_building.html)

They go into setting up lights just for texturing.

[tonygib]

Stroker: ok, thats what I thought, just wanted to make sure I was getting the right end of the stick.

mohh: thanks for that, I will check it out. Even though its for ightwave, I am sure I can "convert" to 3ds max.

posm: thats a nice little game intro, what parts did you do on it. I would be interested to know how it was put together, ie whats 3D, whats 2D composited, how was it modeled, animated, etc, any wire frames?

[EricChadwick]

Mech3 is a long story, but the short of it is that I was an art director for the animation, setting the tone, directing 12 or so artists and animators in creating and refining the art, editing the flow, insuring continuity, solving technical issues, providing some special fx, etc. All the things a director has to do. Not a lot of personal hands-on creation, more of making sure it all looked good.

The clients provided a script, and another a.d. at our company created an initial cinematic. The budget for the project increased suddenly, and I was asked to direct a longer version of the cinematic.

We re-used a lot of models from the 1st one, created new ones, added tons more fx, etc. All 3D assets were created in 3ds max, although one of the modelers favored Nendo, so something could have been modeled there, can't recall.

As to compositing, we used After Effects a fair amount, touching every scene for Levels adjustment and other perks. The graphic overlays, like the HUDs, were done entirely in AE, overlaid on 3ds max scenes.

Mechs were mostly IK legs and FK upper body, everything hand-keyed. I started with a 2D animatic, mostly to solve flow issues from shot to shot, but also to flesh out the storyboards. Animatic was made in Premiere using the storyboard graphics. Simple animation to show camera pans, zooms, mech movement through a frame, etc.

Then it evolved into a 3D animation, using low-res stand-ins for the mechs, soldiers, bldgs. This helped us trim unneeded scenes, keeping the budget reasonable. We ditched a scene where one of the mechs rises from underneath some rubble. Too much work, it would have been.

Afterburn was used a lot, for all smoke fx, also parts of the nuke. We had some really talented animators.

Sorry no wireframes. At least not on hand. Some of the models can be seen in more detail here:

http://www.ericchadwick.com/portfolio/html/chadwick_highres.html

Probably more than you wanted to know. :)

[tonygib]

Thanks for talking the time to write that posm, and no more info is never enough :)

It really is a full "mini" film production isn't it, interesting to hear that 3d smax was used, the one thing you didn't say was how long it took the team to bring it all together.

I sometimes think it will be cool to work on this kind of stuff one day, I'm just not sure that I will ever be fast enough or able to survive with almost no sleep :)

[EricChadwick]

1. Be persistent.
2. Work hard.
3. Think positive.

Oh and have some talent. Well, actually there are some people with little/no talent who are doing this stuff, but that's another story. They usually are extremely good at one of those other three points.

We slept decently, most worked 10 hr days, 5 days a week. I lost some sleep worrying about things. Had to fire somebody popular, not an easy task, but in my defense the artist wasn't keeping up, wasn't taking direction. Essential on a tight timeline.

The mini-movie took about 2 months, but we included a lot of assets from the previous shorter cinematic, so that adds about another month.

The core of the team that worked on this had been doing similar work for a few years together already, so the flow worked reasonably well. Wish we had more time, would've fixed some goofy things, sweetened others.

That's the way it is on production though. You gotta move on. Keep the money flowing in.

If you really want it, then 1,2,3, and you'll get it.

[tonygib]

Yeah, I guess there's nothing like working on something 5 days a week to build up skills. Unfortunately not an option, with other studies etc, plus ppl keep rasing the bar, as I start to get close, I have to step back and improve things even more, sure I am learning, but still its an up-hill battle, but then what isn't these days. At least its not the crap I was doing a couple of years ago :)

This was my last render of my latest WIP, its a bit old now, I have gone bakc to modelling and added more muscle definition, etc.

http://members.optusnet.com.au/~antgib/marie200103.jpg

[EricChadwick]

This has been getting way OT. Gald to see you bringing it back.

To me she seems a bit over-lit, there's no clear terminator between front light and back light. You may want to reduce the number of lights, try to distill it down. Maybe too much ambient contribution? My 2 cents.

Oh, and not sure if this is intentional or not, but she seems a little cross-eyed, like she's focussed on the 3 in 2003, about a foot in front of her.

Cute chick.

[tonygib]

Yeah, I think i'm still in teh school of "everything should be clearly lit". Have to learn that it is OK to have part of an image in some darkness or shadow. However it isn't ambient light, as I have that at zero, but it is the light tracer, my next shot at it will be with just "normal" lighting. That is once I work out the textures, using the lighting tips here, as the textures them selves may be too bright, or the materials, etc etc. Just got a lot to sort out :)

As for the eyes, yeah they are a bit crossed there, due to the fact that this image is really taken from an animation test that had the camera face on, but still, I will have to keep an eye on that :surprised

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