Lighting Technics in production

[noouch]

It really depends on which studio you're working for. In my experience final gather has been used when needed, sometimes just baked out once and reused for all frames, and sometimes just left out because nobody would see a difference anyway.

I've only worked on one project where we rendered for relighting in comp. It's a great approach when you have the pipeline established and can do it quickly, otherwise it becomes a nightmare, setting up passes for each scene, etc., without the tools in place for it. For quick three-man jobs, it's better to get the look straight from the renderer.

Correct and incorrect is not a very good way to look at it, just do what works, and don't do what doesn't ;)

[NemPhas]

Thx Noouch

We have the pipeline in place to easily save presets for multiple passes and select very quickly which to use and not use so that doesn't even come as a thought to me.

The final gather thing I agree with you were most of the time you don't notice the difference.
I was just curios on what people thought worked and was too much, we are starting think we have taken the pipeline in the wrong direction and not getting it better but over complicated.

[rendermaniac]

Do most studios Lighting and rendering pipelines render all passes possible for relighting options in composting, or is the lighting approved on strait CG renders and then pushed to composting for further grade and colour fixes ?

This really depends on the studio and how you split the work between lighting and comp. Personally I think getting a beauty pass that is mainly good, then tweaking in comp is a better approach.

Splitting into all possible passes means that the lighter has to comp all the passes before they can see what is happening. If they are also the compositor, or don't mind being a data monkey for 2d then that's ok, but it can mean a lot of work just reloading all the passes in your compositing program (multi channel exr's do help here - eg in Nuke). If the comp is wildly different from what the lighter sees then it can make it difficult for the lighter to make changes.

Also if you split into passes that need multiplying, then you will get problems around edges and semi transparency won't work (eg fur).

Simon

[mr Bob]

At a very basic level the beauty render should output all your passes without fiddling around , then in comp those passes come together to give you the beauty. If that's not happening you have things to fix !.Please do feel free to expand on your current pipeline ..

[NemPhas]

Thank you everyone for the feedback, rendermaniac hit it on head with the problems we are currently going through.
We are trying to get less passes out to comp and more actual lighting done in maya.
Trying to find the correct balance for easy and quick work flows.

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