Looking for advice on lighting an office scene...

[tharrell]

My two cents (for what they're worth)...

Don't try too hard to mimic reality. Lighting is actually part of the scene composition... it's one of the most important pieces actually: you're directing the eye around in the scene, and responsible for cueing the viewer's eye into what's important (ie, what should I be looking at?).

In a scene as busy as that one, I'd rely on an old trick. De-focus your eyes and look through the scene. Where do you want the viewer's eye to rest? Make that point the highest contrast, and lower the contrast on other planes.

Realize that you're not going to get a lighting setup that works for every shot in your film. This is the case in real-life too on a film set. I think that if you dial down your lighting setup, it'll actually work pretty well as fill light, but I shudder to think of your render times if you end up needing to ray trace shadows on all those area lights.

Have you considered using incandescent planes instead of area lights? It'll make for nice, soft fill light like a soft box without the distracting shadows or crazy render times. I'd also recommend a strong key and rimlight for your subjects, particularly going for a toony look.

Try to think of your composition in terms of planes of light: near-ground, mid-ground and background, and weight each plane as to their importance.

Have a look at the beginning of the Matrix or Office Space and study how unmotivated the light is. You can get away with a ton once you start thinking like a photographer / dp, and your pictures will end up prettier as a result :cool:

Hope this gets you started,

--T

[sundialsvc4]

Read the previous post about sixteen times.

Slowly.

:bowdown:

Rinse and repeat.

[Reed5point0]

I am not sure if he is still at Fullsail, but Jared Edwards can help you light.

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=397646

While I was going through Full Sail as a compositor a few years back, Jared was deeply involved with giving me direction on how to light my cg elements, along with integration in Shake. He is a very knowledgeable resource to tap, and a pretty funny guy to boot.

I am not sure how far along in the program, you are but you can probably find him near the DRC lab.

[EndfinityJon]

Trey - Thanks for your advice! You posed lots of questions that I hadn't really thought about, and this theoretical approach was very insightful. I think one of the most intimidating things for us is that the scene is not only very busy and quite large, but we're also showing nearly every inch of it. That develops a big question to us newer lighters..."Where do I start?"

After looking at our storyboards and rough animatics, it's easy to see that we'll be seeing most of the space in the environment. I'm sure we would be granted routine & easy advice if I came here with a still frame composition asking your thoughts on light intensities, colors, and post tricks, but our task is quite the opposite of a still frame critique.

Here is a rough environment layout with key areas and light sources highlighted:

http://i652.photobucket.com/albums/uu249/EndfinityJon/OfficeLightingMap.jpg

There are only 3 sources of natural light in our building. A large source from the conference room that will softly trickle into the cubicle area, and two smaller sources; one in the front entrance area, and the other in the break room. We feel that the large majority of the scene will be interior lights spanning over the vast majority of the scene.

A couple challenges I can think of off the top of my head is where/how we should start? Should we find a composition that we'll be using in the final, or should we pull back to a wider shot and try and work the whole room (since we'll be seeing it anyway)?

Secondly, should we apply shaders this early in the process? I've always thought that nailing the lighting is key before the application of shaders, but because of how large the scene is, things tend to become a mucky gray wash.

We'll be trying your soft box advice this evening and will continue to keep you guys posted on our progress with test renders and the like.

And Reed, we took your advice and e-mailed Jared and he's already replied! Thanks for your insight.

Thanks again everyone, I look forward to our continued conversation.

~Jonathan

[tharrell]

Most welcome!

Mimickry is a very high form of flattery -- the folks at Pixar do a second storyboard pass that they call a color script. It shows average light and color palette progression from scene to scene in each of their movies (and sets a tonal/mood balance as a result).

I've got a few reproductions of color scripts from Cars and Incredibles... and let me just say that the first time I saw one (at the travelling Art of Pixar exhibit that hit NY MOMA a few years back) that my jaw hit the floor because the idea was so:

- Brilliant
- Obvious

I can't even imagine starting anything more time consuming that paintovers on a project anymore without something like this as a guideline.

Here's one from UP, to give you an idea of how much of a head start it can give you:

http://www.slashfilm.com/wp/wp-content/images/zz379bff23.jpg

Get your tone worked out fast on your boards -- you can iterate very very quickly with Photoshop paintovers. Once you get into 3D, little tweaks mean render time. Know what you're looking for before you start lighting for hero models. Now's fine to get a rough approximation of your fill in the master scene though.

From there, you can move into look development, but I'd suggest picking a specific key shot and putting all of your elements in (shaders, character stand-ins and all) once you nail your fill light from the environment. Don't try to get the look of the whole place down: get a feel for a key moment and work outward. The task will be a lot less daunting that way, and you'll have a reference for everything that comes after.

As an aside, some of the most impressive look development I've ever seen was from Incredibles: and it was all cut & paste collage from magazines... a style of art that I generally don't care for... but it gave an incredible sense of personality and vibrance to the world before they ever came close to 3D.

--T

[EndfinityJon]

Hey again.

Last night we were able to make a little bit of progress with our scene. I sat down with Jesse (who is my teammate in the lighting task) and we banged out a few test renders to get a feel for things. We both picked a composition that we knew would find it's way into the short and began working.

Jesse's composition is very close to the conference room, so he has much more natural light coming in and his render came out a bit warmer and inviting than mine. Because I was on the other end of the building, the only natural light I got was from a small window in the break room. I feel that my lighting is a bit more oppressive and that's the mindset I want our lead character to be in...he doesn't care to be working. It would be nice to find a medium between the two styles, but it could be challenging because his shot is more open to be splashed by natural light, whereas mine is more enclosed in the fluorescents from the ceiling.

We both used a spot from outside to simulate sun and both have an area light above our cubicle. Global Illumination is used and so was Final Gather. We're both relatively new to GI, so if there are any suggestions, we would appreciate the help. I decided to shade my wall, a color I'm not really fond of, but I wanted to test the photon bouncing. Jesse shaded the countertop to see what his photons were doing, and I feel like it looks pretty good; maybe a little too reflective for a generic office workers desk.

So, here's our renders below. Feedback and critiques would be awesome!

http://i652.photobucket.com/albums/uu249/EndfinityJon/SetLightingTest2.jpg

http://i652.photobucket.com/albums/uu249/EndfinityJon/FullSetGIFG10.jpg


Thanks,

~Jonathan

[JesseGutman]

Hey everyone, my name is Jesse and I often read the forums but have finally signed up in hopes of being a productive member. As Jon mentioned above, I am also working on the lighting and shading within our team. Our university unfortunately seems to not focus very much on this subject, but I really would like to pursue this field despite that, and would welcome any suggestions/critiques/help.

As for my most recent comp posted above (2nd shot), I'd like to note that the conference room is to the left of the shot, which is where the natural light is hitting the side of the cubicle (perhaps too blown out at this point). As for the shader that I put on the desktop, I am wondering how best to go about seeing how much color bleeding is put forth by the GI photons without shading other parts of the scene (as it is to my understanding that we should nail down the lighting before we start to shade). We have been researching GI for a little while now and have just started looking into the details of Final Gather, which seems to have quite an impact on the way the scene is lit. I noticed that if I edit the lighting with Final Gather turned on for my renders, that upon turning it back off, lights are blown out. Would it be best to try to light without FG until the end?

Thanks and I look forward to further interaction with you all!

[kanooshka]

Hi Jonathan,

It looks like a fun project you guys are doing!

You have a very good start to your lighting and shot setup. I do have some critiques though I know things will look a lot different with your final materials. Overall, with final gather as a main illumination source, renders tend to look very washed out, lack contrast and evenly light scenes. Of course this can be fixed with post processing, but it also lacks a lot of control. Final gather can also bring up a lot of issues when it comes to animation which is helpful to avoid. Of course if this is just for testing purposes, by all means go for it. To start with your lighting I'd suggest deciding on a main key light direction for the shot and then the rest of the fill and bounce illumination from there.

As for lighting color, outdoor light can be warm or cool as well as indoor light can be warm or cool depending on the type of light and the white balance of a camera. Sometimes in offices like this people prefer tungsten desk lamps as opposed to the flickering fluorescent lights. So maybe you want to put those in some cubicles to mix up the lighting color and direction. Desk lamps can also use halogen bulbs and therefor throw a cooler blue color as well. Outdoor light can be warm if there's sunlight or cool if mostly sky light or even more of a gray on a cloudy day. Finally fluorescent lights even vary in color especially when they're near burning out and be more of a red/orange color. Completely burnt out lights can also add some variation to the ceiling fixtures.

Hope this helps out some!

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