Character + environment lighting how to ?

#1

Hi,

What are the usual steps when lighting a character and an environment ? It seems all tutorials only covers one of those aspects, like interior/exterior lighting for architecture, or basic three point lighting for a character, but on a black background.
Typically the digital lighting and rendering book has a chapter on environments and a chapter on characters but they are completely separated.

Naively I would have thought that the environment needed to be lit properly and then you just needed to put the character in it.

Sorry if the question seems a bit silly, not sure how to put it, I’d be grateful for any pointers to books / breakdown detailing the process of lighting a character with its environment. I’m more interested into the theory than application specific technical details.
I’m an fx guy wanting to get started in lighting.

Thanks a lot,
Vincent

#2

Vincent, You are right most common tutorials don’t teach the whole thing but if you have found out Environment and character lighting tutorial then try to merge both,I might sound bit confusing but this how it is done.
[ul]
[li]First step is to lit your environment according to the look you are after.[/li][li]Second step is to place character in their and try to match it with it’s surroundings the main thing to keep in mind is both should have same key light direction to begin with.[/li][li]Third and final step is to generate all the passes and further tweak it during composting.[/li][/ul]This is the simplest possible way I can suggest to you though I know when you start working on your shot you will learn more options as well as ways to achieve the desired result.


My Lighting Reel

#3

Why not just light them both together? If you were doing a render of a dining room, you wouldn’t light the room, then light the dining table.

#4

well playmesumch00ns your answer is very smart but I would consider table as part of background.
Characters usually are movable objects so you most often need to take extra care about them,but again in lighting there are no rules only the end result matters.

#5

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