General Discussion Thread

#101

Total 180 from whats been suggested I know…just goin off of the eye challenge and the four scripts.

I think the next logical step is character lighting. It’s awesome to light different environments because you have alot of creativity with moods and such. But three of the challenges have been that. I welcomed the eye challenge because it was something different and well more of a “challenge” than the others. And I think we should continue to have different types of challenges to mimick wha lighting professionals would see in an actual production.

Character lighting is the next step IMO…although tricky to set up as a challenge because of many variables with character models and whether to pose them or let the artist pose them. It’s really tricky when you consider that having a character in the shot means in order to evoke an emotion with lighting you also have to have the character posed to mimic that too (so I guess the posable rig is better).

And you can still have an environment too…whether it is simple or a little more complex (like the four scripts/underwater) is up to Jeremy. :slight_smile: Just my two cents…

But if this doesn’t work out in practice then I am all for a forest scene. :thumbsup:

#102

Veliar… I’m always happy to have your Cooperation in developing an idea, in fact always happy when there’s an idea developed by more than one brain :slight_smile:

ACamacho… funny I was thinking the same thing about character lighting, It is indeed the next logical step… But I was kindda afraid to suggest it because of the work load it brings.
You need someone to design a character, model it and rig it.

if it is ever possible, to have a character lighting challenge I’m all for it.
(Ideally I was hopping to light a character in a forest, but that is just way much to ask)

#103

I like the idea of lighting a full character.
The problem is as you guys said ,someone needs to provide the model, a very… very good one but this may take a lot of time .Of course if someone is willing to donate a ready-to-use model ,well that would be great .

My personal opinion is that a fixed pose character could be easier that a fully rigged character, because there will be consistency between the different folks’ final renders. If everyone goes for a different pose it will be more difficult to ‘judge’ between the different renders.
Of course you need a good environment and I agree that this brings a lot of additiona work.People will have to work on such a project for many months due to the complexity and this is not exactly a mini-lighting-challenge. Maybe we should focus more on simple scenes and put all of our energy on the lighting it self …but if many of us want to give it a shot… perhaps we should.:slight_smile:

Edit:

Here is a great thread for those of you who havent seen it , about a full character-lighting project kinda similar to what we could work on.But this project took the man almost a year to complete , of course the results are amazing!Everything is 3d except from the hair ,he is still working on it at the moment. The whole thread is worth a read.

link:
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=360276

Cheers

#104

I agree of course that creature/character lighting is the main thing that most professionals spend their time on. While the eye was a good start, and the rabbit was a good creature for those who tried it, we really need some fully animated, human(oid) characters so we can light them acting in real scenes.

So far, I’ve had students offer to donate their animation to be lit, but they had been using a pre-rigged character provided by their school, so they couldn’t get permission for us to distribute it. Of course animators who have designed and rigged their own characters probably don’t want to give all of that away, either.

I think that a character lighting challenge would need to be “produced” instead of just expecting someone to donate it. I’d need to get someone to model or donate a character model, find someone to rig it, get animators to volunteer to do the animation, then get it baked out into animation in FBX or something that different programs could read… there’s lots of work here, but it’s a good goal for next year.

Of course any charcter should be in an environment, but we could use one we’ve got already, or make the environment be the challenge the month before the character.

-jeremy

#105

I have several characters I have made, although if used I would like credit for it, and perhaps recommendations, :wink: :deal:I build the bases in blender. But they can be used in any program when I convert them into an obj file.

#106

I like the Idea of splitting the environment and the character into separate challenges. It will allow time to focus on the details of each.

and BTW I wasn’t really expecting it to be an animated sequence, However if it’s ever possible… it’s gonna be an awesome lighting challenge

#107

Hmm…I wasn’t actually thinking of a full-blown production. Could be a good thing but I was mainly thinking on a smaller scale. Although…if it can be done would be interesting indeed. Something to prepare in the background while we do the other challenges…

I agree on using previous environments from older challenges…anything to save time since its a lighting challenge primarily. :slight_smile:

#108

Maybe we could ask people to donate a model? Figure if we ask now even if it takes a few months to get it you’d have it. Also whos to say the character needs to be hyper-realistic maybe we could do a sylized cartoon/not so real model? If i have image plans of a character like that i’d be able to model it.
Get the anatomy and figurative sketching sub-forum as a study to help, and draw image plans that could be used for modeling? that would be a start. I guess what i’m asking here would take alot of cooperation which oftem times doesn’t appeal to people or at least the ones who are going to be participating in creating it…even though if rebecca and Robert agreed and got something to work there doesn’t seem to be as many people participating.

But for an idea How about lighting a scene with A living room, Family room in the dark of night with a TV for lighting? Even a movie theatre?

#109

I’m in for the full character/environment challenge. Lighting is still one of those mysterious areas in CG. I mean you’ve got books, tutorials, schools DVDs etc about all areas of CG, from modeling to texturing to rigging, animation, compositing, dynamics, etc…but so little stuff about Lighting. I love Jeremy’s book, and it was a tremendous help for my lighting skills, but things like production scale lighting remain a mystery. What’s the workflow? How many passes do they do when integrating CG with live action? We’ve seen so many people share their secrets about production scale environments in all areas except Lighting. Why so? Its the holly grail of CG imho.

So Jeremy, if the character/environment challenge does follow on in the next couple of months, i also suggest we try first a CG character integration against a live background (It could also be a still, matte painting) or vice versa: someone provide us with some Live action footage/green screen/rotoscoped of some real character, decide on the actual feel of the image (as directors often pre-set that) and then match the environment to the character. I know there might be some compositing involved as Keyed footage is reworked from the ground up before getting pasted onto the backplate, but it’s still a good start i think.

I just thought we could also try an approach to commercials, maybe rendering a car, but not as in a “product design” sense but against a liveplate(or still), all with animation in mind (as a full blown production). I think a model of a car is easy to find nowadays or people are willing to donate one.

Any thoughts about all this?

Oh Lighting, reveal your mystery

#110

TAKADS -

In terms of cars, I think you’ll be very happy next week with the next challenge. :slight_smile:

In terms of characters, that should be our #1 goal for the year, to get real creature/character lighting going. Not that the rabbit and the eye from last year weren’t creature/character lighting work, but we need a full humanoid character or two, to be lit in a dramatic, moving scene. We might take an environment, lets say a forest or a spaceship or a detective’s office, and then the month after we’ve lit the environment as a challenge, try to provide a characters who can be in that environment.

-jeremy

#111

Any news on that one? Or the character and the environment?

#112

I was thinking maybe you can use my scene. This is my best work I’ve done (Lighting wise.) I would like to hopefully see what the more advanced people can make out of it. give me feedback on how they did it, and how they shaded it. I wouldn’t mind letting you guys play around with it. It would help me out even more.

#113

I’d like that also. I’ve actually been taking pictures of this farmers field for the past 6 months capturing different times in the day, weather and now seasons so that i could do just that match a scene in under all the many lighting conditions i’ve taken with my digital camera. The nice thing about it is, being practically a planar field with the only trees in the background there wont be much matt working to get the cg elements in.

#114

@jeremybirn -

These challenges are great! I have a character model I’d like to donate for this cause. I don’t know if you’ll find it appropriate or not, though, can send it to you to see if you like it?

-tedious

#115

tedious - Thanks for the e-mail. That’s definately an interesting character. I see what you mean about appropriateness, but it’s interesting none the less . . .

doodlerboy - Those are nice models. We’ve just done a couple of still-life challenges already, but maybe we could work them into some larger scene if they are needed as part of something else later?

-jeremy

#116

The next challenge will start on Friday. Tedious has modeled a nice environment and as well as a character, but we could make using the environment optional, so you could just comp the character into different live-action environments as well.

I had an idea last year for a project that would be all about comping a model into different environments, it would be a “roaming gnome” challenge and everyone would get the garden gnome model and have to comp it someplace different, but I think the next challenge could work well enough with compositing as an optional approach.

-jeremy

#117

Waiting for friday :slight_smile: like the amelie Gnome how fun to ocmpose him in the seaside :wink: I can try to check also a 3ds max version if I have obj

#118

If fridays new scene is going to be a farm scene I am going to freak out! In a good way lol. I saw the update on Pixars newest schort “Lifted” and so now I’m just stoked about that too. lol

#119

By the way, if we have volunteers who want to model a gnome or a farm, or especially some humanoid characters, contact me and we could use them. Friday’s challenge is something completely different, actually kindof goofy, but it’s a challenging scene with a character and an environment that was donated to us, and I’m looking forwards to trying it myself.

-jeremy

#120

I modeled a gold Renderman teapot I received at SIGGRAPH 2005 awhile back, maybe if someone added a cute little room, pedistal, or display case, we could do that as a challenge:

You can view the animated model tottering around at: http://www.jacpiette.com (go to portfolio --> 3D Animation).