Help getting comic styled shadows?

#1

Hi CGTalk,

This is my first post so I’ll keep it brief:
I’m a 3D and animation student doing a lighting and texturing assessment at the moment. We’ve been given a scene which we have to UV, texture and light. We’re given freedom of choice in style and whatnot and I have chosen a comic book style (Hard shadows contrasting bright colours). It’s built out of ramps at the moment (Something new I’m learning) so I figured this would be fun but I’ve hit a problem that I can’t quite get around…

I have multiple lights in the scene; how do I make it so that the lights will still cast shadows, but the lights won’t affect other shadows? (ie; they will cast hard, black shadows but won’t illuminate other shadows)

Attached below is a render to give you a quick, brief idea of what I’m going for (And yes, that’s a Terran Marine =] Our tutor is awesome.)

Any help, or even advice on where to look for help, is highly appreciated.

#2

Make the key light prominent, and the fill light must be much less powerful to give you contrast.

I also suggest to use either rendering on separate layers, or use light linking so you have more control over your background and character separately.

If you decide to render separate passes, you can also create a shadow pass, and make it as dark as you want in post.

Hope this helps.
Good luck.

#3

To add the the comments above, also make sure you enable contour rendering to get that strong outline around the character.

#4

In your shadow pass you could also make the lights emit Red and the shadows be Green or Blue with all your geo gray shaded to get the most control in comp.

#5

This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.