Hi everyone, apologies in advance if this is a stupid question or one that has been previously answered!
My background is in photography, but I have some knowledge of Maya and have recently picked it up again and have started trying to learn as much as I can about CGI generally.
I currently work as a photo retoucher and my boss has a Digital Tutors subscription which I have been using, and I’ve worked through a few of the basic tutorials and made some simple models like this:
In the last couple of weeks, though, I have discovered that CG Lighting is an actual professional specialisation in the visual effects world, and I found that particularly interesting given my background and interests.
I have always found the lighting and rendering side of CGI to be very interesting from a technical perspective, but don’t have much experience with it and didn’t realise that it was a career path as much as just something interesting to read about.
I have been started diving into reading some articles like this one and I’ve been watching some of the lighting and rendering tutorials on Digital Tutors, and basically any other resource I can find, but while they’re all very interesting, and I am definitely learning a lot, most of the info online seems to be focussed on technical knowledge.
A few years ago I watched a video called Efficient Cinematic Lighting by Jeremy Vickery on The Gnomon Workshop, and this covered a lot more of the actual artistic considerations of rendering (although it’s been a few years since I’ve watched it and I don’t remember most of it), and I was wondering if there are any other resources around like this?
I guess, really, what I’m looking for is any tips or resources on the artistic side of lighting and rendering, since the nuts and bolts is thoroughly covered online, and also any other advice on the sort of path that one would take to enter the world of CG lighting professionally? Obviously I need more skills first, but I think that I would like to progress in that direction.
Thanks for any help and advice!
EDIT: not sure if it’s relevant, but at the moment I’m focussing on Maya (I’ve got the free non-commercial version) and Mental Ray so as not to get too confused, but eventually I would like to learn other renderers like Renderman, Arnold, or maybe V-Ray. I also wonder if I should just watch the Efficient Cinematic Lighting videos again, but I don’t have a Gnomon subscription at the moment…
