LIGHT: Studio Lighting Notes v4

LEARNING TARGETS:

» I can light a subject with a simple 3-point lighting configuration.
» I can implement 3D text in Maya

EXPECTATIONS:

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»

Overall Goal, post 4 renders to your blog:(with all the same camera and position)

1-Point Lighting
2-Point Lighting
3-Point Lighting

Watch video on 3-point lighting. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcMX1RcNRYA

Overall Goal, post 4 renders to your blog: 1-point Lighting, 2-point Lighting, 3-point Lighting, & Final Render

General Steps for Key Light:

Overall Process

Setup initial scene.
- Irregular sphere
- Plane
Create and adjust Lights
- Create and adjust Key Light
  - Render scene and save final image.
- Create and adjust Fill Light
  - Render scene with both Key and Fill Light and save final image.
- Create and adjust Rim Light
  - Render scene with both Key and Fill Light and save final image.
Look at overall scene and adjust all lights for final render.
- Tweak the render settings to improve quality
  - Shadows
  - Render settings
Post final images and label them in blog.
- 1-Point Lighting
- 2-Point Lighting
- 3-Point Lighting
- Final Render

Three Point Lighting

What is a 3-point lighting system and why are we learning it? It is basically a lighting technique that was created to simulate real world lighting in a studio environment in Hollywood. The Three Point Lighting Technique is a standard method used in visual media such as video, film, still photography and computer-generated imagery. It is a simple but versatile system which forms the basis of most lighting. Once you understand three point lighting you are well on the way to understanding all lighting.

A classical 3-point lighting scheme has three lights, a key light, fill light, and rim light.

Setup

Create a polygon cube as the main subject. Smooth the cube 3 times. Mesh > Smooth - so that it looks roundish.
Select your cube in vertex mode, randomly select a small percentage of vertices and scale them out using constraints. Select > Select Using Constraints . . . Under constrain section, choose Current and Next and under the Random tab check Active and assign a percentage to randomly select. 10% would be 0.100

It Should Look Something Like this:

Select your polygon shape in vertex mode, randomly select a small percentage of vertices and scale them out using constraints. First, open the Select menu and choose Select > Select Using Constraints menu. A new window will appear with its attributes. Change the for constrain option to Current and Next and then under the Random Tab, check Activate. Now you can use what ever ratio you want, I used 50% or 0.5 (10% would be 0.100) Using this tool, will randomly select vertices of a given object. Now every time you select all the vertices, you will randomly select 20% of the objects vertices.

Now select all the vertices on the sphere, notice it randomly only selects 50% of the vertices. I then scaled the vertices out.

I used 0.50 first to create a more irregular shape and then used 0.10 to make the legs.

I repeated this a few times, scaling both in and out with the smooth preview active and got something like this.

Once you get a great shape, Smooth it maybe two more times to soften the edges.

Now Create a ‘HUGE’ polygon plane.

POST A CLOSEUP OF THE SHAPE IN YOUR BLOG.

Set Render to Mental Ray: Open render settings and change the render engine . . . Switch to Mental Ray. If it does not appear, activate it by: Window > Settings/Preferences > Plug-in Manager > then check the boxes for Mayatomr.mll.

CAMERA

Create Key Camera: Create > Cameras > Camera then while each camera is selected in one of the perspective view choose Panel > Look through Selected. Also label the camera “Render Me” Manipulate each camera accordingly.

Now you should be looking through the camera labeled “Render ME”. We need to add one more thing, show resolution gate. There are two ways to do this. View > Camera Settings > Resolution Gate or press the resolution gate button.

COMPOSTION

When rendering, composition must be considered, since it is your final output. Composition is very subjective, and honestly, there is no ‘true’ formula for good design. With that said, there are some things that help guide you to understand composition better. The two main compositional aides that we will focus on are the “rule of thirds” and movement. *If you Google ‘Rule of Thirds’ you will get tons of mixed messages, but for the most part, it is a good tool to start experimenting with movement and composition.

Movement is a Principle of art. If you Google ‘Rule of Thirds’ you will get tons of mixed messages, but for the most part, it is a good tool to start experimenting with for movement and composition. An artist uses a visual sense of motion through their work to create movement. There are many ways that this can be done, generally the Elements of Art are visual tools that are used to direct the viewer throughout an artwork. They consist of line, texture, form, space, shape, color, and value. MORE NEEDED HERE

LIGHTS

*First, I want to note that Maya has a default light that is always on until you create a light and then the default light is then turned off. You do not need to, but you can turn off the default light in the Render Globals → Common → Render Options and then uncheck Enable Default Light. The default light may will explain why the scene may drastically change when you add your first light.

ADDING LIGHTS
Spotlight

There are a number of attributes you will need to control the spotlight. Here are the most important:

Changing Decay Rate

Changing Decay Rate controls how quickly the light’s intensity decreases over distance. The default setting is No Decay. I generally try to similar real world lighting, hence I use Quadratic Decay.

No Decay - no decay; light reaches everything

Linear - light intensity decreases directly (linearly) with distance (slower than real world light)

Quadratic - light intensity decreases proportionally with the square of distance (the same as real world light)

Cubic - light intensity decreases proportionally with the cube of distance (faster than real world light)

Changing the Cone Angle

The Cone Angle setting changes the angle (in degrees) from edge to edge of the spot light’s beam. The valid range is 0.006 to 179.994. The default value is 40. The advantage of changing the Cone Angle is that you do not have to adjust your intensity versus when moving the light farther or closer. *This does is irrelevant if “No Decay” is set on your spotlight.

Changing the Cone Angle

The Penumbra Angle setting changes the edge of the spot light’s beam by widening the Cone Angle in degrees. The intensity of the light falls off linearly to zero. The valid range is -179.994 to 179.994. The default value is 0.

Changing the Dropoff

The Dropoff setting controls the rate at which light intensity decreases from the center to the edge of the spot light beam. The valid range is 0 to infinity. The slider range is 0 to 255. Typical values are between 0 and 50. The default value is 0 (no dropoff).

One Point Lighting and Key Lights

The key light is the main or the strongest light in the scene that illuminates your subject. It is also responsible for the over all exposure and defines the most visible shadows. It could be from any main light source from the sun penetrating in a window sill to the spotlight on a stage. In a classical 3 point lighting setup. it is generally placed 30 to 45 degrees to the right or left of the camera. This range for the key light helps bring out more texture and form (dimension) in the subject.

Here is an example of a model with 1-point lighting. She is only lit with a “key” light.

Here is a 1-Point setup with the abstract shape. The light is essentially in the same location as the models but our shape is completely different and captures more light.

Create Key Light: Create a spot light Create > Lights > Spot Light then while each light is selected in one of the orthographic views choose Panel > Look through Selected. Also label the light“Key Light” then Manipulate each light accordingly placing it about 30 to 40 degrees to to left or right of the camera.

SHADOWS There are two main choices for shadows Raytrace and Depth Map. Depth map shadows and ray traced shadows produce similar results,

though depth map shadows usually take less time to render. Maya documentation suggests to choose depth map shadows unless they cannot accomplish your visual goal; I disagree. The quality and control is more superior with Raytraced shadows and that is what I generally use.

On your main light, the "Key light,” activate Ray Traced Shadows, check Use Ray Traced Shadows, and change the light radius to somewhere between 1–10, (it could be lager or smaller) it all depends on the scale of the scene and the distance the camera is from the main objects. The shadow rays adjusts the quality of the shadow. This can drastically slow down your render times. I tend to start with at least 10 and increase it to may 40 for the final render. This will remove the “grittiness” in the shadow.

Light Radius
– This defines the area from which the light is coming. The larger the Radius, the softer our shadows will be.

Shadow Rays – Increasing this will increase the samples of our shadow quality, but will also increase our render times.

Ray Depth Limit – Is the limit of how many times the light ray will bounce from one surface to another.

1st Render – One Point Perspective: Key Light with ray traced shadows.

Save render as 1-Point_Perspective and make sure you change it to a JPG format.

Post render in Blog.

KEY LIGHT with FILL LIGHT

The fill light should be able to reduce and control the amount of shadows created. The idea is not to totally remove the shadows but to maintain a good ratio between main light and fill light. Different ratio gives you different feel so you have to do a lot of experimentation. The fill light helps fill the shadows that the main light casts, basically it simulates the ambient light .   NEEDS MORE

Here is an example of a model with 2-point lighting. She is lit very evenly with both a “key” light and a “fill” light.

Here is a 2-Point setup with the abstract shape.   The “key” light has not changed from the 1st render. The “fill” light softly fills in the shadows made by the “key” light.

Create Fill Light: Create a spot light Create > Lights > Spot Light then while each light is selected in one of the orthographic views choose Panel > Look through Selected. Also label the light“Fill Light” then Manipulate each light accordingly placing it about 30 to 40 degrees to to left or right of the camera.

Fill Light Shadows On your "fill" light, activate ray traced shadows, check Use Ray Traced Shadows, and change the light radius to about 10 , it can be anything, but the objective is to soften the shadows from this direction.   The shadow rays adjusts the quality of the shadow. This can drastically slow down your render times. I tend to start with at least 10 and increase it to may 40 for the final render.   This will remove the “grittiness” in the shadow.

2nd Render – Two Point Perspective: Key Light with ray traced shadows.

Save render as 2-Point_Perspective and make sure you change it to a JPG format.

Post render in Blog.

KEY LIGHT, FILL LIGHT and RIM LIGHT

Classic three point lighting set up.

Here is a 3-Point setup with the abstract shape.

3rd Render – Three Point Perspective:
Key Light with ray traced shadows.
Fill Light with Soft ray traced shadows.
Rim Light with Soft ray traced shadows.
Save render as 3-Point_Perspective and make sure you change it to a JPG format.

Post render in Blog.

Rim Light Shadows On your "fill" light, activate ray traced shadows, check Use Ray Traced Shadows, and change the light radius to about 10 , it can be anything, but the objective is to soften the shadows from this direction. The shadow rays adjusts the quality of the shadow. This can drastically slow down your render times. I tend to start with at least 10 and increase it to may 40 for the final render. This will remove the “grittiness” in the shadow.

4th Render – Three Point Perspective Final Render:
Key Light with ray traced shadows.
Fill Light with Soft ray traced shadows.
Rim Light with Soft ray traced shadows.
Save render as 3-Point_Perspective and make sure you change it to a JPG format.

Post render in Blog.

This is what it look like from the top view. The lights are not really setup the way we want them to be, we will change this in a bit. This is just the initial setup.

Label all the lights: Key Light, Fill Light, & Rim Light.

Turn off both the Fill and Rim light: Select each light and in the Attribute Editor change their Intensity to 0.

FINAL RENDER 3-Point Lighting

CREATIVE LIGHTING

Two Point lighting: Hard “Key” light from the right side and hard “Rim” Light from the back left. Ambient light slightly revels the subject.

Two Point lighting: Hard “Key” light from the right side and soft warm “Fill" Light from the front left.

Soft cool textured light.

All the lights were hard sources and upstage for this shot.
One Lupo 800 light was all I used plus a bit of magic. Continuous light is perfect for this kind of effect because what you see is what you get. White balance was 3800k.
We then broke off from f/16 and opened up to f/2.8 for a bit of a shake up. The light here was daylight coming through my open door in the studio.
Next it was time to shoot the same corner with continuous light. The Lupo 1200 provided the slash of light while the Lupo 800 was warming up as an area flood. The warm up period gives a green light, it soon passes to reveal pure white light.
Pop the white balance to 2600k for a bit of blue action
One Lupo 800 light was all I used plus a bit of magic. Continuous light is perfect for this kind of effect because what you see is what you get. White balance was 3800k.

Great Rendering Article.
http://www.fxguide.com/featured/the-art-of-rendering/

Talk about indirect lighting.
In our case, the main light source is in the ceiling. Look at the top your hand, why is the bottom of your hand not completely in the shadows?
Reflecting
Light is a transverse, electromagnetic wave that can be seen by humans.
The photon the basic "unit" of light
Any light that you see is made up of a collection of one or more photons propagating through space as electromagnetic waves. In total darkness, our eyes are actually able to sense single photons, but generally what we see in our daily lives comes to us in the form of zillions of photons produced by light sources and reflected off objects. If you look around you right now, there is probably a light source in the room producing photons, and objects in the room that reflect those photons. Your eyes absorb some of the photons flowing through the room, and that is how you see.
For instance, a photon in the visible spectrum would contain an energy of approximately 4 X (10 to the power of -19) joules Thus, a perfectly efficient 100-watt light bulb would emit approximately 2.5 X (10 to the power of 20) photons per second.

HDRI image
If I put a chrome ball in a black room, what would it look like? Reflective material is directly dependent on the environment.

HDRI IMAGES HERE: http://www.pauldebevec.com/Probes/

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LIGHT: Studio Lighting Notes v4

Three Point Lighting