A Time Apart: Scene 2 Shot 2 Lighting

Last night, I also got round to lighting Scene 2, shot 2 and textured the suitcases. The suitcases I have chosen worn out, distressed, ripped, rusty, scratched textures to show they don't come from a wealthy family, Fred has a darker suitcase that go with his colours and Doris has a lighter case. After the church window shot it cuts to a close up of the suitcases and tags, I do this to show A) they are city children, B) Their names (and more importantly that they are brother and sister), C) Their date of birth is on it which people could use to work out their ages given the very first shot has the month and year in which the film is set/starting in.

Timed at: 3:39

Fred's Case: Timed at 3:29

Fred's Case: Timed at 4:03

A Time Apart: Scene 2 Shot 1 Lighting

Today I've been lighting and improving the textures of this shot, the Ivy no longer has the white line around it, the window has cement around it to look like it has actually been built into the wall, the window frame is a bit dirtier from the bottom and fades up. The window itself I've changed the dirt map on it from a painted one to a more realistic one. Originally this scene took about 8 minutes to render and I've got it down to 1:20 which I am very pleased about! 

Timed at: 1:20

Viewport View

A Time Apart: Scene 1 Animation + Lighting Revisit

After talking to Alan and Phil yesterday about my animation in Scene 1, I spent today revisiting it, in addition to carrying over the lighting from Shot 1 to Shots 2 and 3. One of the things that needed work was the eye darting to make it more lifelike - I revisited the facial animation presentation from second year and attempted to do some more eye darting for my characters and changed the positioning of the eyes individually which I hadn't before. They also pointed out how my characters move quite slowly, to be honest I don't really know why I did it, I think it's to do with how my mind understands and mimics life, I slow it right down to process what's actually happening within a second that speeding it back to real time feels strange but also when I work with something for so long I lose any sense of judgement. My focus mainly was with Doris's timing - I think I might need to speed Fred up a bit, I can't really tell at the moment. Doris still needs some refinement, however I've cut out a bit of what was in the first version, they no longer look out the window together, instead Doris looks straight at Fred. Part of what I struggle with is getting inside the head of my characters, it would be easier if they were made up characters but I'm trying to think of who they actually were and what they had done. 

This version is missing the matte paintings and clouds as it's animation I've been focusing on and am showing in this post. I also decided to test the object wipe cut shot using an old playblast of Scene 2, Shot 1 - I think it works. Below the video is a render.

After yesterday I have a better understanding of lighting and what I'm trying to do with it. Before I was trying to get as close as I can to my finished shot in maya which in my case isn't what I should be trying to do. In maya I should be getting my tones right and using lighting to make my characters stand out from the background. The moodiness I want in this shot I can do in after effects with the use of blending modes, filters, desaturation etc. But also a render doesn't capture 100% of the tones, the little bit it doesn't I get back in post production. In the render view you can turn off luminosity and have it just show black and white which makes it easier to see where character tones blend in with background tones.

Untouched Render

To understand more of what I'm doing now I needed to have a better understanding of what I'm going to do later, so below Alan showed me in photoshop a few effects on a render of what I would perhaps do in After Effects and showed me how I'm going to get the light to show in the carriage from my matte painting, (gaussian blur on a layer above). 

(This is just an example and not what my final shot will look like.)

Touched Render

Collaboration: LOTR Skits Lighting

Lighting for my second skit: I had a point light to the left giving off the sunset and creating shadows and to the right was another point light which I made weak so it would give off enough light to make the darker side of the skit visible. The directional light was to give an overall weak-ish light. - Paris.

2 Point Lights and 1 Directional Light

For the first skit I only needed a directional light.

1 Directional Light

Collaboration: LOTR Skit 2 - Progress 1

I've managed to do the basic animation for this skit but it's not there yet. I think the timing needs a bit more work and I think that's where it will become more funny, at the moment it's too slow. Next steps: Speed up the shuffling and see how that looks and try and emphasise the tiredness more in the shuffle. Also I'm going to use soft selection to make the ground plane look more terrain-like.

I'm also struggling with lighting, I have placed a directional light (1) rotated the same direction as the sunset in the painting is but for some reason I can't get it to cast shadows. I have another directional light (2) cast on the sign and darker side of the scene just so the sign can be seen but that light has shadows turned off.

DL 1: 1 Intensity 0 Exposure - DL 2: 0.5 Intensity Exposure 3

DL 1: 1 Intensity 0 Exposure - DL 2: 0.7 Intensity Exposure 3

DL 1: 1 Intensity 0 Exposure - DL 2: 0.9 Intensity Exposure 3

DL 1: 1 Intensity 1 Exposure - DL 2: 0.9 Intensity Exposure 3

Lighting Tests

Because I have my objects spread out in a 3D space when I used lights I got shadows so I've turned them off otherwise I get...

 

What happens when you use a spotlight.

No Light

Ambient Light, Left: 0.8. Right: 1.

Directional Light, Left: 1. Right: 0.8

I am going to use a directional light at a value of 0.9, I don't want the entire thing to be perfectly lit, I have used paper textures to make it feel like the books but the lighting when reading books is never perfectly illuminated. Also the Directional Light allows the text to keep that 3D element - puts a bit of darkness around the letters that ambient fails to do.

Directional Light: 0.9

Three Point Lighting

In addition to the two point lighting, this is where the third goes if you want three point lighting.

Spotlight 3 - Rim Light
Cone Angle: 20.000

Intensity: 0.700

Emit Specular: Off

Ray Tracing Shadows: Off

Change colour of light to see where it's hitting on your object.

Spotlight 3 location

*Putting in a light underneath*

Spotlight 4 - Kicker Light

Intensity 0.300

Emit Specular: Off

Ray Tracing Shadows: Off

When you do this, you get lights with hotspots of whites
so you need to go back and change other light settings (below).

Fill Light

Intensity: 0.400

Key Light

Intensity: 1.000

Ray Trace Shadows: On

Light Radius: 6

Shadow Rays: 24

Two Point Lighting

Spot light 1 acts as Key Light
Intensity: 1.300
Emit Specular: On
Ray Trace Shadows: On
Light Radius: 6
Shadow Rays: 24
Ray Depth Limit: 3

Spot light 2 acts as Fill Light
Emit Specular: Off
Intensity: 0.500
Ray Trace Shadows: Off

Spotlight 1 is the main light - the key light but we want the back of the ship to have lighting so we have to put in a second Spotlight to act as a fill light and half its intensity. Because the fill light (spotlight 2) creates shadows where we don't want any we turn Ray Trace Shadows off.

One Point Lighting

Volume light

Intensity: 3
Emit Specular: On

Ray trace shadows: On

Light Radius: 1

Shadow Rays: 48

Ray Depth Limit: 3

(To show where light is and how big)