Them Lights!

Ok so when it comes to lights, i wonder if i just smack some lights on my scene and tune the colors and viola its done ! sounds easy? yes it does, but first a good understanding on lighting theory helps alot, i set that aside for later.

This post is about what i usually do and use in my daily routine. there are plenty of light types in most 3D software, they can be the most fanciest to the most common and basic lights types. the one im speaking of is

Spot Lights 

They are the MOST common type of light you can get in any 3D programs to date.

next off is  
Area Lights

another common type available.

so i wonder, there are so many different types out there why did i focus to these 2 lights? Well first of all, there are the basic form when it comes down to lighting, and by other types they are basically a tweaked version of any of these 2 lights. optimized for niche scenes where not many will encounter.

However after at least a few years of using it, i do rely much on these 2 lights, and when it comes to VFX lighting, these are you most used light( while some other lights are for special scene by scene so less used) and even so i did used these 2 basic lights to simulate the same characteristic as the other lights, its all about the settings and perimeters.

A quick look at
Spotlights : Harsh lighting, Sharp shadows
Area lights : Soft diffuse lighting, Soft shadows 

So by mix and matching these 2 lights, lots of interesting results can be achieved. The whole idea is to know these 2 lights in detail 

Looking at Shader

Shaders are your colors, texture and what will the camera pickup during render, they will decide how shiny( that's specular to you technical fella), reflectivity,  translucency ( aka opacity ) and what color ( also known as diffuse.

and not be confuse between texture artist and shader artist, in a more technical term and requirements THEY ARE NOT THE SAME, I'll be elaborating this more as i write down more stuff. a general idea is that:

-Texture painters are the ones doing the painting in Photoshop and Mari, using photos and brushes to create / manipulate how a CG thing will look

-Shader artist how ever will be the one grabbing the texture images from the Texture painters and give them the CG properties like specularity, reflectivity and etc in which will react accordingly to the light source . they will also be writing codes and command using programming language like mel script for maya user

http://forums.odforce.net/index.php?/topic/14360-shader-writing-and-why-is-so-important/

so below are the default shaders that is available as of maya 2010 they are from left : Hair Tube shader, Ocean shader, Anisotropic, Blinn, Lambert, Phong, Phong E, Ramp and the
bottom : Shading Map, Shading Surface

 Shaders with a singular light source

Shaders with multiple light source for this case 3 point lights

The importance of UV

 fig.1

If you don UV your objects, it might and most times turn out horrible like the above. how ever i do understand that UVing will take some time but is a necessary step, so when it comes down to a TEAM efford who does UVing ?

From my experience is the modelers part as they are well verse with their models ( does not apply to generalist as they are you all-in-1-guy after all ), and for some cases i have yet to see is a dedicated UV guy - skinning day in and day out and all day long.

fig.2

So is it hard to do UV?  Simple answer is no, its quite practically easy-ish (depends how complex the object is ) after going some practice its more or less getting the basic right.

Other then complex objects and/or complex objects, a simple UV can save you the horrible stretch and minimized the ugliness and seems in between 2 different sections.

Take the above picture for example, a non UV( or messy UV ) fig.1 and below a simple UVed character fig.2

So what do i need when i comes to UVing ?
a nice UV COLOR GRID, or the default checkered texture ( available in maya by default )

for this case the UV that i used, credit goes to http://www.pixelcg.com/blog/?p=146

and then next, slice them up!

still can do better , buy hey works like a charm for me ^^

Added stuff

 

yeap i running away from my responsibilities ! 

x-RAY MODE!

Early attempts

some gibberish headless thingy. but looking good !

UVUVUVUVUVUVUVUV SKIN SKIN SKIN1111

kicking up with some cars

i wonder what model and make can you spot them...

Prepping that pipeline up!

So where i used to work a working structure/workflow is used and for this case is called a pipeline ( i believe other people are using this term as well ), so as for "my ( again modified for simpler used) pipeline" the hierarchy will be some thing like this :

sketch ( aka my noobish drawings ) > modeling > texture > lighting > render > compositing
:: This particualr phase is called LOOK DEVELOPMENT(lookdev) or PRE VISUALIZATION(pre viz) or CONCEPT ART

follow by

rigging > animation > dynamics ( animation related, like secondary animation bla bla bla ) > lighting > rendering > compositing
:: mostly an additional animation work flow to the existing pipeline above

More to come as i build up the pipeline, but more important i am focusing at the look development (im going to use lookdev so dont panic for what it means later just look up on google ) side of things, as i was half way there in my training


The Trifecta of look development 

Sometimes you be wondering who and how does the character workflow goes, answer is simple, either 1 person does it all aka generalist or he/she is really that good(i envy so much), or a bunch of specialized people does it,
which include:

a modeler - model the stuff and outputting them UV maps, remember those color grids ?
a texture painter - Add material, color, bumb, spec, and all those high res textures
a lighter - also a shader artist, we material property are tweak in detail to react to the vitual lights

well that is how i was though at that point of time, so there you have it. in case your wondering why sometimes a lighter can't answer some of your texturing question, ( because it happen to me before ) and some of the reason i'm brushing up my generalist skill to be able to tackle that question next time.