Realistic 5 point Studio lighting video turotial

[jason1025]

This tutorial explains lighting in depth.

 

Its extremely long but stick with it because it gets more informative as it goes on.

 

The tutorial has instructions on how to instal this updated default chor.

 

Default_Chor.cho

 

Realistic_Lighting_P1.mov

 

Realistic_Lighting_P2.mov

 

Realistic_Lighting_P3.mov

 

This version of the tutorial has poor audio quality. I will upload another version that has clear audio soon.

 

Vid tutorial chapter list

 

 

 

1. examples of the the new default chor lighting scheme

2. how to instal the updated default chor ino am

3. breif intro to the tecknocrane. for an in depth tecknocrane tutorial watch this. http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=37208

isolating each light to see its effects.

4. rim light

5. key light

6. kicker light

7. the fill light aka global illumination and ambiant occlusion

8. back ground light

9. shadows

10. Why Kleig lights?

11. Shadow property settings and why.

12. intensity and falloff

13. cone angle

14. temperature or color of light

15. where to put your subject

16. tinkering with the key light.

17. more dramatic lighting techniques.

18. wrap up with thumb.

19. intentional imperfections

 

If the audio is too hard for you to listen too I will up load a beter version in a day or 2.

[robcat2075]

That sounds useful! I shall take a look!

[largento]

There's some great info in these videos, Jason. Thanks!

 

As someone who isn't interested in realistic lighting, it's still valuable to understand what the settings are trying to simulate. Great stuff here!

 

One thing that I immediately noticed is that the lighting setup is opposite from what we Westerners traditionally think of as lighting in art. As a default, we think of the light source coming from the upper left of the image and shadows falling to the lower right. I would think it would be the same in film. Our eyes go to the light first and kind of ignore the shadow. I can certainly think of exceptions where you would want to draw attention away from the left side of the screen, but I wouldn't want that as a default.

 

In doing a comic, I want everything to read from left to right, top to bottom. If I've got a character holding a playing card in each hand, I'm going to know that the viewer/reader will focus on the left card before looking at the right card.

[jason1025]

Thats interesting about the key light on the left or right. Out of all the training I have ever been given from DP's I have never heard that having the light start on the left.

 

But what you said does make sense. There is an unrelated rule that the boom with the shot gun mic always goes on the opposite side of the key light to avoid the booms shadow.

 

There is also a rule that the key should be motivate either by nature like the sun coming in through a window or a practical lamp on the set. In other words you dont generally want to conflict with this because subconsciously the brain finds fault with it.

 

With that said when the key is not motivated by nature or buy an on set practical, I think having the key on the left may be a wise choice.

 

I just googled the term modeling pics

 

 

and found these random images. im sure its possible some of these have been flipped but I think it proves there is no standard. If anyone knows the definitive answer to a if a portraits key light should be on the left or right please chime in with the supporting evidence. Anyone request the default chor setup for left key and I will make a new one for us.

[Fuchur]

I'd say there is no standard too... it depends where the image needs to be used (for example for reading, for advertisement, video, etc.) or if the model looks better from one side than the other... (Show yourself from "the best side").

 

Anyway: I like the look of your 5 point-lightening quite much. Even without AO it still looks very nice and the rendertimes will be down for those with slower computers... (of course AO does give another nice touch to the image so).

 

Thanks for the default-chor!

Together with the camera-rig (I think you developed that one a few month ago, right?) it makes a nice startingpoint, so it is of course much more complicated for beginners.

 

See you

*Fuchur*

[largento]

Having the keylight come from the main source of light sounds correct when striving for realism.

 

My thinking is that for story-telling, elements as important as the main light source should be positioned for a reason.

 

A quick check across the web, finds this stub on Wikipedia:

 

Top-left lighting is an artistic convention in which illustrations are produced so that the light appears to come from the top left of the picture. Most people prefer lighting from the left when resolving a convex-concave ambiguity, and this preference is stronger for right-handed people. This is reflected in Roman mosaics and in Renaissance, baroque and impressionist art. In cartography, the predominant custom of placing the shadow on the right-hand side of hill profiles was established during the 15th century. Computer interfaces tend to use top left lighting as well, although this trend has gradually shifted more towards light coming straight from the top.

 

And this excerpt from "Universal Principles of Design":

 

Interestingly, there is evidence that objects look most natural and are preferred when lit from the top left, rather than from directly above. This efect is stronger for right-handed people than left-handed people, and is a common technique of artists and graphic designers. For example, in a survey of over two hundred paintings taken from the Louvre, the Prado and the Norton Simon Museums, more than 75% were lit from the top-left. Top-left lighting is also commonly used in the design of icons and controls in computer software interfaces.

 

One reason to counter top-left lighting is that it does feel comfortable and natural, so lighting from the right can seem uncomfortable or striking. It's a subtle effect (like moving from left to right on screen feels natural and moving right to left feels against the grain), but can psychologically influence the viewer.

 

Photography is different from illustration, of course. Lighting isn't always controlled and an object might look more interesting when lit from another angle.

 

Since I'm not attempting reality, I prefer to save other lighting choices for dramatic effect or when I want to call attention to it.

[Paul Forwood]

Great tutorials! Very illuminating.

Thanks!

[itsjustme]

Great stuff, Jason!

[robcat2075]

The time I find light direction confusing is when I'm looking at satellite photos of the moon. The craters always look inside out to me. I have to turn my head until i find an angle where the light direction looks right and the craters look rightside-in.

[jason1025]

Hey Robert

 

when you look at the batman chest plate / symbol do you see teeth or a bat?

 

Largento

 

I am Left handed. lol that explains why I have always favored keying the right side. Just like your research described. I agree with you lighting needs to be motivated. That said I actually like your lighting style. I just am not interested in that toy story look that AM and your art excels at. My personal preference is photo realism.

 

Thanks for the compliments folks.

 

I know the tutorial could shave off a half hour and be more concise but hey.

 

If you want to learn more about the technocrane watch this http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=37208

 

Its really a very powerful tool.

 

David and Mark did all the heavy lifting on the programing of the technokrane. I think I was just a catalyst. We used Matt's wide angle lens to get real worl lens distortion. Roger did you work on it at all?

 

Anyone interested in helping to program / create a shaky cam? You know the whole law and order look. Its actualy not easy to do. human being don't randomly morve the camera like a random expression. when studied we move the camera in a triangle or circle around the subject. I will post some tutorials on the subject. We also often over shoot zooms so the correction needs to be in the shaky cam when ever we zoom in or out. focusing wether automatic or manual often takes a moment to catch up after a fast zoom. So an additional effect and or pose slider would be the out of focus in focus response to a xoom

 

In my fantasy there would be poss sliders that increase and decrease the shakiness. And pose sliders that correct when focusing.

[largento]

I am Left handed. lol that explains why I have always favored keying the right side. Just like your research described. I agree with you lighting needs to be motivated. That said I actually like your lighting style. I just am not interested in that toy story look that AM and your art excels at. My personal preference is photo realism.

 

In the end, there is always subjectivity to art, but considering only 8-15% of the world's population are left-handed, it does make sense to light for the 85-92% of your audience. :-)

 

That said, this set-up along with your video tutorials gives everyone the tools they need to get the look they like.

[jason1025]

If any of the geniuses who programed the tecknocrane want to update it to version F I would love to add titles to the focal length aka zoom that relate to primes. In film we often use primes.

 

below is a chart which shoes the focal length of standard commonly used primes.

 

[robcat2075]

The shakycam could be done by aiming the camera at a nul traversing a small loopy path. An action could make the null do that and so it could be reused as much as needed.

[largento]

Robert, could that be done with realtime input? Isn't there a way to use your mouse to record realtime movements?

[Rodney]

I'd say there is no standard

 

Favoring the right has been a standard practice since ancient times where the favored position with respect to the noble of a house was reserved for guests of honor. Where this gets confusing is where the audience's perspective appears to place the favored position to the left and many an embarrassing moment (and opportunity) has been created when someone carelessly set the scene wrong.

 

This practice can be seen throughout the world in protocol matters; placement of flags, order people enter and exit cars (due to seating arrangement), etc. and is so absorbed into our language that most never stop to consider it. We may be 'right or wrong' or have certain legal rights, undergo rites of passage, or get left behind.

 

Placement of people and objects may be one of the original standards all others deviate from.

 

In modern photography a primary rule of thumb is simply to find the best lighting for the given subject. An actress might have had her hair done in such a way that right-side lighting would be wrong or they might have a favorite pose or be self conscious of a percieved blemish or deformity, "This is my good side." In these cases, negotiation begins and taste and subjectivity can easily trump protocol (i.e. the customer is always right even when they are wrong).

 

Jason,

I haven't had a chance to look at your videos yet but am looking forward to it.

Lighting is such an important element in any scene I'm glad to see you tackling it here on our behalf.

[robcat2075]

Robert, could that be done with realtime input? Isn't there a way to use your mouse to record realtime movements?

 

Here's a quick try just using the realtime camera mouse controls....

 

shake.mov

 

 

 

It's not quite right; if the mouse had much more inertia and didn't change direction quite so easily i think the effect could be closer.

[Shelton]

Nice tutorials Jason

 

On another note, in the chor your objects such as the lights are in different colors. All of my objects are yellow is there a setting that chages that in the chor?

 

Steve

[largento]

I guess I'm mistaken about A:M being able to record mouse movements. For some reason, I have a memory of seeing a video of moving a ball around with the mouse and being able to record that movement. I thought for sure it was A:M. Then I thought maybe it was something in Flash, but don't see it there, either. (Might have been in an older version of Flash.) Only thing I can find is Motion Sketch in AE.

 

This plug-in isn't for A:M, but would be the answer. The example videos are impressive.

 

[EDIT] I guess A:M can do realtime mouse movements. :-)

[jason1025]

Nice tutorials Jason

 

On another note, in the chor your objects such as the lights are in different colors. All of my objects are yellow is there a setting that chages that in the chor?

 

Steve

 

I don't understand can you post a screen grab?

[itsjustme]

My thinking is that you could use Zign Track to make an Action for the shaky cam motion. If you shoot some hand-held video trying to keep a dot centered, you could then use that motion as an exported Action applied to the camera in A:M. It would be more natural looking, you could shoot a really long Action so that it wouldn't have to loop and you could increase or decrease the amount of shake using a Pose combined with an Expression. That would get the basic hand-held feel that could be added to the camera movement. You might even consider adding some motion from the hips of either a motion capture or hand animated character walk along with the hand-held shake Action.

 

The lag in focus and overshoot of the subject would probably look best if done by hand. It could be automated, but I don't think it would do as good of a job that way.

[jason1025]

My thinking is that you could use Zign Track to make an Action for the shaky cam motion. If you shoot some hand-held video trying to keep a dot centered, you could then use that motion as an exported Action applied to the camera in A:M. It would be more natural looking, you could shoot a really long Action so that it wouldn't have to loop and you could increase or decrease the amount of shake using a Pose combined with an Expression. That would get the basic hand-held feel that could be added to the camera movement. You might even consider adding some motion from the hips of either a motion capture or hand animated character walk along with the hand-held shake Action.

 

The lag in focus and overshoot of the subject would probably look best if done by hand. It could be automated, but I don't think it would do as good of a job that way.

 

 

I think your right. And I think im just the guy to do it. Below are stuff I have done in the passed that are related to this discussion.

 

For_My_Demo.mov

JH_CG__V3_email.mov

Synth_eyes_and_AE_CS5_Roto_email.mov

[Meowx]

Fantastic default chor setup, thanks a ton! I had no idea you could change it.

 

I went ahead and tweaked a few things, here's my version:

 

1) Got rid of extra characters.

2) Got rid of dialog boxes.

3) Set SimCloth default tolerance to 0.3 (something I've always wanted in my default chor!).

4) Got rid of 'kicker' folder.

 

Default_Chor.cho

 

Thanks again!!

[jason1025]

Fantastic default chor setup, thanks a ton! I had no idea you could change it.

 

I went ahead and tweaked a few things, here's my version:

 

1) Got rid of extra characters.

2) Got rid of dialog boxes.

3) Set SimCloth default tolerance to 0.3 (something I've always wanted in my default chor!).

4) Got rid of 'kicker' folder.

 

Default_Chor.cho

 

Thanks again!!

 

 

When you say "2) Got rid of dialog boxes." are you talking about the missing text file for newton dynamics that it asks you for?

 

Cool im glad I could help. I was thinking of getting rid of the characters too but I kind of like the reference of where the light is hitting as a jumping off point. And its just as easy to turn them off or delete them. Im my fantasy I see this lighting scheme as "my" common point of reference for all future models.

I was reading how on the first 2 transformers aka crapformers movies that they had no common point of reference for lighting. It resulted in all the different people working on decals and materials having to constantly re work there materials on the model when different models were put into different chores together.

What I like about this chore is that even if you use SSS and or AO the change is minor. Yes it gets darker with those features on but imo not drastically. so if people working together used this chore to decal / surface / skin / or what ever people are calling it, all the models will work well together with minor adjustments.

 

In the 3rd movie they got wise and started doing this vs everyone just doing there own thing which caused countless hours of reworking the models surfaces.

[jason1025]

Shaky cam tutorial

 

This talks about doing it in post only because its a composite between live action and cg. In my example of the cg birds and man with a shaky camera a few threads above, I was shaking the amera a lot. This was intentional to test my skills using syntheyes tracking software.

 

If I was doing a composite of live action and cg I would try to limit camera shake as this tutorial describes.

 

 

For cg I dont recommend doing camera shake in post because of the the resolution loss when you have to zoom and because of the lack of parallax.

 

Shaky_cam.mov

[Darkwing]

I have a simple skakey cam in the contributors cue I do believe. It worked pretty good for me, though I still prefer to do any skakey cam in post

 

http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showt...8&hl=shakey

[jason1025]

Interesting lighting video tutorial

 

 

 

Funny they put the key on the right. They must be left handed lol

[jason1025]

Lighting chart.

 

[jason1025]

for my next step I was thinking of creating each one of the 6 lighting schemes above into a single default chor.

 

Does anyone know the best most efficient way to accomplish this?

 

Should I make a pose with a slider that reconfigures the lights and there settings?

 

Should I just make key frames in a chor and the user can delete the keys for the setup they dont want?

 

I am leaning twords pose but not sure how to best go about it.

[jason1025]

Robert, could that be done with realtime input? Isn't there a way to use your mouse to record realtime movements?

 

Here's a quick try just using the realtime camera mouse controls....

 

shake.mov

 

 

 

It's not quite right; if the mouse had much more inertia and didn't change direction quite so easily i think the effect could be closer.

 

 

how did you achieve this robert? the real time record?

[thefreshestever]

that´s really cool, thanks a lot!!! the default chor always bothered me.

 

but i somehow changing the default chor doesn´t work on my computer. i´ve downloaded the file, replaced it in my a:m folder, and then when i open a new chor there´s just one bulb light in it. i´ve tried making my own default chor, but then the same thing happens. both with v16 and v15. i´m on a mac, someone else got this problem???

[jason1025]

that´s really cool, thanks a lot!!! the default chor always bothered me.

 

but i somehow changing the default chor doesn´t work on my computer. i´ve downloaded the file, replaced it in my a:m folder, and then when i open a new chor there´s just one bulb light in it. i´ve tried making my own default chor, but then the same thing happens. both with v16 and v15. i´m on a mac, someone else got this problem???

 

 

I have the solution. That same thing happened to me. Now what did I do to fix it?

 

hmm it will come to me. yes now I remember. Download the full data set from this link.

 

http://www.hash.com/ftp/pub/misc/Data.zip

 

after you unzip this needs to go into the hash folder. Remember AM at least on the pc can be installed in 2 distinctly different places because of 64 and 32bit

[thefreshestever]

perfect! many thanks

[jason1025]

for my next step I was thinking of creating each one of the 6 lighting schemes above into a single default chor.

 

Does anyone know the best most efficient way to accomplish this?

 

Should I make a pose with a slider that reconfigures the lights and there settings?

 

Should I just make key frames in a chor and the user can delete the keys for the setup they dont want?

 

I am leaning twords pose but not sure how to best go about it.

 

 

Any ideas Robert?

[markw]

that´s really cool, thanks a lot!!! the default chor always bothered me.

 

but i somehow changing the default chor doesn´t work on my computer. i´ve downloaded the file, replaced it in my a:m folder, and then when i open a new chor there´s just one bulb light in it. i´ve tried making my own default chor, but then the same thing happens. both with v16 and v15. i´m on a mac, someone else got this problem???

I'm on a Mac too and noticed the thing with only having one light and a standard camera after installing Jason's new chore.

To fix it all I did was change the file name by replacing the underscore in the middle of his new file with a space so it matched exactly the original chor file name.

The file name on a Mac should be;

Default Chor.cho

[robcat2075]

for my next step I was thinking of creating each one of the 6 lighting schemes above into a single default chor.

 

Does anyone know the best most efficient way to accomplish this?

 

Is that for a tutorial? Don't automate it, make them do it.

 

If you are wanting to make a gadget for people to use, I'd put all the lights in one model and then you can set them at various positions for certain values of a pose slider.

[robcat2075]

Robert, could that be done with realtime input? Isn't there a way to use your mouse to record realtime movements?

 

Here's a quick try just using the realtime camera mouse controls....

 

shake.mov

 

 

 

It's not quite right; if the mouse had much more inertia and didn't change direction quite so easily i think the effect could be closer.

 

 

how did you achieve this robert? the real time record?

 

Yes. I hit the play button, hit T, and held down the shift key while I moved the mouse.

[jason1025]

for my next step I was thinking of creating each one of the 6 lighting schemes above into a single default chor.

 

Does anyone know the best most efficient way to accomplish this?

 

Is that for a tutorial? Don't automate it, make them do it.

 

If you are wanting to make a gadget for people to use, I'd put all the lights in one model and then you can set them at various positions for certain values of a pose slider.

ok thanks thats what I needed. There are no negative ramifications to this approach? Does this mean lights can not be further adjusted in the chor and will always need to go back to the model for adjustment? If thats the case it could be difficult to like something because you cant see the models in the chore you want to light while adjusting the lights in a model window right?

[robcat2075]

An alternative would be to make a separate model for each light scheme then you drop the one in the chor that you want to use. The lights would all be accessible like bones in the chor.

[jason1025]

An alternative would be to make a separate model for each light scheme then you drop the one in the chor that you want to use. The lights would all be accessible like bones in the chor.

 

thanks

 

Unless anyone has any suggestions I think I will go with that for the default chore.

[robcat2075]

I dont' know if a "chor" will save such models in it...? You'll find out.

 

If you're going to make a default chor, set the Ground to Cast Shadows ON, to avoid single thickness patches not casting a shadow.

[Zaryin]

Great tutorials, Jason.

[thejobe]

very nice and informative