Composite / Lighting Test

[RS3D]

I have been working on getting the lighting correct for compositing Hash characters into photo backgrounds. This can be tricky sometimes because you have to take the entire scene into account in selecting the lighting. Please look at the attached image and see if the characters appear to be be part of the background image.

[robcat2075]

hmmm... the girl and thom don't seem to be casting any shadows on themselves even though the light appears to be from nearly overhead. That's what i notice.

[Rodney]

Please look at the attached image and see if the characters appear to be be part of the background image

 

They do indeed!

 

The voice in my head tells me to say...

 

It would be nice to gain a little more feeling of depth than what we are seeing here.

Compositionally this would have the background fading to a lighter hue while the foreground would be darker.

 

Edit: The above is really a nitpicky thing. I like your composite as is.

 

Is this one frame of a sequence?

If it is it'd be nice to see a test even if the characters aren't walking... perhaps only sliding... through the scene.

That movement is really what will give this scene a sense of depth.

 

Added: A trick I have used to get different elements not from the same source to match better is to add noise over the top of everything. This can be done in several ways one of which is just to place a mostly transparent image over the top and have it move slightly so as not to have any element stay in place. Very very subtle... almost unseen is what you are going for there. Another way (which I have yet to quite get going effectively) is to use A:M's Post Effect called Film Grain. For my purposes it always seem to be too much or too little and so I go with the more manual overlay method. John (Tinkering Gnome) Lemke recently posted a similar technique with a smoky fog/haze that is a similar approach but in your case you aren't wanting the effect to be as visible, just to break up elements and tie other elements together. ( Here's John's topic where he creates environmental space via materials on 2D planes)

[NancyGormezano]

I have been working on getting the lighting correct for compositing Hash characters into photo backgrounds. This can be tricky sometimes because you have to take the entire scene into account in selecting the lighting. Please look at the attached image and see if the characters appear to be be part of the background image.

 

For me, the self shadowing on Thom (and other character) is too soft, compared to the dark, sharp shadows on the plants. And it does not appear that Thom is casting any shadow on the ground. The self shadowing also seems to be "wrong color".

 

For my taste, I would also say that the color of Thom is not as saturated as the colors in the background image, so it looks odd, unbalanced. Something to try to make the colors look more consistent: use Image based lighting, and use the background image as your source. The colors on the models would have a better chance of blending in (would have to try to see if so).

 

EDIT: This may not suit your taste, but I made the global ambiance color more orangey, to make Thom more match the bright sunflowers in the bright sunlight, and the shadow color on the flowers is more consistent with Thoms self shadowing. We now have Thom with dark black shadows on the ground.

 

The ground is flat shaded, front projected & there is only 1 white klieg overhead casting shadows.

 

It could use some tweaking. I tried using your image for the Global IBL, but it didn't do what I was thinking it would do. I thought the orange global color worked better (for my taste).

[RS3D]

Thanks for the excellent suggestions. I will work on them this coming week and post the results.

[RS3D]

robcat2075 Posted Sep 14 2012, 07:45 PM

hmmm... the girl and thom don't seem to be casting any shadows on themselves even though the light appears to be from nearly overhead. That's what i notice

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I tried to create more contrast by changing the top down lighting to be stronger and decreased the bounce lights that I used to light the front of the models. This results

in loss of some detail in the image characters but seems to make the scene more realistic.

 

 

Rodney Posted Sep 14 2012, 07:54 PM

 

 

 

The voice in my head tells me to say...

 

It would be nice to gain a little more feeling of depth than what we are seeing here.

Compositionally this would have the background fading to a lighter hue while the foreground would be darker.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I de-saturated the top half of the background image and blurred it a little. It did seem to add depth to the scene.

 

Is this one frame of a sequence?

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It is one frame from an animation. But before I re-render it, I wanted to get more realism in the choreography.

 

Added: A trick I have used to get different elements not from the same source to match better is to add noise over the top of everything.

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I tried different hazy materials on a front plane, but the changes in lighting seemed to be enough to get the characters to appear to merge with the background.

I will look up the source you cited and try some other changes when I get some time.

 

NancyGormezano Posted Sep 14 2012, 08:26 PM

 

 

For me, the self shadowing on Thom (and other character) is too soft, compared to the dark, sharp shadows on the plants. And it does not appear that Thom is casting any shadow on the ground. The self shadowing also seems to be "wrong color".

 

For my taste, I would also say that the color of Thom is not as saturated as the colors in the background image, so it looks odd, unbalanced. Something to try to make the colors look more consistent: use Image based lighting, and use the background image as your source. The colors on the models would have a better chance of blending in (would have to try to see if so).

 

EDIT: This may not suit your taste, but I made the global ambiance color more orangey, to make Thom more match the bright sunflowers in the bright sunlight, and the shadow color on the flowers is more consistent with Thoms self shadowing. We now have Thom with dark black shadows on the ground.

 

The ground is flat shaded, front projected & there is only 1 white klieg overhead casting shadows.

 

It could use some tweaking. I tried using your image for the Global IBL, but it didn't do what I was thinking it would do. I thought the orange global color worked better (for my taste).

 

-------------------------------------------------------------

 

I tried using the image based lighting, but I kind of gave up trying to get a better effect. I'm sure it is a good way to go, but I just do not have the knowledge to make it work.

I did use the global IBL with an orange color. This, combined with the lighting changes kind of made everything blend better. I still would like to get the effects you suggested

with the shadows on the Thom character, I tried different processes, but again I do not have the knowledge to pull if off effectively.

 

 

 

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I think this new image is better (more realistic), but I seemed to have lost too much detail in the characters because of the shadows. I think I will have to work on some of

Nancy's suggestions for changing the lighting characteristics in the shadows to restore some of the detail.

[pixelplucker]

Big problem is the background image itself doesn't have a whole lot in terms of shadows and is too bright and flat. The 3d models seem to look ok for the scene but if the image was better you could do better with the characters composed into it. Nice ground shadows on the flowers or the rocks and the characters having shadows on the ground with the same approx sharpness, darkness would be convincing.

 

Overall with what your working on it looks good.