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Industry Exercise : R&D Project

Objectives : To create a different Lighting Mood using lights in maya, camera angle to achieve the subject chosen, render passes for compositing. 

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Timeline : 

 

14/4/2016 - 21/4/2016 : Research, Ideas, Blog

 

21/4/2016 - 27/4/2016 : Rigging Workshop 1 and Blog ( At this stage, notes is taken down and follow the steps in Maya during the lesson with Sanjay, blog is not updated at all due to priority for BBC project)

 

28/4/2016 : Rigging Workshop 2 and Blog. 

  • Customizing Attributes

  • SDK = Set Driven Keys

  • Blend Shape

  • Skinning

 

5/5/2016 : Formative!!! A lot to update onto the blog as work is piling up! 

 

6/5/2016 - 12/5/2016 : Getting feedbacks from Josh to make sure I am on the right path. Get the idea and the potential piece to create. 

Gathering the research such as image and some sketches of concept. Not much work can be done on this week as the BBC project due in few days. Be realistic.

Josh's feedback : Focusing my research into Lighting and Camera angle & lens

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12/5/2016 : Introduction to Substance Painter

 

13/5/2016 - 18/5/2016 : Creating the environment. Look into tutorials and research for light and texture. 

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19/5/2016 : Topology - Understanding and trying different way to fix the topology of geometric model. Challenges to complete

 

20/5/2016 - 25/5/2016 : Look into tips and tutorial to focus on R&D project.

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25/5/2016 : Retopology for organic model using Topogun

 

27/5/2016 - 2/6/2016 : Modelling, Different Lighting Test, playing with colours camera angles, light intensity. Post production, compositing, breakdown. A journal complete with the 250 word declaration, research, comments, experiments, analysis of research, and design process all related to the delivered workshops. Gathering all the materials and final video.

 

3/2/2016 : Make sure the blog is up to date and ready to be submitted.

 

Summative Submission on FRIDAY 3/6/2016 no later than BEFORE 23:55 : 

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Lighting Artist

Lighting artists create and design mood, readability and believability. Create your scene with the chosen industry in mind; how heavy the lighting is, is it interactive?, is it highlighting the focal points?, what is it telling us that an unlit scene could not? Don't let 3D applications dictate how you light a scene, use both advanced and traditional techniques to paint light.

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What does Lighting Artist do?

 

  • To ensure consistency in lighting, colour balance and mood between the varios elements of a shot or scene

  • Make sure CGI looks photorealistic to match live action

  • Adding the light to create atmosphere, mood, tone and depth to a scene

  • Working closely with rendering and compositing department to understand what is required in next stage and ensure their material is easy to use and delivered on time.

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Skills or software required?

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  • understanding different renderer such as mental ray, vray, renderman, 

  • strong sense of light and shadow

  • have a great understanding in composition and able to enhance mood using light

  • understand the 3D pipeline workflow in order to work smoothly with the team.

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Resource for lighting artist.

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  • Digital Lighting & Rendering by Jeremy Birn, George Maestri (Editor)(pub. New Riders Publishing)

  • Painting with Light by John Alton (pub. University of California Press)

  • Light for Visual Artists: Understanding & Using Light in Art & Design by Richard Yot

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Job Sectors for Lighting Artist
 

Film - VFXHolllywood - creating photorealistic light for beliavable art. working closely with rendering and compositing department to produce final image/film with desire light.

In the VFX pipeline, lighting artist can be Lighting Technical Director in CG generalist or CGI 3D Department. 

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Before going into my research and developement project, which is Lighting Mood I gathered all the resource regarding lights and possible relation. 

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Making of Ratatouille kitchen : http://www.ronenbekerman.com/making-of-ratatouille-kitchen/

 

Lighting tips from Lego Movie : http://blog.animationmentor.com/11-lighting-tips-from-the-lego-movie/ 

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Brick by Bricks : https://www.fxguide.com/featured/brick-by-brick-how-animal-logic-crafted-the-lego-movie/

 

Setting up SSS shader : http://www.3dtutorialzone.com/tutorial?id=81

 

Depth Map and Raytraced Shadow : http://userpages.umbc.edu/~bailey/Courses/Tutorials/RenderingDemo/DepthRayShadowDemo.html

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Top Ten tips for more convincing Lighting and Rendering : http://www.peachpit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=2165641

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Understanding Final Gather : http://blog.digitaltutors.com/understanding-final-gather/

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Understanding Global Illumination : http://blog.digitaltutors.com/understanding-global-illumination/

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Final Gather vs Global Illumination : http://blog.digitaltutors.com/indirect-illumination-final-gather-vs-global-illumination/

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Lighting- Point Light : http://what-when-how.com/3d-animation-using-maya/lighting-point-lights-intensity-color-and-shadows-essential-skills-3d-animation-using-maya/

 

I found all of the tutorials and tips help me in understanding the lights and preparing myself for the R&D project in such a short time.

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R&D Planning

Moodboard for R&D project : Lighting moods and colours. Environment model. I am trying to recreate a miniature city in my R&D project and play with the light mood.

Walt Disney Animation Studio : Hyperion Renderer for advance Lighting. It was used in Big Hero 6 and Zootropolis.

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More about hyperion by Disney : http://www.disneyanimation.com/technology/innovations/hyperion

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I attended the event organized by London ACM Siggraph and get into deep making of the movie Zootropolis and was exposed to Hyperion Renderer for the first time. The technology allow ighting artist work with realistic ligting and real time render for final result.

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The Making of Zootropolis:

I went to the event organized by ACM SIGGRAPH and have the chance to look into the making of the film Zootropolis by Walt Disney Animation. 

The three philosophy of creating the animation of Disney

  1. Believable World - During the section of Believable world, It covers the process of creating the environment in the film Zootropolis.From research to concept and to new technology "Hyperion Renderer" Creating four different city in the world which make it believable to the audience. Concept and reseacrh focusing on architecture with natural elements. 

  2. Compelling Story

  3. Appealing Character - team visited wildlife world in Kenya for 12 days and observed the animal living in the wild. The team also get in touch with the scientist for deep research of fur in the character. They took photo of the fur of the animals in the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County and recreate them in Maya. 

R&D Project Workflow

Kick start my R&D project!

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  1. Quick modelling of the scene. (tips from workshop : naming all the asset, keep the outliner clean, delete history of the mesh, good topology)
     

  2. Create the camera angle that I intended to work with, lock the attributes so I could have a clean workflow when saving the files without worrying I might accidentally moved my camera. 
     

  3. Getting the light set up. But first of all, I play with different lights to see which I would use. Deicided to use only point light and directional light.
     

  4. Positioning of the lights. 4 side for point lights to lit up the scene, Directional light as the main source of light and shadow. Light intensity, light colours. Here I used attribute spreadsheet editor for easier controlling

5. Test with different lights colour.

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6. Finding out about Final Gather and Global Illumination to see the 

   difference in affecting the render output. Render time increased.

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7. Setting up render layer for render passes. I seperate Final Gather and

    ambient occlusion into 2 different render layer. This is because I found

    out when I try to get them in 1 render layer the render time took 20

    minutes just for single frame. 

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8. In the Final Gather render layer - render setting -

    Final Gather : ON

    Ambient Occlusion : OFF

    Associated render pass : Beauty, Depth

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9. In the AO render layer - render setting -

    Final Gather : OFF

    Ambient Occlusion : ON

    Associated render pass : AO

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10. Composite in Nuke using ZDefocus node for lens blur effect.

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11. Adding colour correct node to achieve warmer tone.

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12. R&D Video explainning the process

R&D Video Breakdown

Journal

In the process of this R&D project, I started off quite confuse in which area I should focus on as my interest is quite diverse. After the formative feedback, I made up my mind to focus on Lighting area. During my research, I found relation between lighting and compositing which lead my interest where I always wanted to be a compositor. To become a compositor, I think the best will be start from getting the light right for photorealistic result. Advancing in 2 department will benefit me in the future.

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My objective of this project is to create different lighting mood.

With the tight schedule I had in this unit, I had to make sure all my research and workflow to be done in time. Although I was told to focus on lighting and get downloaded model to experiment with, I decided to build my own model as I can model quite fast. For my project, I model few assets and just duplicate them to replicate a miniature city.

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Next, I fixed 3 camera angles and I play with the light setting in Maya. After getting the light mood that I want, I had few experiment with render setting. The setting is crucial as it will affect the final look, render time, and light quality. To take care of the elements, I had to separate render layer for different render passes. I have to take care of what passes that I need for compositing in Nuke. 

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Lighting artist have to work together with rendering and compositing department. The workflow is linear and having knowledge in the department before and after in the production pipeline is important for the best outcome.

 

Overall, my R&D workflow of research is quite simple and achievable in a short period of time. This R&D project lead me wanting to get into deep understanding in Lighting and Compositing and beneficial for my Final Year where I have to choose my roles.

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Animation : 3D Animated Series - create light that enhance mood and storytelling. have to understand the 3D animation pipeline with render passes, shader, renderer to provide realistic light for the next department. 

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Example of Job Criteria by BlueZoo

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