When it comes to defining high dynamic range imaging, Christian Block said it best.

“High dynamic range imaging is a method to digitally capture, store, and edit the full luminosity range of a scene. “

Some don’t like the Velvet Elvis over-the-top look of the tone mapped HDR images.

Some don’t like the photos failing to capture the full luminosity range. Old-school junk, they say.

But everybody agrees on one thing. Tone mapping is your very important creative choice, when it comes to high dynamic range rendering.

Continue reading…

“With tone mapping you can simulate the local adaptation mechanism that our eye is capable of.” — Christian Bloch [2]

Indeed, by tone mapping the image you decide what will be visible. You decide what to burn and dodge. You decide how the heck you’re going to display it on the monitor. And whether or not you like the clown-puke looking stuff.

Obviously, Cycles (Blender ray-tracing engine) renders everything in glorious HDR.

And you have 4 tone mapping tools to change the look of that HDRI and to fit it into the display color space.

What are these tools?

Find all of them (besides the Tonemap filter) in the Color Management tab.

1. RGB Curves

2. Gamma and Exposure

3. Film Emulation

4. Tonemap filter in Compositor

What is crucial, by tone mapping the render you decide who is the virtual spectator and what she sees.

(The waves whispering Alisssss, Alissssss…)

Let’s call her Alice.

Wait… what?

Alice and Tone Mapping

The creative process of tone mapping an extremely high dynamic range to your granny’s monitor is where all magic happens.

You use Blender or 3ds Max or anything else. But you neither touch the physical devices like cameras, nor you see the virtual scene directly with your eyes.

Computer graphics is abstraction, damn it.

The question is:

You render the virtual world through the eyes of… who?

A god? A dog? A Nikon lens? A little girl with a dry eyes syndrome?

How you deal with the tone mapping tells the story of Alice and how she experiences the world.

• Has Alice just entered the room?

• Does she see it for the first time?

• Do we see a photo made by Alice, rather than see through her eyes?

• Does Alice have a cataract or a dry eyes syndrome?

• Who the f#ck is Alice?

• Is Alice a dog?

The lighting needs an observer.

The lighting IS how observer observes it.

3 Versions of Alice

So tone mapping is a great opportunity to imagine how Alice experiences the world, and using what device.

Let’s explore three different versions of Alice.

Version 1. Alice Has Just Entered this Weird Room and Sees it With Her Eyes

White shimmer of waves hitting the shore. Cries of seagulls. Such impolite brightness!

Where am I?

Oh dear Alice, should I explain?

You’re nothing more than a spectator in our little simulation. I can call you Gordon if you wish.

Gordon, your eyes has not yet adapted to the bright light hitting the retina. A chemical reaction will kick in soon. Young people need less that 5 minutes to adapt to such light.

• Tone Mapping in Blender

In such lighting scenario you’ll have a few minutes of the pitch-black shadows. The Schrödinger’s cat shadows. The Legacy of the Void shadows. And the light saber light.

In Blender you can try the film emulation to lower the “eye” sensitivity to the dark spots. And please don’t be confused by the film part. It can be used not just for the film looks.

So, by tone mapping the image this way you create the impression that Alice has just entered the room.

And that she sees it with her own eyes.

Quite sensitive eyes, still failing miserably to see every detail.

Alice, say thanks to your brain that knows the tricks like:

• Local adaptation

The chemical reaction in your eye adjusts the amount of light that reaches the retina.

• Reconstruction

Your eyes make a rapid movements around the scene, assembling the kind of a visual cache. Imagine taking a dozen photos of different exposures, then merging it into an HDR panorama.

So after a few minutes of adaptation you’ll see the image like this:

This type of tone mapping sucks, in my opinion.

Bo-o-o-o-o-ring (say this in Benedict Cumberbatch’s voice).

Let’s explore the second version of Alice.

Version 2. Alice Wields an Old Zenith Camera with an Analogue Film

A white shimmer of the waves hitting the shore. That’s all we can see by looking at the old photo.

Thankfully, we CG artists don’t have to use bracketing and other tricks to capture HDR images. We have it naturally.

But you can surrender the glorious full luminosity range willingly. You can screw the tone mapping.

Why?

We are not afraid of pitch-dark shadows. We know how to use it to our advantage.

That’s why Alice wields the camera, the old Zenith thingy.

Photographers often use a low dynamic range film. Painters use limited palettes. Bass guitarists are okay with 4 strings.

That kind of a screwed tone mapping is awesome.

How to do it in Blender?

• The Screwed Tone Mapping in Blender

Firstly, you pick the exposure that you like.

Secondly, you screw the tone mapping using RGB curves. Kind of an S-shape in RGB curves produces a weird tone mapping.

Bam!

Just like an old analogue photo.

Alice wields the old Zenith camera, remember?

Version 3. Create Your Version of Alice

Wait, wait, wait…

Can you imagine your version of Alice?

Stop reading (for a moment) and imagine this:

• Alice sees the room in her dream

• Alice is color-blind

• Alice has a cataract

• Alice has a perfect visual system of a robot

• Alice is a rendering engine of a famous real-time HDRI demo by Paul Devebec

• Alice is a dog

How would the tone mapping look?

Conclusion

So, what everybody ought to know about HDRI rendering and tone mapping is that it needs the observer.

We need Alice to observe the virtual worlds we create.

You can tone map to simulate the human eye, or the analogue camera, or whatever you like.

Now your turn.

Experiment with tone mapping in your next breathtaking render. Only practice will allow you to boost it up a notch.

SUBSCRIBERS’ BONUS:

6 Practical Tips to Creating the Impression of Intensive Lighting

How can you achieve the being-almost-blinded-by-the-light impression in Blender or any other 3D modelling app?

Stack these six things on top of each other.

1. Glare

Add a glare effect (which is caused by excessive brightness, you are right). The physically correct glare is one of the reasons people drool over HDR rendering.

2. Bleaching of Colors

Have you noticed that the colors look bleached in the bright day light? Here we go.

3. Light Spilling Over the Edges

James Gurney, the author of Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter book gives us a great tip:

“One approach to contre-jour lighting is to think of the light area behind the subject not as flat white paint but as a sea of illuminated vapor, with light streaming out of the background, melting away the edges of the form.” [4]

It can be done using the glare effect in Blender.

4. Chromatic Aberration

For some reason, it feels to me that chromatic aberration boosts the perceived light intensity. As if the viewing device can’t handle the dazzling light and produces glitches.

5. Washed Out Shadows

The old analogue film sucks when it comes to capturing the high dynamic range. So you get the pools of a cosmic darkness here and there.

If you want to push this effect over the top, add the film emulation.

6. Wormy shapes called floaters, slowly drifting inside the eyes (actually we see our own red blood cells when we look at the bright light) [3]

Just kidding. I didn’t implement the goddamn floaters.

But you can go further!

Lighting Project and Lighting Tutorials

The Lighting Project is a manifesto of a think-different approach to digital lighting.

This book will help aspiring artists to revolutionize CG lighting by embracing artistic weirdness and aesthetic perception.

Literature & Links

1. Smokie. Living next door to Alice

2. Christian Bloch. The HDRI Handbook

3. James Elkins. How to Use Your Eyes

4. James Gurney. Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter

The post Tone Mapping Your HDRI the Wrong Way (You’ll Love It) appeared first on Creative Shrimp.

You are reading the chapter 16 of the Lighting Project, the manifesto of a think-different approach to digital lighting. The most mind-boggling project of my life.

Do you want to try a fresh hipster stuff… in digital lighting?

The stuff that will make the viewers groove? Yay!

Hint: it’s an underground stuff from the 20th century. Sexy. A bit bizarre. Revolutionary.

It’s called Lomography.

Shall I explain?

LOMO LC-A was a cheap soviet camera discovered by a group of Viennese students. They were hooked with the badass lighting defects this camera produced.

• Rainbow-colored flashes

• Extreme optical distortion

• Light leaks and film burn

Today lomographers even detach the lens ever-so-slightly from the camera body and call it “lens-whacking”.

Why? It gives lighting a vibrant artistic touch.

But more importantly, Lomography is about a shoot-from-the-hip lifestyle. Lomography is the art of junk, that sets millions of minds on fire.

You can do it too. In computer graphics.

Sounds good?

How can you re-create a similar aesthetic experience in 3D? How can you make your renders look hipster and dazzling?

Let’s explore three steps…

Lomography trick #1: Whack Your (Virtual) Lens to Get a Bizarre Lighting

To add an artistic twist to your lighting, experiment with what lomographers call the “lens whacking”.

Essentially lens whacking means that you deliberately make a weird sh#t like breaking the lens and you expect a surprising outcome.

Imagine.

You walk through a crowded Amsterdam street on a late December evening. When you feel bored, you point your LOMO LC-A at a random spot and CLICKKK, the flash goes off. A few days later you process the photos, but you can’t recognize the place. The faces are gone too.

Instead you see the tantalizing light leaks dancing their own rumba.

That’s why people break their cameras. We love surprises.

Ready to break?

•  Optical defects

Start by creating a lens and placing it in front of the camera, like in real world. Any refractive elements will work. As long as your software has raytracing, but any potato nowadays has raytracing.

Bend the hell out of the lens. Clone it.

Make it matte and see how the light is smeared across the lens.

Seeing the effect in real time is the best way to do it.

•  Film emulation

Lomography fans usually don’t give a damn about composition and studio lighting setups. What they do care about is the hipster looks that are achieved with different kind of analogue films.

Did I hear you say Instagram?

Well, kind of. But a real Lomography has much more oomph to it than just a bunch of post-pro filters.

Imagine that every film respond to light with a different flavor.

Some films clip the whites. Some wash out the blacks. And some have shenanigans going on in the mid range (plus a crazy color tint).

Aim for shenanigans.

Destroy the RGB curves to create your unique brand of film.

Lomo Shrimp 100 iso? Turquoise Nerd XPro 35mm?

• Light leaks

Light leak is the star of our show.

To simulate the light leaks in 3D, once again stack a few refractive planes in front of a camera. Then you can throw all kind of textures in to control the distortion, the roughness and the color tint of the lens.

Yay, and you don’t have to pay a cent for a photographic equipment. For us CG artists the spare lenses are free.

BONUS TIP: To cook a believable light leak, spice it up with an additive blending.

Lomography trick #2. We Need to Go Deeper (Into the Post Processing)

Your first step was to whack the lens in 3D.

So far so good.

What else do you need to do to squeeze the most juice out of Lomography?

Post process the image with even more sexy defects. More lens damage, more processing defects and more grrrrrrain.

Let’s go.

• Light leaks

Apply these defects to push your lighting further into the old-school analogue film territory:

• Film processing defects (Doubling)

If you scrub through the gallery on Flickr you’ll notice that kind of photos. They look like the ghostly reflections in the shop windows, with double and triple overlays of different images.

When I stumbled across it I had only one thought.

Why the hell don’t we use this trick in CG?

• Chromatic aberration, dust, scratches and grain

Scratches and grain give the subliminal boost to what we call photorealism.

But what is photorealism, anyway? Just a silver halide reacting to light.

Let’s get straight to the most juicy part.

Lomography trick #3: Don’t Think, Just Shoot

Now when you have all Lomography gears rotating, try this.

“I keep a stiff upper lip
And I shoot from the hip” — AC/DC

Don’t plan your 3D render in advance this time. It means no sketch and no concept art.

You probably think, what the heck?

But ahoy, some lomographic cameras didn’t have viewfinders!

Lomography is about surprise.

Do the same in 3D and you will be stunned by the results.

Waltz into the scene with your camera ready. And hit the render button over and over again while listening to Beatles. Though I‘d prefer Muse or maybe Ghost.

Let the whacked lens (all the rituals you followed through this tutorial) work its magic.

You may find really hot camera angles and unexpected compositions if you apply the motto “Don’t think, just shoot”. Because when you stay tuned to the here and now, you open a new perspective on lighting.

You open a perspective that is an aesthetic experience and surprise.

Over to You

Highest of fives.

If you feel that this Lomography tutorial will be helpful to someone you know, share it by clicking the buttons below this text. It means a world to me, because this way you help me to continue writing the Lighting Project.

The Lighting Project is a manifesto of a think-different approach to digital lighting.

This book will help aspiring artists to revolutionize CG lighting by embracing artistic weirdness and aesthetic perception.

And I’m excited to see your pictures with light leaks and other photo defects. Go ahead and post your wip or finished renders in the comments.

The post Use 3 Lomography Tricks to Make Sexy & Hipster Lighting (Mmmm… the Light Leaks) appeared first on Creative Shrimp.

Sometimes you need to stop interpretation.

How are you going to analyze the lighting in a shopping mall? The shitload of advertisements on Beijing street? The mass production of visual media in New York?

Bam!

The world of hyper consumption exploded with shining, strobing and flashing stuff. And you are still holding your manual with lighting schemes: Rembrandt, loop, butterfly.

You get lost in things that don’t really matter.

To create an image like that you need to think differently.

Why?

You can’t interpret this Blade Runner-esque scene in terms of lighting schemes. No lighting technique from photography book is able to describe this weird aesthetic experience.

So what can you do?

As Susan Sontag noted: “In place of a hermeneutics we need an erotics of art.”

It’s time to recover your senses. I would even say that it’s time to overstimulate your senses!

To create a really immersive urban experience you need to feel something about it. You need to really see it. You need to immerse yourself into that experience.

Lighting Tutorial: Quick guide to Visual Overstimulation

In this lighting tutorial we’re going to create a crowded city illumination.  Follow through these 3 steps and you will end up with having a cool lighting in your artwork.

By the way, if you want to create a nature render instead, check Pro-Lighting: Skies HDRi pack by Blenderguru.

Step 1. Start by Drinking a Double Espresso

Start by going for a walk and ordering a double espresso in the nearest Starbucks or whatever.

Double espresso provides just enough stimulation to feel the vibe of a big city.

Your growth as an artist is a growth towards drinking more coffee.

But be careful, because “Ongoing sensory overload can lead to depression, fatique, hopelessness, and, in some cases, suicidal ideation.”

Step 2. Ask Yourself What Do You Really See, When You Look at New York?

Browse through the references of crowded urban environments on Flickr or Pixabay.

Ask yourself, what do you really see?

And when I’m asking his question, I don’t necessarily mean the content of the picture. Look at form, look at lighting.

Erotics, not hermeneutics.

Here is my list of things:

• LSD trip of visiting a huge mall

Once I stumbled across the article on Mental health talk website, where Trish described her overstimulation while visiting a mall. She said it was like taking LSD.

“Then my visual perception would shift and it was like everything within my visual range was reaching toward me.”

Indeed, all that advertising in a big city reaches to you, speaks to you directly. Can you see it?

• Overstimulation

Look at the crazy amount of light sources in the image.

It renders obsolete such things as the angle and the softness of the light. Who cares about the angle, when the light spills from all angles?

It’s a sheer overstimulation.

It’s a total eyef#ck.

Step 3. Now Overstimulate Our Eyes

Maybe you experienced that anxiety of sensory overload, like Trish did. Maybe you experienced your own thing (Duke Nukem first level, anybody?). Or maybe you found such a great reference, that it made you want to watch Blade Runner for the second time.

Stick to that aesthetic experience. Stick to that thing that appeared to you.

Now when you have seen something, you can start creating.

Time to rock! Turn on the Wasteland 2 soundtrack and start creating the lighting in your scene.

Add that big city lights everywhere.

Make me feel like an Englishman in New York.

Continue adding lights till you irritate everybody, including yourself. But no matter what you do, stick to that initial feeling.

Spread the Word About the Open Lighting Project

If you enjoyed this article, please share it by clicking the share buttons above (and below!). It helps me tremendously to promote the Open Lighting Project.

I appreciate every share and comment and together we’ll create a really outstanding book, I promise. You are amazing.

The post The Most Important Thing About Lighting And Visual Overstimulation appeared first on Creative Shrimp.

If you haven’t experienced it, here is a short demo.

Your head hurts. Looking at these bottles (a little party never killed nobody) you wonder how can human being drink so much beer. You start recollecting memories and then…

Bam!

You notice the lighting.

The lighting is amazingly complex. In fact, so complex and interesting that you forget about your headache.

You notice that every (!) glass bottle treat the light in different way. Some bottles are filled up with cigarette butts and they absorb the light. The Heineken is sleek and shiny and the Jack Daniel’s is covered with dust, because it stands on this table for ages.

Some bottles are red, some are blue.

In that complexity, lighting appears to you in a flash of aesthetic experience.

Like a symphony.

1 simple light source + 32 different bottles = amazingly complex lighting

Wouldn’t it be cool if you can recreate this kind of symphonic lighting in your images? Take a leap of faith and let the light do its job?

After following these 3 simple steps, you will be inspired to try it. I guarantee.

Step 1. Build a Complex Stack of Crap

Build a film set. It will come alive when you add a light source.

I don’t care, what setting will you choose. But make sure it is… well… complex enough. For example, my alcohol-driven setting has a lot of content. Dozens of different bottles and other crap.

All I had to do is to add a light and (bam!) everything clicks.

Get it?

You may want to photo scan a gnarly tree and then add a thick canopy. Or you may find yourself under a bridge, watching how the light is bouncing between the concrete supports.

Step 2. Throw in the Light

Surprisingly, what you need is just one light.

One window is enough to create very complex lighting in this whole scene.

See? When you created a complex scene, you also created a complex structure for the light transport.

Remember? Some bottles are red, some are blue. Some are filled up with cigarette butts and it soak up the light. Some still have a liquid inside.

Here is the equation:

1 simple light source + 32 different bottles = amazingly complex lighting

Step 3. Take a Virtual Camera and Search for the Best Shot

The next step is to pretend that you are a photographer on stage.

Surprisingly, you are longer in control over the lighting. The path-tracing algorithm is doing its calculations. And you can’t command path tracer to throw rays here or there.

The only thing that you control is your camera. And maybe a depth of field (check out this Bokeh tutorial!).

So take your camera and start searching for the best shot. And if you see something cool, stop. Just like I stopped when the lighting on the bottles interrupted my everyday flow.

“Aesthetic experience is an unexpected interruption in the flow of the everyday” 

Gumbrecht H.-U. Aesthetic Experience in Everyday Worlds

After you find that image, just listen to the symphony.

Over to You

How often we try to control EVERYTHING and we fail miserably.

Lose control and let the light do its magic… Isn’t it exciting?

Now create your own lighting symphony. Build up some complex matter, throw in the light and search for the beautiful.

I’m 100% sure you will be amazed, how many cool shots you can get.

And make sure to share your creations with the world!

The Lighting Project

It will mean a lot to me if you support the Lighting Project by spreading the word.

Tell your friends on Twitter about the book. The success of this project depends on how popular we can make it on social media. Yeah, I rely on a viral promotion.

Everybody, can you help me to spread the word about Open Lighting Project by retweeting?http://t.co/0J6y1ZY2it pic.twitter.com/rBszlZQLLk

— Gleb Alexandrov (@gleb_alexandrov) June 27, 2015

Thank you so much!

The post Are You Overlooking This Way to Make Amazingly Complex Lighting? appeared first on Creative Shrimp.

That’s how I feel when two different emotions struggle for my attention.

Like a pleasure of drinking a hot cup of Costa Rican coffee, while watching a cold rain blasting the street. Coffee is hot. The rain is chilling like hell.

You can see the box of a restaurant is filled with a warm light (multiplied by the cigarette smoke). And the whole city outside is filled with a grayish moving gas of the rain.

You can see these two worlds are connected by the thin glass of the window.

They play, and they fight.

Imagine it and I guarantee that you will feel a bit bipolar too. Like Hunter Thompson watching Derby while being high.

What I find super exciting (from artistic standpoint) in such situations is drama. Drama, created by play. Drama, created by different lighting styles, seen at once.

Drama, created by colliding atmospheres in your artistic Hadron Collider.

Why bother?

• The drama breathes life into your artworks.

• It ignites the feeling in your audience.

• It makes your espresso hotter (on the background of a really cold rain).

After following these 3 simple steps, you will learn how to create a super dramatic lighting.

Step 1. Start With a Dramatic Experience From Your Life

I’m sure you live an interesting life. Even if you don’t think so.

Just remember some situation that had that kind of conflict to it. The situation, that drags you in two different directions, emotion-wise.

Even if you want to create a sci-fi cargo bay, start with something from your life.

Maybe you will remember that storm in early 2000’s. The black clouds are getting nearer, blocking the sunlight. You are waiting for the bus in a thickening grayness. And when the bus arrives, you notice that the old junk is literally full of light.

Good old fluorescent tubes in action.

Apparently, the bright bus brings the whole different atmosphere to the pre-storm setting. It brings drama.

That can be your experience.

And my experience is being caught in the rain and finding shelter in the coffee house.

Step 2. Visualize the Initial State of Your Imaginary World

Think about it.

When you see some conflicting lighting scenario, there is always a starting point. There is always an initial uninterrupted reality.

Bam! And then comes something outlandish and spice it up.

Then comes the bus, and it penetrates the darkness. Or then you find a coffee shop, and it creates a conflict with the rainy landscape.

There is always a starting point.

So first, visualize that initial state of your imaginary world. And if it rains, make it rain so hard that it gives us goosebumps.

Visualize the cold atmosphere of the rainy street, creeping in the building. Cover windows with shivering droplets. Do whatever you need to elicit a certain emotion. Aim at the goosebumps.

Feel the mood and stick to it for now.

In the next step, you will flip the switch.

Step 3. Add a Conflict to Your Lighting

Flip the switch.

Now when you have established the mood, it’s time to add a conflict to your ligting.

If you created a heavy rain wrecking havoc outside the window, illuminate the interior with a red torchère.

What about your sci-fi lab, base on Mars? Throw in a capsule with Earth lighting simulation. Natural and cool.

And I want to emphasize something. The conflict isn’t just about complimentary colors. It’s not necessarily based on the image composition at all.

The conflict is based on atmospheres and your feeling of tension between them. To create a dramatic lighting, you need a good conflict.

A smoking hot cup of Costa Rican coffee in your hands. Moth, swarming near the lamps. And a wet asphalt, blasted with the heavy rain.

Over to You

You can’t measure the temperature of a color with a thermometer. The idea of warm and cool color is all in our minds, but the effect of color temperature on the viewer is real anyway. — James Gurney

Now you have a taste of what it takes to create a dramatic lighting.

And I bet you already have envisioned something special. Something, that will help you create the strongest lighting conflict ever.

What’s next?

Go ahead and create it.

The post 3 Simple Steps to Creating Super Dramatic Lighting (By Colliding Different Emotions) appeared first on Creative Shrimp.

I’ve always felt that the term practical light misses something very important. Besides that the light is, well, practical. Available in the scene. Seen by the viewer.

But what about personality of a light source? What about a disturbing feeling, when the table lamp gazes back at you (quite literally)?

I assure you that the table lamp is not merely a practical light.

Imagine it.

You work at the local newspaper. Today is a crunch time. You stay overnight to finish the shitload of writing. When darkness gathers in the corners, the only thing that illuminates your poor existence is the table lamp.

To remind yourself about visiting an eyesight specialist, you stick a piece of paper to the lamp shade. A second later, you notice that the lamp shade is covered with stickers.

In some weird way, that office lamp is your only friend. And as a friend, it has its own undeniable personality.

Step 1. Write a Backstory for Your Light

Have you ever noticed how much our perception of the lighting is affected by the look of the light source?

Freakin’ much.

One thing is to look at a dimly lit cellar. And the whole other thing is to look at the same cellar lit by Falk Stadelmann kerosene lamp (owned by your grandmother).

It is a completely different aesthetic experience.

It’s different because you feel, that there is a backstory behind the light. It’s different because you feel, in Walter Benjamin words,

“…Unique phenomenon of a distance, however close it may be”.

German cultural critic called this feeling an aura.

Now pretend for a moment, that you are writing the backstory for a character.

And the character will be the office table lamp.

Maybe this table lamp will tell us something about its owner (quite a nerd perhaps).

For example, I have imagined a not-so-young journalist, workaholic and sociopath. Burning his life in a never ending crunch, he often stays at work overnight just to finish the article in time.

When darkness gathers in the corners, the only thing that illuminates his poor existence is the table lamp. In some weird sense, that table lamp is his only friend.

To remind himself about visiting the eyesight specialist, he sticks a piece of paper to the lamp shade. The lamp shade is covered with stickers.

…After the bankruptcy and office relocation, the lamp is left behind. Turned off. Worthless junk.

But the 8 P.M. sun hits the lamp shade. For a moment it looks like someone turned on the lamp once again. For a moment it’s so bright that it starts to illuminate the table. Like in the good old days.

You got the point.

Step 2. Find a Reference That Speaks to You

Now find a way to tell your story in a visual way.

First you’ll need a reference.

I’m going to repeat it once again here. You’ll need an awesome reference.

I usually start searching in where people share photos of their personal stuff. It’s Ebay. It’s Flickr. It’s Pixabay.

You’ll know when you stumble across the light that fits into your story. You may even build a new exciting story around that image.

The rest is a breeze, if you found the reference that speaks to you.

Step 3. Give Your Lamp That Extra Touch

Do you relate on lighting to create an aesthetic experience? Than it’s logical to give the light that extra touch.

Look at the light source and ask yourself, what could make it unique.

Here is some things that I did to assure that this lamp stands out:

• Second-hand look

• Humanizing details (stickers)

• Ambiguity: self-illuminated or lit by the sun

I’m sure you can imagine a lot more ways to give the extra touch to it.

Maybe it’s a light texture, cast by a broken glass. Maybe this light can be included into narrative in some funny way. Maybe it invites viewer to play with meanings.

Or maybe it is plain stupid (and thus memorable).

Anyway, there is something deeply satisfying in looking at the light that has character.

A face lit by Marlboro cigarette. A couple, lit by a cheap motel neon sign. A roadside restaurant, lit by old 1967 Ford Mustang headlights.

When your light source is well integrated into narrative, is actually seen in the scene and has a personality to it… It’s a cohesive whole.

The post Why Personality Matters So Much (Even If You Are a Table Lamp) appeared first on Creative Shrimp.

TURN YOUR SUBJECT INTO INKBLOT

First of all, let me apologize for a cheap headline. Of course, without light there is no vision. 

What I really mean is that we can refocus our vision to see the flat silhouettes instead of three-dimensional forms. Also, that we need not illuminate every object. In astonishing amount of cases, the best thing you can do is to turn your subject into inkblot. Dark and flat.

Call it two-dimensional thinking, where light = lightness.

FOCUS ON FLAT SHAPES INSTEAD OF ROUND OBJECTS

A lot of people, and I among them, look at lighting as a tool for revealing a third dimension of the art we make.

There’s a fairly straightforward explanation for this: for CG artists it’s natural to emphasize the the depth and the physically-based material and light interaction. If they just drop it, then it would feel almost like they dropped their greatest strength.

Meanwhile, photography and film industry were using 2D techniques like silhouette for ages.

That may sound obvious, but we may as well learn to see the outlines, the contrasting shapes and the value.

OPERATING MANUAL FOR SILHOUETTES:

1. Leave the subject in darkness

2. Forget about materials

3. Focus on the flat shapes

KEEP IT SIMPLE, STUPID

Sobering truth is that the ability to keep lighting simple is far more valuable, than the ability to build a multi-layered complex stack of crap.

Keep it simple, stupid – viewed from my perspective, that principle could be applied to everything we do. And what a shame that I follow this advice on a rare occasion.

Making art? Try making it using minimalist approach. Shapes, lines, contrasting blobs – is it enough?

It was one of those days when I had spent a whole lot of time on setting up the multi-layered lighting for my image just to see how terrible it became. Having come this far, I was tempted to leave everything as it is, but eventually I ended up starting from scratch.

And you know? Almost no lighting for the major part of the scene was the solution.

Interestingly, no lighting is also a good starting point in setting up any type of lighting. Enable one light at a time and look carefully. Maybe you will see that it’s time to stop.

USE HIGH CONTRAST PLANES TO ENHANCE THE DEPTH, LIKE IN LIMBO

Have you ever played Limbo? Like most games with impressive visuals, it features very well-thought use of lighting. Its aesthetics is based on the separation of the image planes, that is emphasized by a black-and-white picture.

While the backdrop drowns in a grayish fog, the hero and the foreground remain pitch-black. That contrast creates a very stylized, yet visually appealing lighting situation.

Ironically, when a half or the scene receives no lighting whatsoever, it still retains the impression of a 3d depth. This is pretty good evidence that the light and material interaction, and the roundness of 3D forms is not a requirement for the depth perception.

Of course, by playing this awesome game you can tell that the parallax effect separates the background from the foreground as well. But that’s another story.

BONUS TIP: WOLFGANG METZER’S EXPERIMENT

James Elkins in a brilliant book How to Use Your Eyes describes the experiment of Wolfgang Metzer, who put volunteers in uniformly lit rooms without shadows and gradients. After some time spent in this dull environment, the volunteers reported strange things going on with their vision: descending darkness and “gray clouds”.

Interestingly, when the brain has no information to process, it automatically shuts down the vision.

LIGHTING OPEN PROJECT

This project is my way of writing a book, with your interest and support.

Every week I publish the tutorial, touching some aspect of digital lighting. Work in progress and other exciting stuff goes straight to social media. So be sure to like (on Facebook) and follow (on Twitter).

I want to keep this project open in terms of communication. I need to hear your voice, so please leave a comment and tell me, what do you like/dislike about the article, and what do you want to see in THE NEXT one.

Let’s keep it open and make this book together.

LET’S DISCUSS YOUR RENDERS!

Show me your silhouette render and I will gladly provide a feedback (honest, of course).

The post Why No Lighting is the Best Lighting Sometimes? appeared first on Creative Shrimp.

Abandoned Blackwood Manor at night? Alien infested spaceship? Film Noir style close-up? Possibilities for this dark-side setup are endless, especially if you appreciate the constraints of less is more principle.

What is Low Key Lighting?

Last time, we discussed high key lighting. In this tutorial, it’s time to move on from cheery, bright images to their complete inverse.

When you see a pitch-dark scene with a stroke of a sharp and strong direct light, illuminating a figure from the side or the back – no doubt you see low key lighting.

When you travel from Silent Hill foggy surface to hellish underground, you start in high key, but end up in low key lighting scenario.

Film Noir most of the time unfolds in low key lighting situation, like a crime scene dimly lit, nevertheless featuring a harsh spotlight and a murderer’s shadow on the wall.

This style of lighting is all about a high contrast ratio between lit and dark areas (for example, we can measure the contrast as 8:1. In case of high key lighting, this figure will be 2:1).

How to Set Up Low Key Lighting in Blender using Just One Lamp?

Download the scene

Often you can get away with just one lamp to send the shivers down the viewer’s spine, and that’s encouraging and terrifying at the same time.

Encouraging, because you have to worry only about one thing, that is the light source.

Terrifying, because everything depends on a skillful placement of that one thing.

1. Start pitch-dark

2. Use dominant light source

3. Block the part of light using gobo

One Point Lighting. When Less is More

Often, one strong light is all we need to create an appealing image. For me, it connotes the theatrical spotlighting technique, which is quite cool.

Moreover, I think that minimal approach sparks the creativity. When we have to find just one angle for our light, we may very well look for the best angle!

The trick is to emphasize the silhouette of the model, as well as its depth and volume.

Or in case of interior, you may spill light on some part of it, while letting other parts stay in shadow. Like I did with surrealistic and poorly motivated interior below.

Edge Lighting. Revealing Nightmarish Creatures

Edge lighting means that we spill the light from behind the subject, to reveal its edges.

(Of course, that doesn’t mean we can’t place the lamp slightly to the side).

Have you ever heard photographers talking about shaping with light? That’s exactly what we want to achieve in low key scenario.

Reveal silhouette. Reveal form. Reveal texture. Reveal that nightmarish fiend outline, while leaving everything else in below-middle-gray zone. Or even in complete darkness.

Oh, and before we go ahead, here is one thing to note. James Gurney puts it very well:

“Edge light is not just a thin white line around the form.”

Murderer’s Shadow in a Hard Light. Film Noir Effects

Black film is a literal meaning of this genre, and among other things (because Hollywood techniques serve many functions), it refers to low key lighting scheme.

When dealing with lighting scenario like this, I want to encourage you to use a small and strong light source to achieve so called hard light.

Do you remember Film Noir close-ups and how thick and pronounced were shadows? Hard light works wonders with low key lighting.

Indeed, when dealing with a high contrast stuff, you would want to have a precise control over the hotspot of the light source.

Interestingly, hard light is the way do go when creating a vintage look, because the early photographers had much less advanced lighting tech at their disposal. Thus, shadows used to be harsh.

“Use hard light from the sides. Diffusion panels are a modern photographic tool.” – Robert Morissey, Master Lighting Guide for Commercial Photographers.

One Hollywood Lighting Technique, Four Functions.

As Patrick Keating emphasizes in Hollywood Lighting from the Silent Era to Film Noir, Hollywood lighting techniques always have been multifunctional.

For example, here are low key lighting functions in Film Noir:

1. Sets right mood for the story.

2. Creates the modelling effect for the tough-guy leads.

3. Adds realistic details, motivated by environment, like shadows from the blinds.

4. Invokes the established convention of depicting crime scenes, etc.

Bonus tips:

Learn about blocking light using a gobo or a light texture.

Bonus Tip: Introduction to Game Level Texturing

Lighting For Nerds. Share the Joy by Clicking on Buttons Below the Article!

Your support means a ton for me. Go ahead and share the info about Lighting Open Project with your friends. Believe me, it will be very helpful.

The post Introduction to Low Key Lighting. When Less is More appeared first on Creative Shrimp.

WHAT IS HIGH KEY LIGHTING?

Imagine a very bright scene with a low contrast between light and dark areas. Imagine light is streaming from all directions and filling every corner.

High key lighting is all about a low lighting ratio. In another words, the low contrast between a key light and a fill light.

Photographers say, it makes people look younger. Fashion photography embraced this setup for it is strict and minimal. And flattering, as it makes wrinkles disappear.

In this tutorial, I’m making a link between high key lighting and overexposure. But apparently, overexprosure is NOT neccessary for this setup.

Christopher Grey (Master Lighting Guide for Portrait Photographers) emphasizes this point:

“High key” simply means that the vast majority of tones in the image are above middle gray, including any shadows.

And yeah, flat lighting has the drawbacks:

“However, you should use “beauty” lighting with care. The lack of shadows can also produce pictures that appear flat and formless and seem to be wholly without character.”

Light Science and Magic: An Introduction to Photographic Lighting

HOW TO SET UP HIGH KEY LIGHTING IN BLENDER?

Setting up high key lighting is surprisingly easy. In many cases, we can get away with just creating a soft front light, that fills the whole scene.

Or we can use an HDRi to get a nice and bright ambiance.

After setting up the basic lighting, all we need to do is to play with exposure.

A SOFT LIGHT IS A BIG LIGHT

Alternative to HDRi is a soft area light. But what does soft actually mean?

When using area lights, a big light is a soft light. And vice versa. But what really matters is an actual size of the light source, that ultimately depends on the distance from the object.

As Dirk Fletcher, author of Digital Photography Lighting For Dummies points out, the sun is an enormous object, but it acts like a small light source as it is so far away.  And bam! – we see the sharp shadows.

Dirk follows with a great tip: “When you photograph something that needs a softer touch, move the light closer to your subject or add a diffusion device like a soft box or umbrella.”

In another words, move the light closer or make it bigger.

4 GOOD REASONS TO USE HIGH KEY LIGHTING

1. It looks fresh

2. It makes your render stay apart from the crowd

3. It devours unnecessary details

4. It’s highly formal

5. It’s nice to have a dominantly white render once in a while

COLOR MANAGEMENT AND FILM EMULATION

If you go all in with cranking up the exposure, be ready to sacrifice pretty much all information on the bright end of the color range. It either goes over the 1.0 value and becomes pure white, or it gets clipped.

Do you remember those beautiful overexposed photos of old? A great deal of their charm is caused by how film reacts to light. As we’ve said, it narrows down the color range.

Let’s try to emulate the old film look using Blender Color Management.

Enable Film or RRT (Reference Render Transform) and that’s it.  Algorithms will do the film emulation for you.

CLAMP

If your scene starts to look like an empty white environment, where Morpheus introduced Neo to Matrix, you probably need to activate the clamp.

How does the clamp work? When the pixel brightness goes over some value, the clamp prevents it from getting brighter. So, set it to 1 to keep lighting at bay.

HIGH KEY VS LOW KEY LIGHTING

Of course, this style of lighting has its counterpart,  low key lighting.

Dramatic, dark and mysterious, this style goes along the lines of modeling with light.

In my point of view, it tends to produce very heavy and bold kind of images. In an extreme form, even disturbing ones.

To feel the difference between high key and low key lighting, remember how in Silent Hill game and movie, high key foggy town was changing to low key bizarre dimension.

Hollywood-style three point lighting setup often gravitates towards the drama of the low key, especially when featuring a dominant rim light. I have an impression, that high key lighting is often overlooked in 3d and that in video games and movies we see low key stuff way more often.

WHY DO WE OVERLOOK HIGH KEY LIGHTING?

Maybe it’s because high key lighting doesn’t accentuate the form (doesn’t model the object)?

On the contrary, it consumes the form and shadows. But you know, I like the freshness of overexposed photos and renders, even though they have lost some details. If it looks beautiful, who cares?

BONUS TIP FOR NERDS:

Learn how to use Color Management and the ‘Looks’ in Blender for color grading (sort of). 

LIGHTING BOOK OPEN PROJECT

Friendly reminder: I will publish lighting tutorials in my blog every two weeks (or weekly, if possible). Along with making of’s, work in progress and other exciting stuff, that will go straight to social media, namely Twitter, Facebook and Youtube.

After publishing around 10 articles I’ll start packing it into a book, full of interesting things.

Feel free to upload your high key lighting examples & renders!

The post High Key Lighting: Isn’t Overexposure Beautiful? appeared first on Creative Shrimp.

The Lighting Project is a manifesto of a think-different approach to digital lighting.

This book will help aspiring artists to revolutionize CG lighting by embracing artistic weirdness and aesthetic perception.

It’s the weirdest book about lighting in the world (according to my wife).

Feel free to subscribe to my newsletter to get notified when it’s published.

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LIGHTING TUTORIALS (CONSTANTLY UPDATED):

17. Tone Mapping Your HDRI the Wrong Way (You’ll Love It)

16. Use 3 Lomography Tricks to Make Sexy & Hipster Lighting (Mmmm… the Light Leaks)

15. The Most Important Thing About Lighting And Visual Overstimulation

14. Are You Overlooking This Way to Make Amazingly Complex Lighting?

 13. 3 Simple Steps to Creating Super Dramatic Lighting (By Colliding Different Emotions)

12. Why Personality Matters So Much (Even If You Are a Table Lamp)

11. 4 Reasons Why All-Devouring Fog is Actually an Amazing Thing (And a Massive Creative Force)

10. Why Adding Atmospheric Effects (Like Dust) is Crucial for Creating Jaw-Dropping Grungy Interiors?

9. Night Lighting Tutorial for Those Who Love Traveling at Night

8. How You Expose the Light by Capturing it?

7. Five Reasons You Should Look Beyond the Mirror

6. Why No Lighting is the Best Lighting Sometimes?

5. Ambient Lighting: Embrace the Dull

4. Introduction to Low Key Lighting. When Less is More

3. High Key Lighting: Isn’t Overexposure Beautiful?

2. Create Realistic Ice and Seriously Awesome Refraction

1.  Light Texture or How to Breathe Life into Dull Scene

WHAT IS THE LIGHTING PROJECT?

Here is my plan: I’m going to post a series of lighting tutorials here on CreativeShrimp, each devoted to some aspect of CG lighting. Then I publish the book. As simple as that.

And well, this project is OPEN. It means that I’m super interested in hearing your thoughts. I’m interested in chatting with you and seeing your renders and photos.

And of course, I will appreciate your help with promoting this project, so the other CG nerds can see it.

THE GOAL OF THE LIGHTING PROJECT

The goal is to publish (surprise!) the book. And also to post a new lighting tutorial every week.

Along with making of’s, work in progress and other exciting stuff, that will go straight to social media.

Blender Conference 2015 Talk: The Lighting Project

Projects are more fun when done together.

Feel free to follow me on Twitter, Facebook and Youtube, and on my blog, of course.

The post Lighting Tutorials and the Book by Gleb Alexandrov appeared first on Creative Shrimp.