lemonkeygames

Dev Diary - Painting with Light, Part 2

Added 2021-09-07 00:14:09 +0000 UTC

Welcome to another dev diary friends, today I'll like to talk through my thought process on critiquing my own work and improving an otherwise "Ok" looking shot.

Disclaimer: Art is subjective and these are my own thoughts.

Without further ado -

So I've just finished posing this shot, the values are ok, lights are kind of working, and it sets the scene as intended... but it's just looking a little flat. We hear this pretty often when critiquing lighting, "The lighting looks kind of flat", "It's not very interesting" but how do we quantify that into something actionable?

Here's a quick draw-over of the above image.

Looking at the initial render, these immediately pops into my mind. Basically if I were to look at this image as a black and white picture, it's gonna be a flat blob because the colour values are too similar to each other.

So, lets try angling the lights to describe the contours of the body better, and hopefully inject a bit more life into our shot.

Much better! The fingers no longer looks like sausages, there's more interesting play on the shadows, and you can see defined shapes on the arms, having that contrast in there just grabs your eye more - it feels less computer generated, more life-like.

Here's a quick draw over of this new render -

The light values hasn't really changed, the pose hasn't changed, all that's really changed is the position of the lights, and they go a really long way in helping us describe the texture on our characters!

There's this magical moment where while working in 3D, it stops being a technical process and just becomes part of the story, and it's that moment we try to (hopefully!) find in every shot.

And with luck, the audience will see it too.

That's the end of Part 2 of this series, I do quite enjoy writing them, but let me know if you like hearing about this part of the creative process too!

Have a great week all,

LemonKey