Lighting in Maya

So, these are my first ever lighting set ups in Maya...

Alwin. H, Kuchler http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0473696/ known for Divergent (2014), Sunshine (2007) and Hanna (2011) was the lighting cameraman on my set design graduation film 'The Shaman'...

I have a funny memory of him on set, calling out to his assistant, in a very strong German accent

"Can I have an Inky-Dinky please and a quarter two see bee"

This translated was a small light with a light coloured blue transparency gel to fit over the bulb...lol

Lighting in Maya has been one of the best parts of creating a virtual world.

So much fun!

Here's some shots of He-Man with GuessWho in the background. 

I've basically chosen lights that give He-Man a blue daylight wash, plus some bounce light in red, to indicate sunshine hitting the GuessWho plastic.

I've included some screen grabs below to show the Maya interface and the creation and position of the lights...

Shot_05

Shot_09

Shot_18

I suggested we put some books on the window cill, so it looks as if the house is lived in. This set dressing should be 'invisible'...just putting a couple of touches of set dressing here and there (I learnt that on Pie in the Sky, when I was the on set art director) really helps to make the set look more convincing...

a bare window cill would stand out.

I'm very happy with the wallpaper, as it is a non-descript pattern and colour, and again makes the house look more convincing.

I chose a generic street scene as the background plate, in keeping with the modern style of house that we have created.

All of these shots have rendered out really well over the weekend.

As there are four of us lighting different shots, I suggested we put our rendered 25% images into and Premiere so we can get a quick look at the colour script...this sequence is fairly warm...

That way if any shots particularly stand out and look different from the rest, we have a heads up, before the compositing team get started.

I also suggested that where we have similar camera angles (such as the ones shown here) so that whoever did the lighting for that view, does the lighting for the other similar shots too; simply exporting the lights as a selection from the previous shot, and importing and tweaking where necessary..

Shot_28

Shot_29

Next step this week is compositing, where these rendered frames will be imported into Nuke, where we can add dust, focus pull, grain and of course....God Rays!!!! haha

Maya interface for Shot_31 which I am currently working on. 

Ringed in yellow are the red warm light, and blue daylight for the GuessWho board. I set the small daylight blue lamp (an Inky Dinky with a 1/4 2CB lol) to the side of the game and fairly low. This is so the daylight will skip and bounce through the flaps as they move.

I love how the light really picks up on the material finish (shiny plastic) of the game. Stathis made an excellent job of creating the model in Maya and Elena's drawn GuessWho faces are brilliant.

Lighting for He-Man

Overhead, set fairly high and low intensity. Blue and Gold. Each of his shoulders has it's own light. One blue, one red, set at a higher intensity.

Maya interface, showing the render fly out panel, and the option of just rendering a region (red rectangle, ringed in yellow). This gives the option of a very quick render, rather than waiting for the entire shot to load.

He-Man red overhead light, shown highlighted green (ringed in yellow) in the Perspective view, the 

attributes panel (ringed in yellow on the right) where I can adjust the intensity, colour, conical size, and the render panel which gives me a snap shot of how it will look.

Nuke, GodRays and Macro focus

Our first composition using NUKE!

Matt Cameron took us through this step by step, using the render passes that we achieved over night.

(The render of this sequence, about 77 frames in total, took about 2 hours, using 5 computers)

Matt then showed us different nodes to apply to these render passes in Nuke.

The focus depth on the ZDepth was adjusted, to show the trolls in the background out of focus. I found this staggering to watch, as it completed adjusted the scene, as if we were viewing it through a macro lens; making the toys really shrink down in size...

My favourite node label today.

God Rays! 

I cannot wait to apply these to the reverse shot of He-Man as he is backlit by sunshing pouring through the windows...

I would definitely like to test some GodRays for my final film, and the backlit ice figures!!

Lighting in Maya

Creating the lighting for shots 00, 04 and 05; using a selection of direction, point and spot lights, plus an AO volume plane which gives some glow....

These images show us all using Maya, which will then be imported into NUKE for some magic!

Nuke Compositing, inteface and concealing tracking markers

Nuke tutorial and training with Matt Cameron!

Wow, Nuke is brilliant and I love the interface....very simple, flow diagrams, that develop a tree of nodes...and nothing at all buried or hidden.

We were given a sample of footage from 'Ratking'. The footage was of a hysterical pregnant woman, whose belly was full of writhing rats, pushing and moving under her skin.

Creepy.

This effect was achieved by placing a  'plastic' pregnant stomach on the actress.

A shadow map of moving rat feet was created, by placing real live rats on top of lycra stretchy fabric, and filming them running around from the underside.

Nuke was used to composite both the live action and shadow map sequences and included the use of tracking markers.

Our task today was to get to know the Nuke interface and to mask out the tracking markers (black dots)

 1. The Nuke Interface.
Showing imported 'read' live action footage (already including the shadow map of the running rats). The 'A' output of the 'read' footage is then connected onto a 'Tracker' node (peach rectangle ringed by the smaller red circle)
The 'A' output from the 'Tracker' node is then connected to the 'Viewer' node below.

2. We then created a 'constant' node (thin red circle with grip points), to cover the black tracker. There is the simple option of creating just a plain colour, or a cloned colour, which completely matches to the varying pixel colours. The areas ringed in yellow, show a keyframe on the timeline (left) and where it appears in the properties box on the right.

3. Using a  'background' node (as shown as a lilac rectangle) to collectively present all items clearly, that belong in a certain part of the script. This is brilliantly simple and what a great tool, especially when working in a team. The importance of labeling, and being clear when passing on the job to the next person is crucial.

 4. Adding a 'grain' node (circled in yellow below the lilac rectangle) and showing the sliding values on the right (also circled in yellow) for the RGB channels. B (Blue) seemed to show the most grain...

Nuke Tutorials - and the logic of node based compositing

Well from the tutorials I've watched so far, the logic of node based compositing seems pretty straightforward; much like the rigging hierarchy in the outliner in Maya... very satisfying and clear cut...and I really like that it's very visual...

I am intrigued to know more about the merging of A and B inputs, and why there are additional 'A' input options, such as A1, A2, A3 etc...rather than just utilising the alphabet in chronological order...

Really looking forward to the Nuke class tomorrow, where more will be revealed! In the meantime I discovered that Nuke came out in the early 1990's and was the 'New Compositing' software...hence the name 'Nuke'

Shot 32 - animation and Axis update

Fun today doing some simple animation for 'Dean and his cheating girlfriend!'

We've had some very constructive feedback from Axis about the lighting; so we need to have a look at what dramatic shadows and sunlight we can introduce, so we can capture the feel of our original concept artwork

Always good to keep going back to see what the original intention was...to make sure we are keeping in line with the original concept and proposed deliverables....

                     

Henry Moore Institute Leeds - John Latham 'A lesson in Sculpture' exhibition - Critical Review

Here is an extract from the outline of the John Latham  'A lesson in Sculpture' exhibition, currently on show at the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds.

"A Lesson in Sculpture with John Latham addresses his visionary contribution to the study of sculpture, bringing sixteen works by Latham, spanning 1958 to 2005, into conversation with sixteen sculptures by artists working across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries."


I find it interesting to note, that I needed to look up some information, after I had attended the exhibition, to discover what exactly it was about; and what I had been looking at...(it reminds me of the time that I stood for some time, pondering the 'meaning' of  an 'installation of ever decreasing white circles' at a Damien Hirst exhibition at the Saatchi gallery in London...only to discover that I was staring at the building's air conditioning vents).

Had I been asked this weekend - what was the exhibition about? I would have answered. Assorted 3D studies and installations of carbon based materials; such as books, coal, paint, planet earth.

I really didn't pick up any idea (apart from the fact that the gallery was named after Henry Moore) that there may be a link towards sculpture.

The most interesting thing was an obscure quote on the wall - applied in vinyl - making a reference to God. And also a glimpse of Yves Klein blue, that appeared in a scientific study....I did rather like the books that were jammed between two vertical panes of glass; and suppose that this was representative, on some level, of sculpture....

The best part, for me, was a pendant light fitting. which shone in the starkness of it all. However, on reflection, this, like my Saatchi experience, could have been part of the furniture