Lighting Artist?

krumpleton

Hi, my first post:)

I am wondering what is involved in being a lighting artist? I see this job sometime and wonder if you must be very qualified. It's more like in the category of a layout artist where not much specialization/experience is necessary?

Thank you very much for any replies!!!:)

renderhjs

I assume rather general expierences (film/ game) and a special passion & critic oppinion for lighting, shadows, colors and all that matters to it.
I guess esspecially when it comes to rendering (film, stills) a good fundametal expierence and knowledge about different lighting models (spot, directional, omni,square,...) is essential because it often can reduce dramaticly the rendering time- very vital when rendering animation. Often these days people push everything through Indirect illumination rendering methods causing lots of unpredictable render times even though there are still lots of ways reaching something similar but a lot faster.

Other skills like finding out which light causes which shadow- fixing unwanted and adjusting existing shadows/ highlights would be propably a good one.

If you want a very good resource I can recomend (though non realtime render orientated)
http://www.3drender.com/light/index.html

I have the first issue and it has lots of great concepts I wasn' t aware of before- I assume that the 2nd edition fills in the holes regarding FG, GI, AO,...

pior

Another Jeremy :

http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/dvds/jvi01.html

SHEPEIRO

id say its one of the hardest things to get into in games, as you need a very good knoledge of light science (in an artistic way), an artistic eye, and a good knoledge of the engine working in, but not to put you off its also one of the most rewarding parts of my job.

I would start by making a few greyscale scenes and then lighting them in different ways, either by copying film, photos, or paintings to get good at dissecting the lighting of a scene and then re-creating it in 3d.

also get used to using realtime lights in some game engines and get used to the limitations of differing lighting types, baked, forward, backward and deffered lighting all have there limitaions and plus points.

Toast

Actually when it comes down to it, Lighting is possibly one of the most important roles because it has such a massive impact on the final look of the product.

I've heard of lots of places offering junior roles for lighting artists but I've never pursued this avenue, but I imagine it wouldn't be terribly difficult to get into. You probably have to have a very good eye for detail and design though.

Wafer

krumpleton wrote: »

Hi, my first post:)

I am wondering what is involved in being a lighting artist? I see this job sometime and wonder if you must be very qualified. It's more like in the category of a layout artist where not much specialization/experience is necessary?

I have been involved in hiring lighting artists in the past and from my experience you don't really need much more than a good portfolio of images. Images demonstrating your understanding and artistic ability, with some good knowledge of a 3d package or two.

An eye for how real life lighting works, and how CG lightng works is important. You can use Photographs in your portfolio too.

krumpleton

Thanks for all the info and sources!

Wafer, do lighting artists generally work by some predetermined guides or is it very general? Like we want this area to have this type of mood, etc.

Thanks.

Eric Chadwick

You might find hourences' book interesting, here's an excerpt.
http://www.moddb.com/tutorials/lighting-in-game-environments-the-hows-and-whys

Also, "Painting with Light" by the cinematographer John Alton is a classic study of lighting, a must-read for any lighting artist.

krumpleton

Cool read Eric, Thanks:thumbup:

krumpleton

Hello again,

On further thought, I want to make a simple map with already made textures for lighting practice. I want to use Max for this but use textures from Half Life 2. I have the Hammer editor, but I can't find the .vtf files on my hard drive that are used in the material library in Hammer. I have searched everywhere on the internet for the answer on where to find them but no luck, so I'm hoping someone here has some clue.

Any help would be great!

Best.

Mark Dygert

I recommend creating your own textures, and making them in the style of HL2.

But if you're dead set on using another persons hard work, make sure you give them proper credit.

The VMT's and VTF's are packed away in .gcf files. You can use a free program called GCFScape to browse and extract files from within the .gcf files. It's also handy because some textures are packed away further, inside of bsp files which GCFScape also browses.

Joseph Silverman

Don't forget this!

http://www.cybergooch.com/tutorials/pages/lighting_rfom1.htm

krumpleton

Vig, thanks for that. Of course if I displayed anything using these textures I would give credit. Anyway, THANK YOU, I looked forever for how to find those textures.

krumpleton

Here are a couple of samples of a scene I made today. Any more posts I will put in P&P but wanted to know if you think this would grab the attention of a studio and which version you like best. I like more the version without the ceiling lights but am wondering if it's too simple.

http://img352.imageshack.us/my.php?image=hallwaymn7.jpg
http://img73.imageshack.us/my.php?image=hallway2wa5.jpg

Eric Chadwick

Too simple, not enough visual flair. You should light an actual textured game level instead.

krumpleton

I might texture this scene actually, but was more wondering if these would show a recruiter that I have a good artist's eye for light.

renderhjs

fail imo.
that just plain lights in a plain room, maybe start researching something more basic,- like:
http://images.google.com/images?um=1&hl=en&safe=off&client=opera&rls=en&q=color+theory+portrait&btnG=Search+Images
read some articles about color theory,- how its applied and what different types there are (and there are alot +10)

Eric Chadwick

Here are some examples of good game lighting. Getting in this ballpark will show you have talent worthy of a recruiter's time.
http://malcolm341.com/franklingallery.htm
http://www.marc-antoine.ca/
http://www.geomerics.com/enlighten-media.htm

krumpleton

Well it was only my first experiment anyway. For this I wanted to work with basic dynamics in lighting without worrying about textures atm. Here is my final solution if you are interested. I am happy with it for what it was meant for. Thanks for all the resources and advice.

http://img521.imageshack.us/my.php?image=hallway23wi4.jpg

Eric Chadwick

It's a good start. You could experiment with pushing the contrast more, using less light sources for more drama, changing the person's shadow to a more dynamic pose, etc. But it's come a good distance from the previous shot.

krumpleton

Thanks. I think I will use this scene for further light expriments.

I was wondering, in games lighting, for light maps do they use point based lights to get bounce effects or is radiosity/skylight typical?

*edit* concerning indoor lighting. *edit*

hellobuddy

It differs, Unreal for example has no bounce light out of the box so you need to fake it with extra lights, but on our latest project we integrated Beast from Illuminate Labs to do our light rendering which enabled us to have bounces and color bleeds etc, but as I said, its different from project to project.

Lighting can also be more than just placing lights in a room, we were responsible for setting all lightmap resolutions to optimize for memory/looks, tweaking properties of shaders for the bounces, working out workflow and pipelines with the programmers etc. Not to mention all the limitations and artifacts that comes with using Lightmaps. DXT compression is not your friend.

Working out render settings to get the most out of the render times versus the quality of the lightmaps is also something you might have to deal with. In the end I think we spent more time fiddling with the technical stuff than placing lights.

It's however very rewarding work , as what you do shapes the look of the game in a very big way.

SHEPEIRO

you use whatever gives you the best results.
but i use Global illumination to acheive good results.

krumpleton

SHEPEIRO, what do you mean by global illumination. I don't see how you can make alot of use for radiosity in game production. Do you do some hack, like skylights, or big fill lights?

renderhjs

you can bake lightmaps or merged texture maps

krumpleton

Sorry, what I meant was for overall production timeline. Wouldn't baking true radiosity be too much time for making light maps?

SHEPEIRO

no it isnt - render farms can bake out lighting fairly quickly, and you dont work in production quality, from day to day i work with something of the lowest quality rendered at about five -ten minutes if and when i really need to, then at night or over the weekend il send a superhighquality render off.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_illumination