Tutorial: Character Lighting in Marmoset Toolbag.

EarthQuake · Feb 2013

As promised here is part two of the lighting tutorial for Toolbag. This time I'm covering common lighting setups for portrait/character lighting, filled with animated GIFs and awesome art content from polycount's very own Tim spacemonkey Appleby.

Check it out here: http://www.marmoset.co/toolbag/learn/character-lighting

Skin shader writeup is next!

LRoy · Feb 2013

Ah man thanks for taking the time to do these! Really helpful.

Looking forward to the next one!

TehSplatt · Feb 2013

Oh mang you're amazing haha thanks for this as well.

D4V1DC · Feb 2013

Thanks for this and future tutorials, have to check this out when I have the time, thanks I skimmed through it and it seems very informative can't wait for the shader write up! Still love that sagat model.

spacemonkey · Feb 2013

EarthQuakes a better man than me! Nice write up indeed!

BoBo_the_seal · Feb 2013

Thanks! This is great.

- BoBo

Jeff Parrott · Feb 2013

This is awesome EQ! You are killing it with these tutorials.

cptSwing · Feb 2013

Yeah, lots of useful information in these tuts.

Fomori · Feb 2013

Thank you!
xxx

JohnnyRaptor · Feb 2013

some good stuff man! thanks for putting these together!

disanski · Feb 2013

Thanks EQ. Very interested in the next tutorial as well

BlueDog · Feb 2013

These are great tutorials keep they coming

EarthQuake · Feb 2013

I'm really glad you guys are liking these!

So, other than the skin shader, what else would you guys like to see? Maybe something on glass/eyes with the ComplexRefraction shader? Something else entirely? Let me know!

PS: Tim: You're a gentleman and a scholar, thanks again for letting us use your model.

ILLMATICC · Feb 2013

Thanks for this Earthquake! I look forward to the skin shader write up. Also a glass/eye tut would be greatly appreciated

Kwramm · Feb 2013

nicely done!

MartinH · Feb 2013

love these tutorials, really easy to follow and adapt to my own work.

Torch · Feb 2013

Oh sweet, you're using Tim's model too. Awesome tut, thanks man!

poopinmymouth · Feb 2013

One thing you might want to add to this is the definition of broad vs narrow lighting for faces, and why/when you would use each type.

Narrow is left, Broad is right.

Best single image I found quickly. When lighting a face with a light at a 45 degree angle, the front of the face and one side will bit lit, and the opposite side will be in shadow. In broad lighting, the camera can see both the lit front and lit side. In narrow lighting, the camera can see the lit front, and shadow side of the face.

In my opinion, with real time rendering shadows being so limited, narrow lighting is best for showing of facial features. Broad lighting is very flat without completely realistic shadow and light interaction, or extremely fine control of your lighting beyond just intensity and falloff.

benji · Feb 2013

Great tutorial, thanks Earthquake.

JohnnyRaptor · Feb 2013

Maybe a tutorial on how to get animated characters in ?

DustyShinigami · May 2024

Sorry to resurrect an old thread, but I don't suppose you still have these tutorials, @EarthQuake? They don't appear to be on the Marmoset website any more? And I can't find them via a Google search. Thanks.

Eric Chadwick · May 2024

Wayback Machine has it. https://web.archive.org/web/20130508184237/http://www.marmoset.co/toolbag/learn/character-lighting

I suspect the old tutorials use outdated workflows, so they were probably just not worth the effort of updating.

Tutorial: Character Lighting in Marmoset Toolbag.

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