Lighting Artist's please
quad damage
Hi, I am on the lookout for websites/artists/papers and so on that focus on real time lighting, if you know any please post.
Jobs Examples
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=137992
Lighting Tutorials
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=51209
Artists
http://www.scottgreenway.com/
http://shijusomrajan.blogspot.co.uk/
Video Channels
Vivian Ding, Lead Lighting Artist at Naughty Dog - https://vimeo.com/user2147021/videos
Jobs Examples
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=137992
Lighting Tutorials
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=51209
Artists
http://www.scottgreenway.com/
http://shijusomrajan.blogspot.co.uk/
Video Channels
Vivian Ding, Lead Lighting Artist at Naughty Dog - https://vimeo.com/user2147021/videos
Replies
Lighting Resistance: Fall of Man - http://www.cybergooch.com/tutorials/pages/lighting_rfom2.htm (multiple pages of nice shots of unlit and lit levels)
Presentations:
Shining the Light on Crysis 3 - http://www.crytek.com/cryengine/presentations/shining-the-light-on-crysis-3
Moving Frostbite to PBR - http://blog.selfshadow.com/publications/s2014-shading-course/frostbite/s2014_pbs_frostbite_slides.pdf (such a good introduction into the topic, its benefits)
Lighting You Up in Battlefield 3 - http://dice.se/publications/lighting-you-up-in-battlefield-3/
Art Direction in Uncharted 2 - http://www.slideshare.net/naughty_dog/gdc-final-sliced (there's a lot attention paid to composition, lighting. Lots of nice concept art too)
Any technical papers to read up on will be very welcome, thanks. Also any games that you think have great lighting would also be welcome.
Games
Limbo, LIMBO is a superlative illustration of a dystopian world. Nightmares turn into reality for a small boy who wakes up in this pitch-black cataclysm.
http://store.steampowered.com/app/48000/
Inside
http://playdead.com/inside/
No further info is posted there as of yet! Looks like limbo but with some colour.
Journey
http://thatgamecompany.com/games/journey/
Before and after shots are cool too.
One major point I have picked up has been to master setting up a physically correct sky, sun, and ambient light settings. If the engine is physically based, this will do 75% of the final work for you, if the env is not entirely interior. Interiors are little more tricky, and rely more on experience of the Lighting Artist.
Going from there ("2nd pass"), depending on how the engine is setup, bounce light and direct sunlight + ambient light should lay down a really nice ground work for your first lighting pass. I then identify the key focal points of the level and get some focal lighting setup if the objects call for it. After this, start getting into the chunky stuff, like setting up spotlights and omni lights on light emitting models found in the env.
The third major pass of the level would be artificial bounce lights with non-shadow casting, non-dynamic static lights to fill out rooms. This is where you can break away from the physically correct aspect a tad bit and become the lighting artist. I make sure to bring out the blacks and tone out the bright whites found on surfaces. This is also a time to color lights to get a good warm/cool contrast.
Fourth pass includes setting up base scripting for scripted dynamic lights, setting up post processing triggers, and generally prepping your first post process pass. Get ready for many post processing passes, some of the levels we would see in <game I was/is working on> on (in our case, we were primarily working on PS3/X360) would get 20+ passes per section of a level. To top that off, some of these levels would be broken down to 20-30 lighting sections by the end of the level's major production period. These passes would include post color adjustments, diluting pure white and black tones, and all other post processing goodness.
From here forward, would just see a lot more refinement. My past workflow would include a lot of compile time, welcome to lighting, so I would switch between scripting and lighting during compiles. So I would work in engine editor prepping a pass on section(s), start a compile, then jump into script editor and continue setting up events and such. Also, during the above periods, each step of the way the reflection capturing for materials/surfaces would get more and more work done to them. Would start with a general node (during first passes of setting up physically based world settings), then each section (interior and exterior would be separated to match predicted colors of a reflection on a surface) would slowly get broken down more and more with each major compile to get correct looking PB surfaces.
Key roles I see on a daily basis are: In editor lighting work, real time post processing work, reflection and material correcting/creation, and technical assistance of tech and programming to improve pipeline and quality of final product in relation to light.
EDIT: Also, as a lighting artist in the PBR world, materials are EVERYTHING. No matter how physically correct your lighting setup is, if materials are off in one way or another, it just will not feel "right". I see the more technical lighting artists work outside of the production levels quite a bit in test levels and such. Setting them up for prop artists, based around the predicted final lighting of a level, testing lighting scenarios, and working with programmers/tech to improve final quality of lights. I find myself tweaking materials quite often to feel and operate correctly in a PBR env.
Sorry if any of that does not make sense, ironically wrote this up pretty quickly between a light/reflection compile.
Thank you also to Bruno Afonseca and Avvi, great posts, lots to read through there.
Was gonna throw his work up here but ya beat me to it :P
Thank you so much for posting that link. The New Order had some fantastic lighting! I took so many screenshots of that game.