OBJECTIVES:

• Bringing out subjects shape
• Creating specific mood
• Communicating to your audience (but, who is your audience?????) , maybe you want to deliver important story point or perhaps invoke an emotion through an image

What is Light?

• Light is electromagnetic radiation perceivable by the eye
• It is the reason we see the world around us
• It affects a way how we perceive the color
• …and it often drives how we feel too

Thus to all this facts, its only natural to want to convey all these elements when creating an image that visually communicates to your viewer.

Light Types:

• Natural Lights

  • In Solaris context, this will include your Dome Light or Environment Light, as well as your Distant Light, aka Sunlight.
  • Also, a good starting point when starting to light a stage
  • Good practice is also to keep HDRI images at 2K resolution as higher res can produce noise in the render

  

• Artificial Lights

  • KEY + FILL + RIM

  

  • Any light with intention of highlighting certain features that contributes to mood creation within your scene and often times these lights are not often justified as in the source from where they are coming from its not necessarily always obvious and might not even make sense but if done properly it can definitely enhance the look of your object or communicate the story point or evoke emotions.

• Practical Lights:

  • Often used in film production and lights are often visible in the shot. So things like a lamp, light from the phone device or candle light which gently illuminates the subject.

• QUESTIONS TO ASK

  • What type of light source and where the light is coming from?
  • What is the position, point in space angle and distance?
  • How does it interacting or affect the environment/subject?

• THE QUALITIES AND QUANTITIES OF LIGHT

  • Color / Temperature So what is the HUE of your light?

  • Intensity

    • Simply a Brightness of your light or
    • Exposure as F-Stop on Camera

  • Attenuation (Fall-Off)

    • This is determined by how close the light is to the subject

      • If you want to mimic depth, then light should be closer to the subject
      • Putting light source away of the subject, gives us more flatten look

      

  • SHADOWS (another half of the work)

    • Can define focal point of your image but also frame the subject if done properly
    • Big element for defining depth

  • SOFTNESS of the light and the shadow

    • The smaller your light source the harsher the shadow will be, if you want the softer result, increase the size of your light

    

To be able to mimic light conditions and interactivity between objects and environment, you MUST look at the real world reference examples.

Create mood boards and create a library of images of all sorts.

• e.g. Indoor, Outdoor? Day, Night? etc…