Image Based Lighting and more

So last time I showed some photographs I took studying light, specifically time of day outdoor light changes.  I have been working on a short animation that involves an outdoor shot of a market as the sun sets.  Right now it is suffering from rendering errors that our renderfarm occasionally puts in, so my next step is to fix all those.  I also have a slight displacement problem, but the other big factors include the light colors and positions of the street lights.  I have a lot of work to do to make this scene work, but once it is finished, it will look really nice.

Time of Day lighting test 4 from David Hixon on Vimeo.

But that isn't all I've worked on.  I have also been taking this to another level and creating a scene that uses actual photographs and actual light information from the environment and integrated by own CG element into the scene.  In other words, like action plate CG integration.  I went out and took a series of images at SCAD Atlanta's DMC, where I captured "background plates" and environment maps.  These environment maps are made as HDRI so they hold more information than a regular image, and are then manipulated in a program called HDR Shop to fit into my CG scene.  I can then use this to capture the light information in the scene to capture the ambient light, and then tweak it from there.  I also had to render in passes, so I could isolate everything from the shadows to the reflection of the chairs to the ambient occlusion.  I finally used Nuke to composite it back together, and voila!  Movie magic!

 
Image Based Lighting with CG Character Integration from David Hixon on Vimeo.

But that's not all!  I've been a REALLY busy bee.  I can't show anything currently from my last 2 projects I've been working on (not to mention math), but you can check out my other blog to see updates to my senior film, Last Light, at LastLightFilm.blogspot.com.  Besides working on my film, I have been lighting and rendering and compositing Michelle's film, Leaping Place.  It continues to be a challenge, but this entire thing must be done in one week, so it's crunch time!  I'll update more on that later!

Day 4, SIGGRAPH 2013, Night

Another day comes to a close.  Today was the first day the exhibition hall at SIGGRAPH was open, and boy was it busy!  At first, I was asked to assist with registration, but since the registration area was so crowded, they decided to make a remote registration area for pre-registered users where they could get their badges quick and easy.  We were crowded for about 4 hours and helped countless people.  Immediately afterwards, I got to help out in the studio, where I was assigned to work with the Epson print station.  They had a table with computers on it where users could bring files they could print out on a variety of papers on several different printers, including large format printers that could handle canvas.  Ah... Just like the old days at National Geographic when I would often print on HP and Epson large format printers, using high quality papers and canvases.  Of course I was right at home, and loved that anyone can come up and print anything they want for free!!  I am totally taking advantage of this tomorrow, if I can get a hold of one of my larger files.

After that, I explored the exhibitors hall.  WOW is there a lot to do and look at.  I can't even go into it all, but I was very impressed with everything in the hall, and enjoyed talking to a lot of the exhibitors.  And of course there is the job fair.

This was a great day today, and I can't wait for tomorrow.  SIGGRAPH is going by too fast, can't I slow time down?

I will leave you with this one image.  While I was in the Studio hall, I witnessed a remote controlled robot talking to an AI controlled robot... I was indeed a Kodak moment.