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!

Gnomon School Master Classes

Hi everyone!  While we are all getting into a full Holiday swing, I have been busy with tutorials and projects, working from building ice and tree shaders to Maya dynamics and Sub Surface Scattering.  I am really hoping to get as much out of this break as I can, and one of the things that has come to my attention are the Gnomon Master Classes for 2013.

 
These 14 classes are taught by leading professionals in the industry in Visual Effects.  They've done everything from commercials to video games like Star Craft II and films like Gravity.  These classes last for 2 weeks, and cover a wide range of topics, with private forums and 2 hour long HD tutorials with over 28 hours of instructions.  I know this is a little last minute, but I figured it would be better to post this now rather than later.

The best part is, if you can't make it every day for the instructions, you can come back later and watch all the videos as many times as you want!  So you won't miss out on much if you have family obligations.

But in case you need more convincing, check out this video:

Gnomon Master Classes 2013 from Gnomon School of Visual Effects on Vimeo.

Remember students get discounts as well!  So consider this a great opportunity to get some master classes from veteran Visual Effects masters!

I will post more of my own stuff soon as well.