Hi Nick and Tony,
Thanks for your update, sorry again for the delay. There is some good work here, especially the outdoor lit shot. Those skin tones look great in the sunlight. You mention that you do not have the luxury of time, (how much time do you have?) the way I see it you have 2 options. You either:
1) Render all 59 Shots, schedule 2 people, for 15 days to do 2 shots a day, 8 hour days (this is optimistic but also realistic if you can keep it simple)
2) Aim to Render and comp 10-20 shots to the best of your ability. Schedule 2 people, 1 week or more, 1 shot a day. Render the rest with ‘temp lighting’ then finish it after you leave Uni (for your showreels or festival admissions) If I were your position this is what I would do.
I only put good animation on my reel, and I am not an animator. From experience I know that even if I put the most amazingly lit shot on my reel, if the animation is bad, people can’t see past it. Equally your animation is going to look better with lighting that complements and accentuates, everyone in your group needs to understand that. It is worth making a realistic schedule and then sticking to it. If that means you need to be less ambitious with how much you get rendered, I think that is a compromise I would be willing to take. Keep in mind that the industry will judge you on your worst work... not just your best.
A consistent rig is useful in lighting a set, and characters. If there are 2 of you lighting, it does make sense for you to have the 3 main lights (Key, fill, rim or bounce) in roughly the same areas/same intensity/ same colours, so maybe setup a simple rig that can be shared, rotated and moved on a shot by shot basis. A dome of lights as a rig does not seem necessary to me. What are you doing that is different to using one ambient light? Do all of those lights have a specific job? Do you remember when I said in my very first post on this blog, add one light at a time, and consider if it is really necessary. When I was at University we used a dome light rig with small blurred shadow maps to fake ambient occlusion (because back then it did not come with the software). You have access to ambient occlusion, so use it, and keep the lighting simple. I thought your previous shop light setup was fine, it just needed a little more key light and fill light.
By having the shop lighter at the front, and a gradual shift into darkness there is a nice sense of depth. Now you have lightened the darkness, your wide render of the shop looks flat. My eye is drawn to the big light coloured wall. The wall should not be the focus. The only contrast I see is that between the dark wood and the light walls, where is the atmosphere created by lighting? The back wall doesn’t seem to have that problem light on it any more but the right wall now does, you need to fix that. I am not worried about the saturation or levels as these can be adjusted later. As your now at the stage of shot lighting, I would take your widest interior shot, and use your simpler rig, with adjusted intensities. Don’t worry too much about getting this spot on, everything can be perfected in shot lighting and compositing. Once you have a shot finished that you love, match to that, this is easier to do in comp. Then as you finish more shots, keep watching them next to each other to check if they cut together, and amend so that they do.
I think that having most of the action at the back in the dark is no bad thing. You can really light your characters so they stand out from the background (as in the reference of Delicatessen from the last post) I know that this is not an accurate lighting portrayal but you are forcing your audience to look at the characters, they will be so much more involved in the action. Take a look at my quick Photoshop job, darkening the background and using light and colour to bring forward the characters, it is a little over the top, but I prefer it. Your animation is stylised, why not making the lighting stylised? My only comment is concerning the shadows. The key light source is quite a long way away, it is indirect and hazier. The shadows would be a little blurred.
A quick way to get through your interior shots would be to render in layers. The lighting doesn’t have to be very exciting for the background so it will be quick, and it only needs character shadows when sunlit (in which case you render characters with primary visibility off and shadows on); otherwise you can just use occlusion. Then on a separate pass light the characters. I will often light the characters and set with a completely different bunch (or rig) of lights, so I can get the look I want in one without upsetting the other. I don’t use light linking, and I don’t fuss over things too much, I just get the layers out and the comp started. Being able to independently adjust the layers gives you bags of control such as trying out depth of field on the background or just darkening it to focus the shot.
I really do like your outdoor shot, see the notes I have written on it. Hope this gives you enough to think about.
Overall, great work. Shot lighting can be a struggle, it seems like a big mountain to climb when your at the bottom looking up, but schedule it right and I promise you will get there in the end. Let me know how you get on.
Tessa
PS sorry about my last post, the images seem to be small (they don’t expand, hopefully these ones do)
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