Airport lounge #2 – lighting

Written by Helen Jackson.

Okay, so you know all about textures. But, lighting is also important. Without any lights, apart from the default lighting the software puts in automatically, the scene looks like this:

Getting the lighting to work is a process of adding layers of lighting. In this case, we started with a bright external spotlight – usually called the sun (1). Then, some external “omni” (multi-directional) lights were added to increase the ambient lighting levels (2).

The result is pretty good, but a bit high-contrast – as you’d expect for a scene lit only by bright sunlight. Some internal lights were needed to reduce the contrast a little. Firstly, more omni lights to give extra ambient light (3). Then, some fill lights close to Kyle so he isn’t so strongly shadowed.

And there we have it – the finished airport lounge:

Comments

[Caroline]

Thank you for these insights into the animator's art, Helen! They are absolutely fascinating. (And it gives us something to to and look at in between episodes. It's all good.)