Lighting Demoreel - Sascha Bähr

Hi, my name is Sascha Bähr. In this entry I want to show you my Demoreel projects in more detail. The projects were created during my education at Pixlvisn and my mentorship at Thinktank-online. The focus of these projects is VFX Lighting.

Neon Synth

TASKS

To get a better result in Nuke with the camera tracker, I sharpened the image slightly and increased the contrast between the person and the background without making the compression marks too dominant. To achieve an accurate tracking result, I chose a high number for the features and a low distribution of them. These adjustments helped me a lot with the final tracking result. However, minor errors in the tracking appeared in between. I manually compensated for these errors in Maya by adjusting the rotation of the head at the problem areas. In the best case you have tracker points on the person that improve the tracking of dark images.

ADD STORY CHARACTER

After the tracking was done, I thought about how I could make the project even more interesting.

Since I had the model of a robot, I thought about doing something similar to what was done in the movies "Short Circuit" or "Chappie". The synthetic human should have got an own consciousness similarly as in the films by a disturbance. The concept was now the "free will".

For this I modeled in ZBrush a sticker for the forehead with the imprint "rejected". A graffity with an anarchy sign and the word "fake" should illustrate a conflict. Furthermore, I designed logos and symbols in Adobe Illustrator for the texturing process in Substance Painter.

MODIFICATE THE MODEL

To focus more on lighting, I downloaded the base model for free from scetchfab (credits in the demo reel). Since the entire model was made of triangles and not beveled, I decided to retopologize the larger elements (head, eyes) to have more control with maps later in the texturing process.

To make the model look more realistic and interesting in light and shadow, I added smaller applications to the model and worked a lot with displacement and bump maps.

TEST LIGHTING

First, I added a simple gray shader to the model and imported it into Maya for reference. Then I roughly created the lighting. Without existing texturing I could see if there would be interesting shadows or if the model would look too simple at the end.

Since I had not recorded the footage myself. I have also had no plate with a Chrome/Greyball or Macbeth chart. Ideally, these are available and it is much easier to determine the number of lights, light intensity, position, color, etc. in the scene. Still, it was a good exercise to look closely at the lighting conditions in the footage and recreate the situation as realistically as possible with as few lights as possible.

CREATING THE LIGHTSTAFF

Once the area lights were in place, I was able to parent them to the cylinder and use it to control the animations. The cylinder has been rendered invisible so that it is not visible in any reflection.

LIGHTING

After all the lights were placed I built some geometry based on the tracking geo to use as a shadow blocker. Most important were the body and the collar. These have the function of blocking the light sources and at the same time were used to project the footage to give the head the right color cast. I also used an open cube for the room so that the light would bounce a bit. In the footage the person is also standing in a room. So it helps a lot to recreate the circumstances as close as possible. All this geo was hidden in the render layer.

I rendered the following layer for better control in Nuke:
1. beauty
2. Shadow matte
3. volume eyes

In the end, I used a total of 8 lights.

3 for the light stick, 1 Skydome, 1 Area light which I used as support for the light stick, 1 directional light which is the next most dominant light in the scene after the light stick. Finally, 1 point light each for the eyes. For all these lightfunctions I created lightgroups to adjust them later in Nuke if needed.

RENDERING

After the lights were placed and ready, I prepared the required AOVs and set the render setup to final.

For control I checked again the set values for the Ray Depth in the render settings. To avoid unnecessary reflections, I went through the number of light reflections needed for the surface-comlexed objects in the scene. After some render tests with a small number of frames I was able to determine the optimal number of samples and lightsamples.

POST PROCESSING/ FINAL TOUCHES

After retouching out the visible hair with the Rotopaint node, bringing all the elements together was not particularly difficult. 

The head felt more and more integrated when I adjusted the Z-Defocus setting to the footage. Next steps were color grading and adding some motionblur. Then I created a grain map and adjusted it to the footage to match the integration to the compression of the footage.

Final steps were adding godrays for the eyes, which I rendered from Maya, and using lensflare effects to make the eyes glow more. As a final step, I made the black values a bit darker to create a more menacing mood. I also used various vignettes to draw the viewer's focus a bit more to the head.

CONCLUSION

I learned a lot from the car project "Sunside ride" that I created before. I was able to apply a lot of what I learned there to speed up my workflow for this project.

The most difficult part of this project was the tracking, because in the best case you have tracker points on very dark footages, which simplify the workflow. From my current perspective, the footage may have been a little too heavy for me when I started the project. It's always good to allow a little more time for unexpected problems, but I learned a lot on this project about finding solutions away from my regular workflow.

Sunside ride

TASKS

· lighting
· texturing/lookdev/uvs of the car
· compositing
· retouche HDRI, reflections, projections
· matchmoving
· animation of the car
· camera-tracking
· color-matching

DESCRIPTION

As a VFX lighting artist you have to integrate 3d objects to a given footage. For my first integration project in VFX I wanted to have the focus on the technology and learning the VFX workflows.

START / TEXTURING, LOOKDEV OF THE CAR

The car, the Acura NSX, was purchased to save time on modeling (credits in demo reel).

To make the scene as realistic as possible, it was clear from the beginning that the car had to be reshaded and textured. Since the car had already been driven several miles, it had to have an appropriate level of dirt. For the style, I looked at many different references and thought about the aerodynamics of the wind and how it would disperse the dirt through splashes and dust.

MATCHMOVING

The next step was matchmoving. Since I didn't know the focal length and other background image information, I determined the correct camera settings using the Camera Tracker in Nuke.

When creating the geometry, I divided the scene into shadow catchers, shadow casters, and projections early on. The row of trees on the left, for example, didn't need geometry. For this, I searched for suitable royalty-free tree images, which I then croped and color processed in Photoshop.

Another important step was to reconstruct the shadows on the street. I drew the shadow line on the footage at the beginning, so that it was easier for me to match the shadows in Maya.

LIGHTING

After the matchmoving was done, I started with the lighting. I used a Directional Light to set the main light source. Then I adjusted the position, brightness, rotation and the angle to the footage in the background.

Because I hadn't photographed the background myself, I didn't have any individual images of the surroundings that I could assemble into a skydome. After several approaches, I decided to use the existing footage as the basis for the skydome and retouch the rest of the information in Photoshop. Since the car was not highly reflective, the retouching was mainly about having the right colors in the right place. Strong brightness points that were in competition with the directional light I had retouched out in this step. If I had wanted higher quality ambient reflections, I would have photographed a similar backdrop and assembled it into a skydome.

The trees were placed on planes and distributed as an avenue as in the footage. Here it was important that the treetops are properly reflected on the windshield of the car.

To have full control later in Nuke, I created 7 render layers with the render setup in Maya. Especially with the shadows for the car this process was very helpful.

After I put on the Skydome light, I was faced with the problem that on the sunny side the car surface was still too cool. A global adjustment of the Skydome with a aicolorCorrect node had also made the cold side too bright. Making the keylight brighter was also no solution because the lights were too bright for that. At this point I decided to create a second Skydome, I made it warmer and masked the cold side with a Ramp node. So the skydome has no influence on the right side of the image.

POST PROCESSING

GET THE CAR SHADOWS RIGHT
After bringing all the elements together in Nuke, I was first thinking about how to realistically add the long shadow from the car with the shadows from the trees.

GRADING / DEPTH
Since the car now casts a merged shadow, I darkened the right side of the car a bit to match the color of the Shadow plate.

For each 3d-element I created a grade node which should control the atmosphere. With a few more adjustments I was able to quickly adjust the colors at any time.

The next step was to blur each element with the correct depth of field setting. 

FINAL TOUCHES

After color matching, I created a series of planes in Nuke. A smoke footage is intigrated in each plane. The planes appear on coordinated frames as the car passes. I used many planes of smoke footage to create a seamless look and avoid visual holes.

Next step were adding some motionblur. Then I created a grain map and adjusted it to the footage to match the integration to the compression of the footage.

In the global color processing, I wanted to make the overall look a little fresher and more summery. An animated flare node supports the incidence of sunlight from the corner of the eye. While different vignettes should put the focus on the car.

CONCLUSION

The sunside ride project was my first VFX lighting project and I learned a lot from it.

Already at the beginning of the project I knew that the project would be technically more challenging than anything I had done before. And that was a good thing, because I definitely wanted to handle complicated tasks.

For the first time I had enough time towards the end to take care of existing problems and to further optimize the result. Having enough free buffer at the end of a project helped me a lot here.

War is over

Introduction

As a 3D artist specialising in lighting, in this article I want to share with you what I learned about lighting a scene with a concept I created myself.

Software used:

Modeling, uvs, lighting & lookdev: Maya - Arnold (ACES Colorspace)
Sculpting: zBrush
Texturing: Adobe Substance 3D Painter
Compositing: Nuke
Sketches, paintings: Photoshop
Logos: Illustrator

Use of special equipment:

Wacom Cintiq + Pen for Paintings and sketches in Photoshop and sculpting in ZBrush.

The Concept

Planning
For the basic planning of the scene, the following questions helped me:
· Where am I?
· When am I?
· What story do I want to tell?

The questions also helped me later in the lighting, for example, to set a time to determine the position of the sun and the angle of the shadows.

During the planning I also thought about the size of the project and the number of cameras needed. All the work had to be done within a certain time frame. As a creative person, it was an important point for me to keep the megalomania in check during the conception: creative people will always want to do more to make the project better. If you know this trait in yourself, it is important to draw a line early, for example, to avoid creating more models later and jeopardising the schedule.

As a source of inspiration I used ArtStation, Pinterest and the keyword search on google.

To organise my thoughts, I wrote down keywords that I found suitable and connected them to a mindmap.

Visualisation

The idea was found. The following things helped me a lot in the further planning:

· Creating a quick sketch, in my case digital. Here I could quickly move elements I had on layers until I was satisfied.
· Find a suitable working title.
· Search for references for room, objects, lighting, mood. I placed these in PureRef for better overview and order. Where I always had a view on it within my whole process.
· Search and creation of a colour palette.
· First blocking of the scene in Maya.

Also in blocking I was able to decide which items I would need. To avoid spending too much time modeling assets from this time, I decided to create different sizes of boxes that I could repurpose by printing them differently.

Since I decided on a style of the 50/60s and wanted to pick up the mood of that time a bit, I thought of some ideas for the packaging which could subjectively pick up the mood.

Here is a very early and quick visualisation of the scene where I tried to set the position and shape of the assets (very blocky).

Time Management

After the initial planning stage, I needed to take the next stage seriously, so therefore, I created a schedule, a list of required assets and a buffer zone! The buffer was important for me to deal concretely with problems that will occur in any case! It's important to be honest with yourself about what you can definitely do.

Composition

It helps me early on to position the lights after creating the camera in the blockout of the environment. I pay attention to a good composition and in the case of this project, to a clear focus. I create a render layer for a clay render and use it as an overwrite early in the process so that I don't see the textures and can focus on the light and shadow.

This allowed me, for example, to move the assets so that they created an artificial vignette in conjunction with the light at the end. Among other compositing rules, this setting further increased the focus on the Hero object.

In conjunction with the environment and the camera, I built the scene in such a way that guidelines are created, which increase the focus on the hero object. This makes it easier to add a "focus" later during lighting and comp.

Illustrations, Texturing and Shading

After modeling, UV unwrapping and sculpting, I baked and textured all the assets in Substance 3D Painter. To make some textures look more interesting I created logos and drawings with Photoshop and Illustrator and integrated them into Substance. The drawings should pick up a bit of the era and mood. I decided to use the poster style of the American war/industrial posters from the 50/60s (well known are for example Duck and cover).

To avoid unnecessary work, it helps to at least make an overview in your head of what purpose an illustration should have in the scene

For the most difficult objects in the scene, I created a lookdev turntable and looked to make the surfaces behave as realistically as possible to my references. I used a lookdev turntable setup from Cave Academy.

Lighting

Preparation

Exposure in blocking allowed me to test and plan the focus of the scene early on. After the textured assets were loaded and I started the first render, I noticed that everything was calculated much slower. One solution was to place frequently reused assets as stand-ins. So I loaded the whole room assets of the attic as a standin. Assets that were further away from the camera got less subdivisions and instead of a displacement map only a bump map. Furthermore I built up the scene in 4 render layers (foreground, middle ground, background, godrays). Dividing the scene into different layers had many advantages for me: samples could be set specifically, switching off the displacement maps for invisible objects that affect the respective layer. These presets of the layout sped up render times and avoided crashes due to overload.

Process

The colours from this era, or much more the colours from WW2 were drab and not very saturated. The desaturated colour palette of the assets, helped me get the menacing "war character" into the scene. The only "saturated" colour should be the flower growing out of the bomb. My goal was to convey the feeling of hope with light. For this I chose warm colours for the light entering through the window. The environment outside the light should seem more threatening. For this I chose a cold colour temperature.

The keylight was already set by the blocking process and should illuminate the center of the image. To emphasise the bomb as part of the hero asset I placed the cabinet with mirror directly behind it. The mirror reflection allowed me to set a Rim-Light behind the bomb, which separates the outline from the dull background. As HDRI I used an attic interior and adjusted it from the colours in Arnold to the hues of my scene. Then I gave the dark tones in the HDRI a slight blue cast. The HDRI should create the cold-coloured shadows in my scene.

For control I checked again the set values for the Ray Depth in the render settings. To avoid unnecessary reflections, I went through the number of light reflections needed for the surface-complexed objects in the room. After some render tests with a small number of frames I was able to determine the optimal number of samples and light samples.

Compositing

I was able to build up the beauty, render layers, light groups, Z-Depth, volume rays set in the lighting process as a light slap in Nuke early on to better assess the possible end result. In this process, I was able to decide well which AOVs one really needs in the end to possibly save render time. The Z-Depth channel was a great way for me to get the depth of field I wanted on the one hand, and some atmospheric depth on the other. With the light groups I was able to adjust the individual groups in Nuke with an Exposure node.

I integrated the dust particles into Nuke using the particle system and linked them to different shapes, so as not to always show a repeating dust particle or just a sphere.

As for the global colour corrections, I tried to stick to my concept. The shadows should have a bluish cast, while the light area is bathed in complementary light.

Conclusion

This was my first demo reel project and it was a good way to think about the story of a shot and how to support it with composition, lighting, texturing, etc. Also, I think it was a good way to further train my eye for quality and aesthetics. On the other hand, it would be more time-saving for a first project to take up an existing concept.

I also learned the importance of following references and studying them in depth. If everything was textured and shaded correctly according to PBR rules, the surfaces usually behave authentically in the Lookdev Turnable and in the Shot.

Thank you

Thanks to everyone who supported me during my 3D education. Special thanks to Brandon Martin as well as Stefanie Knopp who provided me with feedback along this journey.

Also thank you for taking the time to read my entry. If you have any questions please feel free to contact me.

Linkedin
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sascha-baehr-3d/

Artstation
https://www.artstation.com/saschabaehr

E-Mail
[email protected]