3d art

Character
Volumetric lighting
Refining the scenery and lighting
The lighting was done to highlight the curves of the
09 character and to make the scene more fanciful. For this
a key light interacts with the ambient light that falls on the trees
along with the butterflies. The key light is set to let the strongest
points of light mark the silhouette of the character. The sidelights
give more depth to the skin tones and the clothing. Colour and light
are two powerful tools that help enhance the mood of a scene that
has been established by the composition, camera angles and
characters. Firstly you see the result of light being reflected from
a surface up to the eyes. The colour is a quality of light taken from
a surface, based on the frequency range.
To generate the
10 lighting three
Photometria lights were used:
the key light, front light and side
light. These provided the
ambience for the scene. Each
light colour was set to match
the colour palette of the scene.
The lights had an important
function because in nature,
light flows, revealing and
concealing areas. The light
shines, reflects, refracts, reacts
and diffuses into the air. The
light is warm or cold, high or
low, near or far, bright or dark,
strong or mild. In the digital
world lighting is a matter of
calculation. Normal alignment,
G-buffers and Z-buffers
determine the display of light.
Where the calculation misses
the mark, the artist has to
compensate and correct. The
temperature of light is a
technical aspect that can affect
the emotion of your scene.
Essentially the temperature of
light is a physical aspect of the
light source which affects the
colour of the light. However, it
is not the same as using colour
filters on lights to create colour.
1 hour
render time
Resolution:
1,800 x 1,013
The character’s shader was made with the SSS Fast
11 Skin in Mental Ray. The skin needed to have the exact
brightness to make
it both realistic and
fanciful, then working
with lighting shader
to achieve that result.
Maps were used to
work together to result
in uniformity between
the dermis, epidermis
and subcutis skin layers
and the specular and
reflection aspects.
The backdrop was all done in 3D. The vegetation
12 was created in 3ds Max and rendered with Mental Ray.
Once completed the background image was placed in the
composition. The layer was designed to merge with a colour
palette to create a more pleasant scene in accordance with the
skin tones of the fairy. Making the character was the highlight
of the scene.
The lighting plan
The greatest difficulty in creating the image was deciding
which technique would be better for the hair. The textures
were made and painted in Photoshop with an extra touch
in BodyPaint. The lighting was done with a keylight and
side lights, with the toning following the colour palette.
The best option for this was to use Photometria lights
before rendering the scene with Mental Ray.
To create the final
13 image I separated
z-depth maps for depth and
occlusion maps to define
shadows and contacts were
rendered. These were then
composited in Photoshop. The
fairy character was actually
rendered separately and then
the two images were
combined with a colour map
being used to match the
ambience between the two.
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