Lighting is a key element of Cinema. It’s used to draw and divert the audience’s attention, set the mood of a scene and reflect the inner emotions of the characters.
After a lecture on lighting, we followed along with a demonstration.
HDRI (High Dynamic Range Imagaes) lighting involved using a 360-degree image to light a scene. This is useful for creating naturalistic lighting to make 3D animated scenes more believable.
After that, we set up the environment lighting using skylights and area lights.
Our character was lit using 3 point lighting.
This Lecture also covered using 3 point lighting to illuminate characters. The 3 lights referred to are…
key Light – This is the main light source illuminating the character. It’s also the brightest light drawing the audience’s attention to the character’s acting making it the most important thing on the screen.
Fill Light – This light illuminates all other elements of the scene without outshining the fill light.
Back / Rim Light – This light is directed to the back of the character to help separate them from the background.
Because our animated short is set underwater the main light source would be the sun above. Our short should be very brightly lit to reflect the comedic tone.