Even More Lighting

Progressing from my last post, I learnt about how characters can have rigs for eye lights. I didn't have the time for Rocket Dog to sit and make a lighting rig for the eyes, so I had a makeshift alternative - a point light constrained to one of the controllers at the front. Lipin showed me how constraining to controllers (or as this tutorial video shows, a locator) can make the constrain work more reliably than constraining to geometry. This worked for the most part, but I had a new problem - even though the light was now generally moving where it needed to be, the dog looked like he wasn't really focused on anything in particular, and it looked floaty. And I wasn't able to move the light around and key it because of the constraint. I ended up checking out the different tabs for the constraint itself and found one related to offsets, with the ability to key on them. Again, moving the light in the viewport and hitting key didn't do anything. But it did provide me a key to work with in the graph editor, where I was able to tweak the curves as needed.

Eyes with no point light

Eyes with point light

Eyes with point light and the constrain offset keyed

In the future I would use area lights with a shape texture file to maintain the correct shape, size, and exposure of the lights in the eyes. I ran into minor issues with the point light varying due to movement and differing shots.

Accuracy

I've been quite concerned with making sure aspects of my film are accurate such as which insects would appear, which wildlife is around, and when plants would be out. Red grouse eggs are commonly found in April/May time, and this would line up with the two being out on the moors looking for eggs in pretty warm clothing. I did a lot of research into which critters I could use, such as butterflies or damselflies. I liked the idea of a red damselfly appearing in the film, as something that might stand out a little more and seem a little more ominous compared to a white butterfly. Sundews are also around in these months, so everything has lined up nicely for my animatic!

I want to use the environment as much as I can to tell the story where my characters can't. For this I'm keeping prey animals closer to the beginning, such as sheep and grouse. Towards the end of the story I'm incorporating more threatening creatures such as damselflies and eagles. I did look at if I could sneak a killer whale in at the very end, but I think I'd be pushing my luck a bit!

More lighting/rendering learning

Working on so much lighting and rendering for Rocket Dog has massively boosted my knowledge of working with lights and keeping things optimised when it comes to render time. This past week I began learning about AOVs and how they are used during both the rendering and the compositing stage. As I'm trying to keep things simpler for Rocket Dog, I don't think I'll need to use them too much for the Going Live module. But I think they will be very useful when it comes to Advanced Production where work will spend a bit longer in the compositing stage.

I can also now constrain lights to objects so that something moving will carry the light with it. I can see this being useful for lots of work with lighting in general. I have explored lights working with materials that are transmissive and have some subsurface scattering (like the dog's helmet, and his ears) that will be useful to know when looking at water and cloud materials for the bog. I have realised I may be able to try a simple displaced plane with some subsurface scattering as a method for the clouds rolling over/overcast moments in the film - I will need to test this.

Something I realised when working on this shot is that light doesn't always have to be fixed - you can have lights get brighter and key different things as needed throughout the shot. I've read online that Maya lights can be termperamental with Arnold, and I've definitely found this to be the case with the point light in this shot - when I started keying visibility, the light frequently refused to work at all. I will look into ways that lights can be cached as I work on a shot.