In this video, ‪@MartinKlekner‬ shares several character lighting tips that he learned throughout his career as a cinematic 3D artist. From light placement, to adjusting its quality, quantity and color, you will learn practical workflows to make your character lighting more cinematic and help you in your storytelling needs.
The Shaolin Monk "Su" 3D character model was created by Juan Hernández, our newest colleague at CGBoost. Check out his ArtStation page: www.artstation.com/donchuan3d
⇨ Martin Klekner's KZfaq Channel: ‪@MartinKlekner‬
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CHAPTERS
00:00 - Intro
02:21 - Lighting Scenario 1: Beauty lighting
04:00 - High-key / Low-key lighting
05:06 - Light types (Key, Fill, Back, Rim...)
06:02 - Light Quality - Soft Lighting
08:54 - Lighting Scenario 2: Dramatic
08:56 - Light Ratio - Low / High Light Ratio
12:01 - Short (Reverse) / Broad Lighting
12:23 - Paramount Lighting
12:46 - Loop Lighting
13:52 - Motivated Lighting
16:40 - Lighting Scenario 3: Mysterious
17:28 - Hair Light
19:23 - Split Lighting, Rembrandt Lighting
21:21 - Lighting Scenario 4: Evil
25:03 - Lighting Scenario 5: Dynamic
27:27 - Checkerboard Lighting
28:35 - Lighting Scenario 6: Mystical
33:05 - Outro
QUESTIONS BEFORE YOU START LIGHTING
1. What is the focus of the shot?
2. What is our relationship to the character?
3. What techniques support our decisions?
LIGHTING TERMS
💡 Key Light
The first and usually most important light in a lighting setup, highlight the form and dimension of the subject
💡 Back Light
Hits your subject from behind, creates depth in your scene to prevent it from looking two-dimensional, divides subject from the background
💡 Rim Light
Back light illuminating the subject from the side
💡 Top Light
Highlights the top of the subject's head, sometimes called Hair light, it can create a halo effect
💡 Fill Light
Fills the shadows created by the key light
💡 Soft Light
With bigger light sources, the light quality and shadows get softer
💡 Hard Light
With smaller light source, the light quality and shadows get harder
💡 Lighting Ratio
Describes how much brighter the highlight side of your subject is, than the shadow side of your subject
💡 Low Light Ratio
Low contrast between the light side and shadow side of your subject
💡 High Light Ratio
High contrast between the light side and shadow side of your subject
💡 High Key Lighting
Lighting setup with a reduced light ratio, filling your scene with light
💡 Low Key Lighting
Lighting setup with a high light ratio, filling the scene with shadows
💡 Short / Reverse Lighting
Placing the Key either slightly behind or at an acute angle to the subject, rather than simply letting it fall square on the face of your character
💡 Broad Lighting
The portion of the subject's face that is turned toward the camera is lit most brightly
💡 Paramount Lighting
Paramount lighting is a lighting setup where a strong key light is placed directly in front of the subject with a slight downward angle
💡 Loop Lighting
The light source is above and slightly to the side of the subject, creates a small "loop" nose shadow cast onto the cheek.
💡 Split Lighting
Key light is lighting only one side of the subject, the other side of the subject is in shadow
💡 Rembrand Lighting
Key Lights is placed far to the side, shadow from the nose connects with shadows on the side of the face, creating a small triangle of highlight on the cheekbone
💡 Checkerboard Lighting
The background is light on the dark side of the subject, but dark behind the bright side of the subject, creating a checkerboard effect
💡 Motivated Lighting
Motivated lighting is when the light in the scene imitates a natural source within the scene, you don't come up with nonsensical lights
PSYCHOLOGICAL EFFECTS OF COLOR
🟠 Orange - warmth, kindness, happiness, exoticism
🟡 Yellow - imbalance, nervousness, obsessiveness, insecurity, madness
🟢 Green - nature, danger, sickness, rot
🔵 Blue / Cyan - calmness, coldness, sadness, night, detachment
🟣 Violet / Purple - sci-fi, mysticism, fantasy, eroticism
🔴 Red - danger, aggression, passion, love, anger
🌸 Pink - femininity, beauty, innocence, carelessness
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