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Welcome to 2013, its the new year we have all anticipated, although to be honest no one day is different from the other, as long as emphasis has been placed on one season over the other it does find its way into out way of doing things and our belief system, so I do believe you are set out to make this year a better on for yourselves.

So... good to have you here here for this part 2 of the series, here we are taking it further, we will consider more about the lighting scenario, remember this is a blog not an academic text, so the idea is to open our eyes to what potentials lighting may holds for graphics excellence.

Here goes, have you taken time to notice that in the so called 'developed world' light plays a big part in their day to day lives, you would not notice this until the night time approaches when you expect people to be back home for the night then you notice malls and department stores, office buildings, neon light publicity etc all illuminating the night and replicating the daytime as much as possible.

Many details you may not notice in the day-time becomes very obvious at night-times, shapes, forms, height, colours all become the first things you will notice in the night simply because of the lighting in the environment (if any), the same goes for 3d, lighting helps a better perception and appreciation of the 3d form since your models and details are better defined.

The previous blog link below highlights this further. http://www.debohadeaga.yolasite.com/my-blog/3-d-lighting-series-lighting-and-the-artist-%E2%80%93-1

Accidents DONT happen
In the 3d world, getting the lighting scenario correct is an intentional effort, nothing is going to happen by chance, accident or fluke and as some call it, matter of factly is any accident in lighting would mostly ruin your plans hence the need for a carefully guided lighting plan even before you create the very first light and in advanced cases, before you create your model, as mentioned you cannot do without a good life reference in the 3d world and since lighting is also part of the 3d world often time a careful study of real life scenarios, pictures, video recording, your own living space and so on, will be a good place to begin to get it right with lighting.

Nature of 3d lights scenario
Generally I like to classify 3d lighting scenarios based on their directional properties lets also call these uni or omni directional lighting, I love to see the nature of light via their directional make up and under this nature classification can begin to list out several others.

Most 3d programmes have the same basic light types in common talking about the Spot light being the most common, not only in 3d but in live productions aswell, the spot light is wins the love of most artist because it is can be made to adopt a dual nature with regards to the direction, when a spot light is enclosed in a light house feature or a light box it aims at one direction and can be said to be uni directional even when its not housed in a light feature the spot light will naturally shower a cone like feature on the 3d scene, however when the artist adjusts the rim of the spot light and increases the pen-umbra and or umbra features then we can notice a feature of light which we will talk about later, this is called the diffusion, and with this adjustment you could use more than one spot light to create a nice light blend displaying soft and subtle shadows -this is something else we will discuss later, as we cannot talk about light without understanding the shadow that accompanies it-, same as you would achieve using the Area light.

Before the area light, here is the Point light, this is an omni directional light in its nature, picture the common home lightbulbs, thats a very good example of the point light, it emanates from a point and spreads through, the point light can be made to act like a spot light when a light feature is built to house the light, a cone for instance would mean the point light would be directed to a spot on the scene just like the spot light would do but why bother when you can get a spot light created for that purpose and with much more control. Now the Area light, can be the most desired type of light in 3d, it spreads over a square of rectangle emitting light all over the surface and this creates the most desired element in 3d space, the soft shadows, the area light in my opinion would be a uni-directional light aswell because its effects is directed towards where it is facing, briefly is the light that adopts the sun rays and I would guess that for lack of a better name certain 3d application have called it Directional light, as explained above all light are directional anyway but this special light goes in only one direction and has powerful rays, the aim is to depict the sunlight and so you may see names like Infinite light (to suggest the rays goes on and on to infinity), you may see it called Sunlight which is the correct description.

There is no denying the fact that experienced lighting artist could tweak these lights to adopt the opposite nature take the case of the many spot lights explained above for example.

Most 3d application if not all have a natural default light which is often there to have a general idea of what you are modelling, sometimes they are called Ambient light as they are there to just light up the 3d scene for you to see, these often make the scene flat and washed out so its it good practise to switch this light off before you place your own newly created and intended light in the scene.

Cheating in Lighting
Artists may have to cheat in order to optimize their resources, cheating is allowed in 3d environments and it could be costly when you try to fulfil all righteousness, pretending to be 'holier than thou' just like the Pharisees of old (oh yeah the Sadducees aswell), sorry guys none of those is necessary in 3d or 3d lighting, the aim of lighting is to direct most of the viewers' attentions to what you need them to focus on and less on where you dont want, so lighting will mostly ensure this happens.

In cases where you want to avoid the endless render time as in the case of the Area light or times when you cant just think of any other solution than to create the effect of the real life lighting scenario, as in the case of placing a light source behind the camera or out of camera frame but pointing it into your scene to create an external light source or an open window or so, so viewers tell themselves there is window open yet this is not the case.

In other manner, objects are created textured in a white for instance, the surface properties altered making that same box or polygon transmit its texture unto a scene to act as a light source, this can be understood in a studio lighting setup where you cannot afford to add a real light into the scene as it would make it unrealistic yet you need the elements receiving some sort of lights from a source we cant see.

Advanced lighting artist can create an Environmental light or HDRI lighting, in this instance, a real photograph is wrapped around a 3d scene and this emits its built in lighting properties unto the scene to create a false sense of light, false because the no light is created nevertheless this is a standard industry practice and with great realistic looking results, there is also a case of Light-rigs created and used severally to ensure continuity in case of an animated scene, we will talk more on this later.

Finally, I promised to talk about diffusion in 3d lighting, in real life lighting gaffers usually place a filter over there light source to create this effect, in 3d I suppose the same could be done however what is this diffusion? Simply put, it is the effect adopted either manually or in built which allows the light to be spread round and mixed up with the environment with less notice.

In a programme like 3d Lightwave, the diffusion of a surface of light is inbuilt and you can push it up or down in percentage degrees, other 3d apps may handle it differently but its all back to the artist to create this effect if they want it and depending on their shot requirements.

NB- this is not precisely the same a light bounce or fall off, but they may be used together to achieve the results without being able to tell which effect is most helpful.

Lighting is a wide area however the basics are the same, a grasp will make you appear to get results effortlessly.

In my next part I will fulfil my promise and talk more on the areas I could not expand on in this part, interestingly we should also find out why shadow are our friend in the 3d scene.