Follow The Light

"Follow the light... the light is your guide."

Invasion of the Astro-Monster (1965).

Lighting and Compositing reel Spring 2024.

Hope you enjoy!

TOWERBACK 生物兵器

"TOWERBACK 生物兵器" is the first project that I have done using real-time rendering workflows. I found this amazing character animation by Nishant Greene, as a huge Kaiju-cinema fan I knew I had to light this shot!

For this project I also wanted to push the stylized lighting a bit further, trying to create a lighting scenario similar to a shot from the film "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem"  .   Since the animation was longer than the usual frame range I have been working with I decided that Unreal Engine and Lumen would be my tools of choice for rendering. Due to the increasing popularity of real-time technologies in different studios across industries I was really eager to try and learn how to incorporate those workflows to my tool-kit for lighting and rendering. Since the primary focus of my portfolio gravitates more towards serialized / feature animation, I chose to aim for a more "cinematic" approach with certain creative choices that would allow me to have a result similar to other render engines. In the end I rendered out a multi channel EXR file that had different Arbitrary Output Variables (AOVs) that contain different types of data/information which were used for compositing inside Nuke.

After working for a long time using more conventional path-tracers, switching to a real-time rendering solution was really fun and interesting learning experience!

Beauty / Raw render from Unreal / color grade / glow / lens effects

Beauty / Raw render from Unreal / color grade / glow / lens effects

Reference. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (2023)

Late Night Poker

"Late Night Poker" is a small project made up from two different assets: "The Library" by Dani Schoenfeld and "Pokerpus", designed by Chris Ayers, modeled by Sarah Tarr.

When I first analyzed The Library asset I realized how much potential this environment had; the candles and fireplace in particular were the two elements that I wanted to explore during this project. I thought that this character inside that environment had a lot of potential to create a nice atmosphere, this is my take on trying to achieve a moody late night poker game inside a library.

I tried to focus mainly on creating an interesting lightning scenario using various practical lights. For this project I also decided to do a full beauty rebuild workflow inside Nuke. The Layout, environment and composition of this shot made me realize that it would be a good idea to divide all the elements into different render layers, alongside different utilities like Z depth, Position Data and Cryptomattes to use later down the line in order to composite everything for the final pixel. These are some of the challenges that came up during the project: trying to integrate the various fire elements into the shot, optimizing the render time of my volume and emission render passes, doing the eye treatment for the character inside Nuke. Additionally to all the lighting and comp I also wanted to focus on doing surfacing work to enhance the lighting, character and environment as much as possible.

Raw render / eye treatment / emission / lens effects

Raw render / eye treatment / emission / lens effects

Reference. The Witcher (2021)

Fantasy Oak

“Fantasy Oak - Lighting Study” was originally designed and modeled by the artist Sarah Tarr. After a process of self discovery I realized that I want to specialize as much as possible in everything related to color inside a 3D content production pipeline. After doing mostly texturing and surfacing work, lighting and compositing were the two next areas for me to tackle and have fun with. I decided to grab the Fantasy Tree asset from the Lighting Assets Library of the Academy of Animated Art to create the first of this series of lighting-focused CG projects. I also had to do surfacing to better enhance the asset/lighting for each mood/time of day.

For this environment I thought it would be cool to do various lighting scenarios to change the mood and feel of each one of them. So far I’ve come up with two versions, a sunny day and an overcast and misty forest.

Day / Sunset / Overcast

Raw render / DMP / Emission / Volume / Lens effects

Reference board

Lastly I would like to thank everyone in the Think Tank community for all their help during this process, you guys are awesome!

Thank you for reading until the end