Should your glance on mornings lovely
Lift to drink the heaven’s blue
Or when sun, veiled by sirocco,
Royal red sinks out of view -
Give to Nature praise and honor.
Blithe of heart and sound of eye,
Knowing for the world of colour
Where its broad foundations lie.
— Goethe
Another concept image of Horstmann within his environment. This one is made up of twenty or so other images that have been sliced up, masked, transformed and merged into one image. I have also worked into the image with Photoshops painting tools. I think this image is lacking some detail around the periphery but overall it’s beginning to take shape. The coloured tendrils stand out really well despite the deep blue saturation within the shadows and darker areas.
Click for larger image.
I’m currently working on the the lighting for Horstmann… I always feel a bit in the dark when it comes to lighting a scene, I’ve never had any formal education in this area. In fact most of my knowledge of cg and animation has been learned through the trial and error of personal experience. I’ve always been interested in lighting and feel like my own exploration of it has given some good results, but I’ve never really developed my understanding to a point where I would feel confident knowing what is achievable without simply adding lights to a scene, moving them around and hitting render.
Artistically, I feel a huge respect for lighting and the impact it can have, not just compositionally but emotionally, yet I do not feel that I have enough technical ability to achieve the impact that I believe can be obtained through good lighting. I’ve always been fascinated with light at a scientific level from the electromagnetic spectrum to the brains perception of light. I have a good understanding of the physics of light or at least our current understanding of how light works but when I thing of lighting a scene in CG I think more towards the drama of light rather than the reality of light. I think of the renaissance painters and how they manipulated light to affect a response, or Edwin Babbitt’s obsession with the harmony between light and shade. Being able to manipulate light as if it were paint is what I would hope to achieve over the next few years of my life but just to learn what brushes to use will be a good place to start.
So… I started with Google… As you do… And found this really useful tutorial from Computer Arts magazine called Getting started in CG lighting. Although it’s written for Lightwave users, it’s transferable to any software package as long as you have a simple understanding of the lights for that package and what they do. This really is a beginners tutorial but it has introduced me to a basic principles of CG lighting that I have never used before called four-point lighting. It explains how to set up a scene with four-point lighting and the reasoning behind it. For the image below I used a four-point lighting set up as a starting point and then manipulated the values to suit a darker, subtle environment.
So now I’ve opened the door to the world of CG lighting I must continue. I’ve just stumbled upon a course paper from Siggraph 96 entitled ‘Pixel Cinematography, A Lighting Approach for Computer Graphics‘. Although it’s over 10 years old it will hopefully give an insight into the early methodologies of Pixar as well as some useful lighting principles and techniques.
This is the latest pre-vis for the butterfly trails. It’s a little dark but will make more sense within the context and will also be illuminated by the lamp. It’s made in 3ds Max using an overly complicated process of making splines from nulls attached to the wings of a butterfly, animating lofts along the splines an then duplicating the loft objects at specified points in the animation and removing the animation followed by animaing individual UVWs for each separate object as the butterfly passes through it.
I’ve removed the butterfly from this test and I quite like the idea that the butterfly transcended it’s physical form into pure colour. I don’t think it’s important to the story that the butterfly is seen as a butterfly, it’s probably more important that it is seen as an abstract form, more ethereal and less mortal.
Some more work on the trails from the butterfly… A little more solid and 3dimensional. They look great as stills but could be troublesome if they intersect the wings. I’ve done some video tests but not rendered any out yet. They’re actually very subtle when animated.
I think that the answer lies in a mash-up between the particle and the solid trail… I feel like we’re dancing towards a conclusion. Maybe I should name the butterfly.
Some lighting work in progress renders. I’m actually working on the texture of the wood alongside the lighting. I’m using my Kaiser Idell lamp as a guide for how the light spreads from the head cone.
Thinking about Chiaroscuro, the fine balance of light and shade.
Floor lit without bump texture
Floor lit with bump texture
Well for the past few days me and Biff have been pulling shapes at the Futuresonic 2009 festival in Manchester. Now in its 14th year, Futuresonic is the UK’s leading festival for digital culture. Art, music, collaboration and ideas are all in the mixing bowl and a whole host of visionary thinkers wielding the spoons of debate… I’m not sure if that makes sense but it sounds like something off a television show and that feels good right now. Anyway…
Amidst all the grand ideas buzzing around the festival it was actually something very small that immediately grabbed our attention… A little chap known as Bob the Lamp.
Bob is a wooden lamp with a personality. You can chat to Bob using a keyboard and he responds just like any other lamp… He’s interested in what you’re wearing, he’s not keen on guns, he likes movies about robots and tells some pretty bad jokes. A typical lamp of his age I feel. As well as resonding with text Bob displays his emotions through his movements. If he is feeling down he slowly slumps over towards his feet and if he’s feeling good he lifts his head high and proud, illuminating all those around him… He’s ace.
The great thing is that when you’re not in his presence, you can still chat to him online and see his emotional responses through a live webcam:
Seriously… He’s very sweet and extremely funny… Go and check him out!
Here are a few other wonderful things present at Futuresonic that are definitely worth a world wide wander:
Isophone – Immersive telephonic space
Aaron Koblin – Uber data visualization
Johann Johannsson – Beautiful strings
Murcof – Electronic soundscapes
Philip Glass – Beautiful classic piano
“LIGHT reveals the glories of the external world and yet is the most glorious of them all. It gives beauty, reveals beauty and is itself most beautiful.” Edwin D. Babbit
I’ve been captured by Edwin Babbit’s book entitled “The Principles of Light and Color”. I can’t stop reading it. It was written in 1878 and apparently not very well received by the medical community due to the suggestion that light and colour could have healing effects on the human body. I’m trying to remain aware that the work was written over a hundred years ago and that much scientific discovery has happened since then and it’s this very thought that keeps my mind dancing back and forth between new understanding and new ‘old’ understanding. The way it is written is very different to any scientific writings I have experienced before, he uses elegant adjectives to embellish theories and writes with passion about subjects usually documented with a more objective approach. I haven’t read like this since i was ten years old, reading Roald Dahl under the bed covers by the light of my Sega Game Gear.
In first chapter “Harmonic Laws of the Universe” he writes about unity and diversity and how the these combine to reveal harmony. He uses three images to illustrate his ideas:
Fig 34 and Fig 35 are described as equally distressing and a violation of the regular development of nature. The first (fig 34) immediately resembles the work of Jackson Pollock and the second (Fig 35) reminds me of Kazimir Malevich’s Black Square and even John Cages’s 4′33″. It’s fascinating to think in the century following this book, artists began using the principles Babbitt is discussing in their work to explore alternative directions in art beyond the aesthetic.
Anyway… It’s got me hooked and it’s got me thinking… about light and colour and Horstmann and the butterfly.
Take a peek for yourself:
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