Research Project - Useful Reading Material

I am currently in the reading phase of the research project/document, so will be posting some good quotations from useful sources here for future references and to share. :)

Using Lighting to Create Mood

Written by  Alan Blakely
http://www.prophotoresource.com/home/item/74-using-lighting-to-create-mood.html

"...When we talk about bright and airy lighting we're usually describing broad daylight sources with medium to low contrast. Daylight sources cast shadows downward. When we talk about romantic and moody lighting, we're often describing tungsten lighting with medium to high contrast. Tungsten sources often cast shadows in a variety of directions, including up."

"Let's Summarize
Almost any desired mood in lighting can be achieved by manipulating the following four variables:Color temperature
Light source contrast
Light source direction
Depth of focus
Rarely does an assignment come my way that doesn't require manipulation of the existing mood. Having a grasp of the lighting values that work together to create mood will allow you to make the best of any situation--what's more, you''ll amaze your clients!"


ELEMENTS OF MISE-EN-SCÈNE
http://www.filmreference.com/encyclopedia/Independent-Film-Road-Movies/Mise-en-sc-ne-ELEMENTS-OF-MISE-EN-SC-NE.html

"Mise-en-scène is generated by the construction of shots and the ways that they lead to visual coherence, across the edits from shot to shot. It includes all the elements in front of the camera that compose a shot: lighting; use of black and white or color; placement of characters in the scene; design of elements within the shot (part of the process of production design); placement of camera vis-àvis characters in the set; movement of camera and/or actors; composition of the shot as a whole—how it is framed and what is in the frame. Even music may be considered part of mise-en-scène. While not seen, at its best music enhances the visual and narrative construction of the shot."

"Mise-en-scène can also be an evaluative term. Critics may claim a film does or does not possess mise-en-scène. For example, if a film depends entirely on dialogue to tell its story, if its visual structure is made up primarily of a static camera held at eye level on characters who are speaking in any given scene, if its lighting is bright, even, and shadowless, it lacks mise-en-scène. On a more subjective level, if a viewer's eyes drift away from the screen because there isn't much of interest to look at, the film lacks mise-en-scène."

Elements of Cinema - Cinematography - Camera Angles
http://elementsofcinema.com/cinematography/camera-angles.html

"Whereas shot sizes direct who and what we see, camera angles affect how we perceive it. Is a character going to appear dominant and tall? Or short and weak? A strong weapon in the cinematographer’s arsenal is the ability to position the camera in relation to the subject or scenery."

"Low angles are captured from a camera placed below the actor’s eyes, looking up at them. Low angles make characters look dominant, aggressive, or ominous."


Planning Animation Cinematography and Shot Structure to Communicate Theme and Mood by Kevin Kennedy and Robert E. Mercer

"The broad approaches to setting mood are well understood. To set up a happy scene, one should use a technique such as bright lighting to create a “feeling up” mood. A sad, dramatic, or scary scene should use a low-key, “feeling down” effect such as cool colours. De-saturation can be used to draw viewers into the scene, or high saturation can make them feel like outside observers. These techniques are often applied in the visual medium to give films a specific mood."

"Lighting is used to set mood, direct viewer attention, and provide information. The computer cinematographer can apply lighting to characters and backgrounds independently. The quality of lighting can be adjusted to alter the amount and sharpness of shadows. The brightness and direction of lighting is changed to achieve communicative acts as required."

Idea for Startup Factory Report (Context 3)

In the field of 3D visualisation, specifically for architecture, product design and engineering, I feel there is a gap in the market for an application to be used on touch-screen devices (such as the Apple iPad and other tablets), where 3D models and environments can be viewed interactively.

Usually when presenting a visualisation project to a client, particularly in the field of architectural visualisation, rendered stills and animated walkthroughs are frequently used as the main visual stimulation. These methods of presentation are quite linear in their approach, where the viewer is not in control of what they see. Whereas using an interactive application for similar purposes could allow the user to rotate models and explore an environment or interior space themselves.

I have researched this type of service and its current availability within the areas of 3D design and architectural visualisation, and have only found one or two uses of a similar product. A quite large visualisation company that I have looked at before - ‘iCreate3d’ - offer a very similar service on their website described as ‘interactive touch-screen master plans’ using their own mini application called ‘iViewer 3D’. This application, as it were, is mainly a piece of software used on large touch-screen displays for presentations, and is also online based on www.iviewer3d.com. They say it can also be used on iPad for similar uses but I have not managed to find an app on the Apple’s App Store available to the public or other businesses.

iCreate 3D's 'iViewer 3D' service in use on a large touch-screen device

This is where I realised there could still be a gap in the market for my idea – an application available to all businesses, for an appropriate price, to be used as an effective method of showing 3D visualisations to clients in meetings and presentations, perhaps with either separate tablet devices or larger means such as a touch-screen smart television.

The application itself could be used by uploading generic 3D file types such as .OBJ or .FBX etc., or even files from specific software such as 3ds Max (.MAX) or Maya (.MA/.MB). The application could then show your model and environment in its plain form to look at, and also include a real-time rendering engine to view textured or partly textured version of the work.


Here are a couple of very simple and quick Photoshop mockups of Arch-vis shown on an iPad screen, to give an idea of how it could look and be presented:

Research Document Sources

I had my first tutorial for the research module today with Jools while Roma is absent working, and now feel I can put together my presentation to a high enough standard to present both next week, then the week after for assessment.

In this tutorial, we shared our research enquiries and came up with some of the things that need to be in the presentation. One of these were relevant sources for the research document, which we shared with each other.

Here are a few of the books and sources I plan to use and that may help others in my group :)

Digital Cinematography & Directing by Dan Ablan [book]

http://www.google.co.uk/products/catalog?q=digital+cinematography+book&hl=en&rlz=1C1SAVA_enGB503GB503&prmd=imvns&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.&biw=1024&bih=499&um=1&ie=UTF-8&cid=17739491182849422789&sa=X&ei=dlZsUI-tKOS40QXLvIGoBA&ved=0CFcQ8wIwAg

Essential CG Lighting Techniques with 3ds Max by Darren Brooker [book]

http://www.google.co.uk/products/catalog?hl=en&q=darren+brooker&um=1&ie=UTF-8&cid=12978891025636653771&sa=X&ei=TlhsULvyFoy10QWP5oHwDA&ved=0CEwQ8wIwAA

CGSociety Website and CGTalk Forum

www.cgsociety.org

Experimenting with lighting...

I have been on holiday in Benidorm since last weekend and only just got back (freezing here!), but before that I did some quick lighting experiments with my old DP3 work from my second year in 3ds max. I didn't get chance to post them before I went, so am doing so now! :)

Here are the renders I did - a couple for each piece of work (so far...):

Still Life Visualisation Project:

Evening time with volume light

Night time with a cool feel

Morning/midday - very bright sunlight from window - happy feel?

Silent Comedy Animation Project

Daytime with warm-feeling sunshine

Nighttime with a cooler feel, but with yellowish street lights.

'Of Mice and Men' Bunkhouse Visualisation Project

Night time with cool feel

Night time with cool feel - stove light

Morning light with warm feel and volume effects

Morning light with warm feel - subtle stove light

I feel this has helped me a lot with lighting a scene dependent on time of day and mood, and think I am improving with my overall skills using the standard lighting within 3ds max. However, I am still unsure on how to use some lighting systems and photometric lights, which I will look into more in the next few days. I am still also gradually collecting more research and articles to help with the project and examples of 3d environments that inspire me. I may also experiment with how post-production techniques can produce similar effects too. :)

3drender.com Challenge :)

I chose a pretty old rendering challenge from 3drender.com to help practice texturing and lighting to create different atmospheres in environments. I chose the simplest one I could find for now, as I wanted to focus on lighting and effects at first rather than texturing for hours on end!

http://www.3drender.com/challenges/candles/index.htm

So this is pretty similar to the still life project I did earlier in my second year for visualisation in DP3, a few objects on a surface, but this time features the addition of candles.

I approached it quite basically in terms of lighting, by adding a main directional light source from the right using shadow maps, then some omni lights for the candles with added glow effects. I also added some fills to add a slight impression of light bouncing off other surfaces. For example, a brown tinted light from below the wood surface and a pale beige one both above and from the left, both at intensities of about 0.3-0.5.

In my first example, I tried to create a cold, dark night atmosphere to the image by basically tinting the main lights with quite strong blues and using a lower intensity (0.5-0.7). I used a similar technique to create a warmer, brighter mood in the second example, by using yellow/orange tinted lights with stronger intensities (1-1.5). In both examples I also used render elements to render out zdepth maps, which I used to create a lens blur effect in Photoshop, adding depth of field.

This is quite simple for now, but I plan to experiment more, perhaps with my previous work for my second year (still life, character animation, chess player, etc.), as these are already textured so won't use up too much of my time! I am also constantly still finding resources for this project and completing more reviews of cinematography, which I will post soon. :)

Research Time (Finally..)

I have finally started to gather a bit of research for the big research project in my third year, which is creeping up a bit too quickly for my liking! :)

Anyway, so far I have started to save a load of useful written sources, image locations, and reference videos from YouTube onto my Delicious bookmarking account, so I have lots of references to looks at and perhaps use when it comes to actually starting this essay, etc. in October.

I have a lot of things to be working on and practicing during the rest of my summer break that I put on my action plan for this project...

 1) CG Lighting Techniques with 3ds Max book - read about theory and complete as many tutorials as possible to help with lighting knowledge. << I have done 3 of these tutorials so far, so am feeling my skills improving slightly.

2) Look at 3drender.com lighting and texturing challenges as examples of how moods and genres can be created and try to complete a challenge myself.

3) Research cinematography within film and animation - history, techniques, etc. - review pieces of animation, film, visualisation in terms of their cinematography and aesthetics to help with this.

Today I have started number 3 of the above tasks, and will post my reviews of films, etc. as I do them. So far I have looked at animated film 'The Corpse Bride' directed by Tim Burton, and French film 'Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain' directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet. I have started with these as they are two of my favourite films of all time, to be totally honest, and I think they both use colour and lighting really effectively within them.

The Corpse Bride

Tim Burton’s ‘The Corpse Bride’ is a stop-motion animated film, with a main genre of horror/thriller, but also featuring mild aspects of comedy in parts.

The main cinematographic feature that is noticeable throughout the film is the strong use of colour and tone to represent mood and genre. During the scenes with a spookier feel, for instance, the shots are very dark, with a cool, blue tone to them, probably achieved through lighting and post-production techniques. This is also achieved during the scenes underground, where a more light-hearted, party-like atmosphere is portrayed through the use of much brighter and warmer lighting and props.

The rule of thirds has also been used a lot within the main shots, where the focus of the shot is placed slightly to the left or right of the image. Along with this technique, depth of field and lighting is also usually used to highlight this focus even more and add dramatic effect. For instance, a subject lit with bright, blue light and casting dark shadows may seem to simply show the audience that it is night time, but can also suggest a haunted or cold mood to the scene. Also, the focus shifting quickly onto a subject or action whilst the background blurs could impact the audience and add to a build-up of tension or atmosphere.

Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain

Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s ‘Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulin’ is a romantic comedy set in Paris. Throughout the film, feature many different moods, including humour, happiness, passion and suspense.

Perhaps the most recognisable feature within Jeunet’s cinematography is his strong use of bright, warm colours throughout. Each and every shot somehow manages to feature these signature yellows, reds and greens within them, through lighting, props, location, and post-production techniques.

These warm colours often reflect the warm, happy mood within the plot, and can be edited slightly to show a change in mood effectively. For instance, in a scene where Amélie is daydreaming and happy, the colour is very bright yellow, then when she returns to reality and starts to cry, the shot appears marginally cooler and lower in saturation.

Another good use of cinematography within this film is the use of close-ups and depth of field effectively together. For example, I have captured a still showing a close-up shot of a sugar spoon and dish in the cafe. The strong use of depth of field within this shot, where the viewer’s eye is drawn to the spoon, combined with the bold colours and high contrast, gives a much more dramatic feel to the shot.

Compositing Projects - Outcomes

I have now completed both projects for this compositing module, which I am ready to hand in. I am pretty pleased with the outcomes, although I would have liked to have used more accurate editing in After Effects but I have not yet got a vast enough knowledge for this standard of work. Also note, I haven't added any sounds to these videos, mainly because it wasn't stated in this particular brief, and I wanted to focus on the compositing skills rather than extra effects, etc. Anyway, here are my completed videos for both the character and creative effects compositing projects. :)