The Gnomon Workshop - Light and Shadow Lighting and Rendering Series Volume 1-TUTOR

It is reasonably assumed that lighting is all about lights. The word ‘illumination’ implies that we exclusively focus on areas that are lit or brightened. Shade would only be the remainder of the areas we left untouched. Yet, this is not the way we should think about lighting. Notan is a Japanese word that means “lightness-darkness,” and it encompasses one of the fundamental principles of composition in painting, photography, film and computer-generated imagery. This fundamental principle is that, like Ying and Yang, opposite forces are interconnected and interdependent. Actually, lightness and darkness are complementary, interacting to form a whole greater than the sum of their parts. With these concepts in mind, the motivating factor of this DVD is to bring more awareness to the infinite possibilities that the concept of darkness offers the artist. This seminar ranges from the general to very specific lighting techniques. We use Maya and Mental ray, but the concepts are applicable to any software or renderer. Technical topics include Light Falloff, Decay Regions, Intensity/Color Curves, Penumbra, Blockers, Barndoors, Gobos, Gels, Negative Lights, Light Linking, Shadow Lights and Global Illumination.