HDR Light Studio is a unique blend of adjustable light sources, a robust interactive lighting preview, a ‘point and click’ light positioning system and image based lighting. The result is an intuitive lighting approach that empowers 3D artists to express their lighting vision with ease and light their shots in record time.
Andy Rowan-Robinson, CG Supervisor, Framestore, explains their recent project using HDR Light Studio.
“In the Snapdragon spot HDR Light Studio was used from blocking out the lighting right through to adding the final tweaks. It allows an extremely quick method to correct our orientations and quickly balance the base HDR images that we send to our renderer. We can play with the general levels of these base images before we go in and lighten and darken specific areas on the fly to create the shape and look that we are after.
As the shot progresses the LightPaint feature is great for placing specific highlights and rims in the exact places that we want. Instead of experimenting with specific light positions we can simply click in the view where we want the reflection to appear. We found this especially useful for accurately placing highlights in the eyes to really bring the dragon to life.
Production wise we found it really easy to share settings between artists and shots and found the tool is flexible and modular enough to fit well within our pipelines.
In summary the tool was invaluable for getting quality and fast results in the lighting - we were able to light accurately and in a very creative way, definitely making the process very enjoyable and intuitive for the lighting artist. By the end of the spot the tool had been employed on almost all dragon shots in the spot.”
HDR Light Studio compatibility includes: Maya, Houdini, 3ds Max, Cinema 4D, Pixar's RenderMan, Chaos Group's V-Ray, Arnold, Maxwell Render, MentalRay and many more.
Take a look at some of the snapshots below and watch the spot here -