Technicolor Creative Studios Lighting Academy is a 10 week intensive course aimed at gearing artists for the showroom floor. Its fast pace and will challenge you in all aspects of lighting. Throughout the 10 weeks you will tackle different lighting and troubleshooting tasks.
Week 1 - Cabin in the woods
A simple starting project to get us going. The brief asks us to find a reference of a cabin in the woods, and match the lighting, shadows and colour as closely as you can. Feedback given to the group this week was more or less preparing us for future weeks, reaffirming the foundations as to not make simple mistakes.
Week 2 - Tin Horse
The second week brief is to find a surface reference and a lighting reference of a rocking horse, and match it as closely to the provided asset. I chose a matted chrome horse for my surface reference and a well lit night time lighting reference of a carousel horse. The goals for this project was to match the highlights, shadow density and quality, and to render this out as a turntable. To achieve this the HDRI was rotoscoped and colour graded, and the surface roughness and displacements were decreased.
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Week 3 / 4 - Still Life
Still life was a two week project in which we had three reference options. A sunny, cloudy and night time scene. I chose to do the night time reference as I envisioned various lightning setups and exciting ways of interacting with the scene. I kept in mind that the following week we would have to optimise this scene, therefore I used only 7 lights.
Therefore optimising the scene becomes more manageable. Areas of the HDRI were blacked out to lower samples. The maximum shadow distance of all lights were set to their lowest. Light blockers were used to contain bounces and minimise extra rendering. Unnecessary assets were removed and objects were placed in object statements to enhance quality and visuals.
Week 5 - Lighting for VFX
The first week in which we are introduced to the Katana and Nuke workflow. The brief is to match the chicken to the plate as best as possible and this starts with constructing and then grading the HDRI to then be matched to the reference bundle. The HDRI and extracted light can then be graded again in Nuke, with the graded values baked into Katana therefore achieving a faithful raw render.
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Week 6 - Lighting for VFX
The same process as last week however, we were allowed to proceed at our own pace. My goal was to complete each stage as fast as possible, but to never skimp on quality. Instead improving upon last week's assignment.
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Week 7 - FX Competencies
This week tests all the skills, techniques and workflows that we have learnt from the previous weeks. The task is to match the lighting to our chosen reference. We had free rein on how we decided the shot composition, lighting, optimisation and the use of assets.
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Week 8 - VFX Lighting Sequence Setup
This is the final Gaspard Week in which we are introduced to variable setups in Katana. These variables would allow us to interchange between shots effortlessly.
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Week 9 / 10 - Final Goolwa Project
The final 2 weeks we were faced with the worst case scenario being that nothing matched or was correctly set up. Therefore prompting us to use every aspect of what we've learned through the 8 weeks. This therefore made it one of the most accomplishing feeling projects.
By the last week I had finalised the shot. In the extra time I was allowed to take beauty shots of the asset as it was a gorgeous high fidelity model. We were told to focus on the highlights in the eyes, as it would bring the leopard to life. Therefore by creating a separate render setup, I could create these highlights using a separate lighting rig. Heavily optimising the scene allowed me to get two final renders done before the deadline.
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