Original subtitles

Now it all comes down to lighting and

Most of the time when you need to light a character

It's recommended to use a three-point lighting where you basically cast

One light from the side, which is a key light. It's the strongest light and then softer and

A little bit weaker light from the other side to fill in the shadows a little bit

So you don't have so much contrast in there and then you add one light

To the back to create something called rim light where you can light the edges of the objects from behind

So that's like the most common and standard model and it's recommended for beginners and there's one rule there

That you need to place your key light from the top since if you are lighting for example a face

Lighting something from the bottom might create weird shadows

You know, the character might end up looking a little bit sinister or something

But sometimes that's what you want to achieve

You know if you are lighting a villain or you're lighting a dramatic scene

So you need to think about these little things most often

I would just take some area lights and place them in a way

I've just described but here I want to do something a little bit different because first of all, we don't have a face here

So we can afford to do a little bit more dramatic lighting and at the same time

We have this shining wisp. We have the crystal which I want to light up a little bit

So this should end up looking a little bit mysterious

So I'm good by using a few of the point lights to light the character and I want the strongest light to be coming

Up from this wisp because there is our point of interest for this scene

If you look at it like this where the character is

Reaching with his hand towards something you are creating some kind of story there some kind of conflict in the image

It's good to support that story within the image with the light as well

So so first of all while still in the render settings we can go on and enable some options

So the Eevee preview looks a little bit better. So I will check the ambient occlusion

You can see these are a little bit stronger shadows and cavities here and there we can enable bloom

so the wisps really start to shine and

We already enabled screen space reflections

So we are good to go. There's no need to like create lighting probes and create indirect lighting here

This is not for rendering purposes. This is just to make

Preview a little bit better. So let's place the cursor on a hand here shift right click there

Shift a and I will find the light and point light here and we'll move its position a little bit. So

Let's rotate like this and move it towards the wisp a little bit

So press G and then move it right here and from the top as well

So it's kind of a in the middle between the hand and wisp

So right now I want to modify the intensity of the light

so going to the object data properties and let's ramp this up to something like

150 and

To actually see what's going on in the scene will of course need to go here and for the viewport shading

turn on the scene lights and

Scene world. So this is our lighting setup and I have a little bit of a problem here

whenever I enable scene world and

Scene light the shadow start blinking like this in my Eevee material preview

so what I used to do is to just go to the shadow settings and

disable soft shadows, so it's not blinking all the time and

Right now we can focus on this light. So this is the main idea. It really doesn't matter

Which direction we are looking at this?

We just created the light that focuses our

Attention here on the hand and on the wisp it creates these

Shadows that are really sharp from that point light. Maybe we can modify this a little bit and make it it

Even a little bit sharper. So let's go something like 0.15

So it's even more bright and maybe move it more towards the wisp

So this way we are really supporting the idea that these two creatures are

Meeting here are interacting here or something

and now we can modify the color of the light since the wisp are a little bit blue and greenish and

The rim color is really green here. Let's pick up the green light color. It's the one right here

We have the palette open from the chapter before so let's just click the color eyedropper tool and pick up this

color, so

This is starting to look a little bit more blended in but there are still a lot of work to do

when it comes to lights and the first step to blend the scene a little bit more because this is a

Little bit too green. There's a little bit too yellow going on here

And I want to complement that with some colder light

But at the same time blend

The lights and the shadows a little bit more and the great way to do that is to use the world lighting

So I will switch here to the world settings and we will use this violet color here for the world light. So

let's pick up our eyedropper and

sample the light here and you can see how this is looking much better now and

The color is not so yellow right now, it's not that green you can see those nice blue and violet shadows there

so this is all together much better blended in and we are ready now to

create some supporting lighting some fill lights some rim light and

Back light on the background there

but before I do I want to create a camera here because that's a really important thing when you're trying to finish up the scene and

Finish the lighting you really need to know what angle you have there was the pose

So we have the pose figured out, but we don't know how the camera looks. So let's add the camera right now

I will press shift a and add a camera like this and

We just created some camera on the position of the cursor and it's oriented in a way

The viewport was oriented when we created it and right now we can reset its position and rotation and it's very easy to do

So let's just press alt R and you can see this is the default rotation of the camera

It's looking down and now let's press alt G to reset its position

So it's right here in the middle of the scene and we can now bring it up

So let's press G and Z and move this up. So it's

Approximately on the eye level and we can

Place it a little bit more precise. So it's two meters high up and

Then let's start moving it on the y-axis here

So you can move it either by entering minus 10 meters in the Y or pressing G than Y, you know and move it here

So I'm looking to something like this, but I like round numbers

So I will enter minus 10 and now let's press our X and rotate 90 degrees

So this is our camera setup and let's press 0 on the numpad

To look from the camera and the last step is just to go to the output settings and

Adjust resolution. I want the portrait aspect ratio here for this kind of character. For example for Instagram

posts I use

1080 times

1350

so you can use something similar and now let's select the armature and

Since we parented the wisp we can now rotate the armature to find better placement for the character

so R Z and

Rotate it like this

That we saw on the reference render and we can double check by loading the render here

So you can see this side of the mask is almost in the center of the view. So

We

Have something similar going on here. Maybe we can rotate this a little bit less something like this

So this will be our final composition for this

We can cross check this and I have to say I really like

This one better. You can see it's not the same

You know, if you model something organic like this every time the result might be a little bit different

So if you have a different result you can either go on and

Create it once again or change your approach or you can tweak it

More and more and more until you get your result and that's the way how all of the great art is done

you just need to do a few rounds of tweaks then rest a little bit and return to your artwork and

Work on it some more but you know

Don't overdo it like three or four

Iterations should be enough to land on something you like if you go more you might get caught in that vicious cycle

You know of never being satisfied with the artwork and always finding something that just doesn't look right

So yeah, as always the answer is somewhere in the middle so we can now finish our lighting and there's one little thing

I forgot to do and that's to parent this point light to the armature as well. So

You can see it didn't travel

With the armature. So let's look from the top view and let's move it here. So it better

Matches our original intent

Which was to create some kind of a drama with the light there and as I mentioned before

We will need some rim light

Especially here when we have a dark background and dark branches

We'll need to separate them from the background a little bit more. So with this point light selected

let's just duplicate it by pressing shift D and moving it up and

Now we can look from the top and move it here behind the branches

And we can make it a little bit larger so go to the light settings here and let's

Ramp up the radius to something like one. So it gives a little bit more soft shadows and

Right here as we move the light you can see

The light rim it creates here so that's what we are going for and

This will be really the large difference when we render out the scene

That the light is present there and it sheds some lighting from the other side as well

But to be able to separate this character from the background a little bit more

I always like to do some backlight to shine some light on the character as well to create some kind of like an aura or

halo behind the character and

That's what I want to do right here

So I will press shift s and snap the cursor to world origin and let's create a real light

For a change, so I will go light

Area and let's move it behind the character. Let's press G and Y to move it behind the character

Something like this maybe so it sits in the middle between the character and the background and let's move it up a notch so

Something like here, we don't want to go too high up and you will see why and now I will rotate this 45 degrees

So press R X 45

So we are shining with this light on the background here

And if we would go to up you can see this angle here since this is area light

it would catch the character here or

The background underneath him as well and we'll need to blend this light nicely

With this lighting in the front, so

That's why I don't want to go too high up

so let's settle on something like three meters on a Z and four on Y a little bit closer to the character and

Let's set the size to something larger like two meters and we'll add some strength obviously

So I used 300 watts for this and if we look from the front that might be enough here

But I want to use a little bit more blue color so it blends with that world lighting a little bit more

So let's pick up the color eyedropper tool and pick this cyan color

Okay, I really like this so far so you can see how by shining on the background we are separating the model

from the background a little bit more and

Now these dark branches are much better separated from the background much better than before

And now we'll just create some ambience by adding some point lights to these other wisps as well

They're not that important as this one

So this will be a little bit softer light. So let's look from the top press shift D and move the light here

I'm using shift D. So this is not linked duplicate

So when I modify this it will not happen for the other light as well. So let's modify this to 50 watts

And let's move it down a little bit

something

Like this

so it kind of

makes a

Little bit of a light on the character as well from this side if you press H to hide you can see that we made

These shadows a little bit softer, but don't worry. They will be there

We are just blending this a little bit more and we can of course make it a little bit larger

We want the soft light here

We want just to fill so we don't create any sharp shadows

And now let me look from the top and here we can afford to use the old

Duplicate since we want these two lights for these two is to be same

so all D and move one here as well a little bit up and

If we now compare the result, I will hide this you can see how we are additionally creating a little bit of a rim here

And

And defining that character a little bit more with those gradients and filling those shadows

And now there's one last light I want to use and I want to light up this talisman a little bit

So let's shift right-click there create a point light and let's set strength for this one to 50 as well

And we want this pink light from here. That's the last color from this palette. So

Let's pick up the eyedropper and

Sample this light so you can see how this will create a little bit of the additional interest here

A little bit of that color and some of those nice gradients on the character and give this a little bit more story

Where there's actually something happening with the talisman that it's active that maybe there's some kind of magic happening

So let's finish this up and I want to move this point light

Inside of the talisman, so let's press G and move it inside a little bit

Here as well

So you can see the origin is here in the middle and now let's reduce the size a little bit so

Something like 0.1

So it looks like it shines a little bit brighter and we already enabled subsurface scattering and transmission on the material

So it should work in the cycles and we'll of course double check this and finish up with the lighting in cycles

Let's go to the camera view once again by pressing 0 and this should be the lighting

I will click away here and don't forget to save

This should be the lighting for the scene and you can see how we can use only point lights

to deliver a

Story, especially in this case where I imagine this happening somewhere in the forest. So it's a

Really dark around the character

There's the darker green shade there happening and a little bit of the blue tone coming from the world light

So it really enforces the night feeling and then the strong green lights

Happening around the character in form of those of those wisp

a little bit of that more dramatic lighting in terms of sharp shadows and

a glimpse of like an active crystal material or something with that little

Purple or pink point light. So this all supports the story

We are done with the lighting and one last thing I want to set up here is to set the depth of field for the

camera because as you can see, we are not using

isometric or

orthographic camera for this project

so let's select the camera either in the outliner or here in the viewport and go to the camera settings and

I'm satisfied with the focal length of 50. That's kind of a standard portrait focal length in photography as well

It varies from 50 to like 80 and in this way

The character is not that distorted if you would set the focal length to something like 35

That's more fit for landscape shots or something like that

because the character might got a little bit distorted, but the 50 should be okay and

We'll enable depth of field here and with the depth of field enabled

Let's go down a little bit and in the viewport display section of the camera settings

You can see there's a checkbox called limits and you can enable this right now

And now if we rotate we should be able

To see the line pointing from the camera

But if we switch to the wireframe, there is a cross as well and the cross defines the distance

for the focus on the camera

So if we go back to the depth of field and play with the focus distance

You will see this cross moving

you wouldn't be able to see this happening without turning on the limits here in the viewport display and

We can go back and set this up where it touches the mask. So

let's drag the focus distance and we can help ourselves by holding shift and

Let's put it somewhere here. So it's

9.1 meter and let's look from the camera by pressing 0 again

And one last thing we need to do is to play with the f-stop value

So it's the aperture settings for the camera and by holding shift

We can bring this down and you can see how if you go all the way down

This blurs out. So that's the bokeh blur. We want they're happening, but not so strong

so go up to something like 0.3 here and

That should be enough and optionally you can you know move

The focus distance there. I really want the camera to be focused on the face here. That's like the main focal

Area of the scene and the story that's happening right here

But you can see in the foreground

This wisp is a little bit blurred out which plays perfectly into the scene because we are again

Supporting the story by telling you that this is blurred out. This is not important for this story

You should look further in the image to look

What's happening there? So that's for the camera settings. Let's save this up and

Basically, this is finished. We'll just need to check this up in cycles set up some render settings

You know denoising and stuff like that and render it out. So yeah, see you in the last chapter