Graphics Programs Reference
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Figure 4-17: Not bad... sterile, but not bad.
Step 4: Why Do Things Look
“3D”?
What makes something look “3D”? Just the
fact that it is 3D isn't enough; an actor's
face can look flat if it's not lit well by the
crew's director of photography.
The general rule of thumb for making
something look 3D is to hit it with a warm
(in terms of what color it is) light on one
side and a cool light on the other side. One
light should be much brighter than the
other. And that's it — for the most extreme
“basics” of lighting at least.
Figure 4-16
of view as to what it “sees” and what is
“hidden” from it. For most of my video
work, I generally use a Shadow Map Size of
1,024. It produces a good-looking shadow
map for most instances, without eating a lot
of my computer's physical memory while
the scene renders.
The Shadow Fuzziness setting has
always seemed a bit arbitrary to me. I've
done a couple of quick test renders and
found that 12 gives me the shadow softness
I'm looking for.
You can save a little time in rendering a
scene if a shadow-mapped spotlight doesn't
move and nothing moves through its
“beam” by activating Cache Shadow Map.
This uses the shadow map data generated
by the first frame rendered for all the other
frames in that render.
You can manually change the shadow
map's “view” by deactivating Fit Spotlight
Cone and fiddling with the Shadow Map
Angle setting. For all but the most “hacker-
ish” circumstances, you'll want the shadow
map to fit the spotlight's cone exactly.
Note
One of the reasons I stress studying theatri-
cal lighting so much is that a theatrical
lighting director must make his set and
actors look 3D, even to someone sitting in
the cheap seats at the back of a 5,000-seat
auditorium. All he has to do this with are
spots in the auditorium aiming at the stage
and banks of warm and cool lights hanging
directly above the stage.
Challenging? Yes. But theatrical lighting
directors, over many, many years, have
developed ways of making these limitations
work and work well. The best way to know
what they know is to work a few shows with
them.
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