Lighting at TD-U

I just finished a month long online course of lighting techniques under the tutelage of Micheal Tanzillo and Jasmine Katatikarn. I learned a ton of new techniques for lighting and compositing! I can't thank Mr. Tanzillo and Ms. Katatikarn enough. This was a 5 week course and all images are lit by me. However, none of the models, pictures, textures, and materials were done by me; they were all provided by td-u.com. Further more, I worked on these files in a student educational version of Autodesk Maya 2012 and are not to be used for commercial work. Anyway, pictures!

Week 1 challenge;

The challenge was to create mood with generic shapes. I went for an eerie kind of scene. I wanted to add fog but this render took 36 hours of render time alone so I was unable to submit an alternative picture. I do have a WIP pic of fog though it's far from perfect;

The front doesn't match up that well but I really liked the background! Just to show how dramatically this thing has been worked, here's the first test lighting;

Week 2 challenge;

For the second weeks' challenge, we had to light a character to a photograph (Simon; fully licensed to TD-U. I was granted permission to post this on Jonny Pezzatti Productions by Mr. Tanzillo. The photograph was also provided by td-u.com). I was really pleased with how it turned out but there was a lot of composit work that I did to it in the week 5 challenge.

Week 3 challenge;

For the third week challenge, I had to light an interior. The interior was provided by td-u.com as well. This was one of the most successful I think. It feels very real, it has a nice mood, and I like the glare bleeding through the windows.

Week 4 challenge;

This challenge was to match a 3D model to live action. Can you guess which one it is? It may be harder in the small picture but it's fairly easy to tell when you blow up the picture (all materials except the lighting, again, was provided by td-u.com). It's going in the right direction, but I need to work on it more to make the hat look like the others.

Week 5 challenge;

For the week 5 challenge, I decided to work further on the character lighting scene by working more in depth with compositing (which I did in Photoshop CS4). I really think it's a step up from the picture prior. It integrates with the picture much more successfully compared to before and the eyes don't look like they are glowing.

Well that's what I got for this month. I can't thank Mr. Tanzillo and Ms. Katatikarn enough for the lessons. They helped a lot! I highly recommend TD-U's principle of lighting course to anyone looking to learn more about developing an eye for lighting in a 3D space. You can take a look and sign up at http://td-u.com/