Lighting in the dark

Lighting has been kicking my arse, mainly because it hasn't really clicked yet like with everything else. i've watched lots of tutorials, and while I understand the basics, i've yet to make it 'fun' yet in my mind.

I've been doing lots of little tests to try and get the right settings and placements and i've decided to use coloured lights get help get the spacey atmosphere i'm aiming for

Quick test - floor texture is temporary 

I've also gone back to looking at reference footage, especially because I don't want to throw lights in willy nilly (yep I said it).


AND SO, even with the tutorials and the referencing and the red velvet cake I was still getting this super weird blocky output that was mocking me :(

AND SO because the internet wouldn't help me it was Sean to the rescue and in the space of an hour he's managed to make lighting seem so much less dark and and a lot easier to atleast add some lighting basics.

Firstly using the Depth Map Shadows appears to be screwing me over, I didn't really need to be using it, I can get much better results by using Ray Trace Shadows and tweaking these settings to get the effect I wanna use.

I also want to get the screens inside the ship to glow inside Maya instead of when compositing so that they can light my model.

One issue I did have was what appeared to be a weird patch of light on the face (mainly affecting the cheeks and upper lip)

I thought it might be the lights or texture and after 2 hours of testing I finally figured out that it was the simple option - the bloody outline -_-.

The reversed normal mesh must have been doing something weird... penetrating the mesh in some way, so i've been able to fix it and other problem shots by simply turning it off ha. I'll be rendering it off as a separate layer and the lighting doesn't need to affect it so i'm not worried.

FIXED

I also picked up a neat trick from Sean - I can 'turn off' the lights affecting bits of mesh in the Relationship Editor. I've done this with Shot 9 as I need her to be more illuminated but not the cave - so I have 2 directional lights set up.

AND SO, after 12 glorious hours, I HAVE FINISHED LIGHTING!! Again this will all be revised just before rendering, and i'll get a second opinion from someone else to make sure I haven't gone crazy.

But as of now all that remains ahead of my July 1st Render deadline (10 days ack) is Dance sequence and Texture tweaks - which will be occurring on Tuesday.

But i've also decided that even if I haven't finished the dance rendering will still be happening especially because i'll probably need to do a couple of tests.

Sad times.

Never has a song been more relevant. Thank you Hoobastank