I’d like some advice on this scene in an animation I’m working on. I’m pretty lousy at lighting, and can’t quite figure out how to light this scene in an interesting way. It’s of course an interior, and only has windows on one side (this is important, so I can’t really change that). I don’t know how to use, for example, a 3-point lighting system in a dynamic scene like this where the camera is moving all over the place, especially since those windows are the only diegetic light source. How can I improve this?
(Please pardon the low sample counts.)
(More images can be found here https://twitter.com/patagorithm/status/1247575833130291200?s=20)
Honestly, the lighting looks pretty nice the way it is. Maybe you could bump it up a little more, not too much though. I’m assuming you want more light on your characters?
3 point lighting is super simple. There are plenty of videos and rescourced to find out more, but Andrew Price did a really nice collection of videos on lighting not too long ago. I found it super helpful.
You could have a 3 point light setup for each character, and then parent the lights to an empty, which in tern is parented to the character rig. That way, where the character goes, the light goes. You’d have to render them on separate layers though and composite it together if you don’t want the environment to be affected by the lights, but that’s not too difficult.
As a separate note, you might want to fix whatever is happening with the textures on the characters (looking at the Twitter images). The bump map or whatever seems way too strong. Also, If you’re using a principled shader, drop down the roughness to .1 or something, and play with the spec value too, to give it a really sharp plastic like reflection. Having that sharp spec on the characters will also help with the general look, and improve how they interact with the lighting…
Good luck! 
1 Like
Thank you very much! Will look into those things.