Lighting Like Pixar movies

Support Lighting and Rendering
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Hi Guys, I want to know, how can I achieve a lighting for a scene in blender that will look similar to lighting in Pixar and Disney movies, especially, Encanto, coco, wreck it ralph, moana… and many more.

I love this type of lighting but i don’t know what its name and if you can suggest me some tutorials to follow, I am not looking for realistic type of art. So, please guys, what are the most important tips so I can achieve that.

I am doing a project, and this is still a wip, I want to achieve that amazing environmtal and encatning look like in encanto,

aWIPtho
aWIPtho1080×1920 3.3 MB

example like these colors:
encanto

Thank you in advance

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I’m no expert but some of the lighting elements I see are the following:

The general lighting seems to be quite warm and yellowish with long and soft shadows (particularly visible on the house). This points to an early morning or evening shot and a somewhat diffused light source.

Then there are the lighted rooms behind those people. However, this effect doesn’t seem to have a huge influence on lighting at all.

Surrounding and behind the main character you have that yellowish glowing light, which is continued through the flying butterflies. This has a pretty strong glow or bloom effect.

Not so much the lighting but more the look:
Colors are extremeley contrasty to each other and super saturated. Together with all the small details, this is probably what has the most effect.

I don’t know if that type of lighting goes under a specific term. But I mentioned some of the elements that are used here.

I would put in a similar amount of detail, choose strong saturated colors and the general right lighting and then I would boost those using blender compositor, gimp or photoshop. No need to dial in every aspect for hours pre-render.

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Oh, thank you so much for the info, I will look on that!
Thanks!

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There’s a lot of information in this free book about lighting. The artist actual worked as a lighter in some animations. I highly recomend that you install Renderman Non-Commercial for Blender and go trought their learning tutorials. Cycles is very good, but is limited when you start aiming into production level.

Disney and Animal Logic has free scenes for practicing:

Moana Island Scene: https://disneyanimation.com/resources/moana-island-scene/
ALab Open Source Scene: https://animallogic.com/alab/

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OMG! WOW! wow, thank you so much I really appreciate it. I hope I can learn from that and produce so much Great art.

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This is exciting stuff! Thanks for posting this.

Sure it’s literally the answer to the question that was asked, but I don’t think anyone was expecting a free online textbook by a Pixar lighting artist.

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Chris brejon CG cinematography is amazing, not only there is a lot to learn from it, but its filled with link to other amazing resources, you can spend mounts exploring and learning.

Plus the way he share his experience is awesome and he talks with passion about how he experienced each movie he worked on.

To add up a bit to the conversation, the question is a bit tricky. Of course you can learn a few techniques that will help already. Is it really about making good lighting or good imagery in general ?

When you look at a shot from a pixar movie it’s a whole team at work. And a lot of planning is done by various department. It’s the same with live action :

image
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image
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These images got a very well crafted color scheme/palette. A lot of planning is needed to make sure the color of the character’s clothing is matching the set, the set match the sequence, that match the story… So everything is planned a lot before the actual lighting takes place, at which point these decision needs to be taken so when you are ready to film and light everything you need is there ?

With a good color palette and image composition it’s much easier to get a good image, you don’t even need to be super fancy with the lighting. A lot is about readability , which asks for simplification. Once things are simple it’s easier to make them go in one direction (the story).

But it’s also possible to do the same simplification by playing more with the lights, and less with the colors of the set :
image
The limited palette helps a lot to make the image simpler and easier to enjoy, but most importantly to support the story.

So yeah, I just wanted to mention that a lot is done to make everything support the story.
There is an idea, that is elaborated with characters, designs, sets, and lighting is just a new take on how to push these ideas further.

I don’t mean it’s always like that, a good colorist can probably save a poor image.
Same with a talented lighter like if they get on the set and nothing was planned they’ll manage to make the most of his light rig to support the story.

But with talented filmmakers everything is crafted from the beginning therefore there is nothing to save.

Hopes that helps a bit ! Have fun !

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I’m of the opinion that good lighting and color can be the single most important aspect of good image composition, depending on the the type of image of course (light drives our perception of color, so they’re closely related). All aspects of an image and its composition are important of course, but lighting is a powerful component of image composition. The same subject framed from the same angle can convey a completely different mood or feeling just by radically changing the lighting.

Good lighting can make up for other areas where an image would fall short, and bad lighting can ruin an image like nothing else. In 3D especially lighting feels like it’s sometimes the main element that elevates an image from being a modelling/shading demo to a work of art.

It’s pretty fascinating how much of the lighting we see in movies and on TV are actually super fake. Often the windows, lamps, screens, and fires you see on screen often contribute very little to the lighting on the scene, it’s all boosted and controlled by artistically directed lights and and reflectors. Sometimes those in-scene light sources are added to the set explicitly to provide an excuse to frame the character or set with specific lights.

Of course in all the images you posted, there are additional factors that make the scene effective, but lighting is the main factor I notice. Some of that could just be me though.

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Agreed ! Even if it’s very difficult to dissociate composition and lighting and that’s probably why DOP works both altogether.
So to me it’s hard to say that one is more important than another :smiley: But sure , no light , no picture :smiley:

And yeah it’s fascinating how much you can get away with lighting that are completely fake but feels natural. There are a lot of detailed example in the CG cinematography book.

When I started, to me composition and lighting was primarily supposed to be cool and interesting.
In a similar fashion, the point of a story ( that I would write) would need to be interesting and original.
But the more I learn the more I think that the most important point is very functional.

When lighting you put some areas of interest under the light and therefore areas of less importance get less visual weight. Then you draw a kind of a roadmap for the eye so we know where we supposed to look.
Same with composition where we can try to eliminate distracting stuff.
Then we can ask ourselves if the creative decision we made serve or contradict the story / point of the image. If we do that right, we already get a very cool result with only “administrative stuff”, without getting fancy. And then it’s possible to go crazy and the more creative and original work can begin.

In the beginning I used to think of crazy fancy stuff first, and totally missed the administrative one and somehow the result was never there. In the other hand it’s really easy to see that an unwanted area drive the eye a lot, and it’s also very objective.

I’m pretty sure you know already all that but maybe that will help the OP :slight_smile:

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Thank you everyone for that! Then I need to ask a second question, how can we get ideas? And how to stick to only one?

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You can get ideas anywhere. That’s not helpful, but any consumption of any kind of visual content - including just being outside, or even descriptive written content, can potentially inspire an idea. For a more “organized” approach, think about what kind of art you want to do (Landscapes? Character art? Contemporary arch vis? Genre concept environments? Still life? Automotive? Creatures/animals?) and create a Pinterest or Pure Ref board on it, sketch out 10-20 thumbnails, etc.

It can be helpful to analyze what kind of art inspires you, which specific elements of them you find effective, and intentionally draw on the kinds of themes, subjects, colors, lighting, and/or compositions that captivate you.

Another thing you could do is take something outside that sphere, and adapt it into that sort of thing (like reimagining a street photography image as a cyberpunk one, or using artistic interpretations of an extinct animal as a jumping off point to design an alien creature, or some other “what if?” approach).

I have no advice on the second question. You can either choose not to start any new projects while working on your current one, or choose to start another one. If wanting to stick to one project isn’t strong enough to stop you from pressing those two little keys CTRL+N, I’m not sure what anyone can say to stop you. All you can do is remind yourself how much you want to finish your current project, and maybe how great it will feel to finish something you can share? (Yeah, sorry, that’s all I got)

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Thank you so much, it is really helpful. <3

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aah, this is an interesting topic, I guess I want to share some of my personal workflows when it comes to lighting, but on a side note, I’m originally a graphic designer/photographer and the main reason I’m learning blender is to make a lighting plan/simulation for my photo works.

I tend to separate lighting and colour, thats why when it comes to lighting, i work in BW in their relative brightness. As for idea for the lighting, there are only couple of basic pattern in lighting, each with their pros and cons, and in general there are only 3 main adjustment for lighting:

  1. Light position (xy space) + shadow ratio (z space)
  2. Light (power) ratio
  3. Light transition/hardness (size and/or distance)

After that done, then i back to work in colour and make lighting adjustment as needed (like colour filter to further enhance the colour or mood) , as for the idea for the colour itself, it’s similar to the lighting, each colour harmony have their own pros and cons, and i choose based on that. And i often took inspiration from clasical painting for my lighting and/or colour(especially 4 canonical painting mode of Renaissance).

What i see that people tend to forget when dealing with colour harmony in a software is, there are 2 colour wheel that often used, RYB colour wheel (artistic), and RGB colour wheel (scientific), i always plan my colour in RYB except for a special case.

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Ideas isn’t a real problem once you understand that everything can be interesting.
Subject doesn’t always need to be interesting or original, but that’s your take on that subject that makes it interesting.

Movie stories tends to gravitates around the same subjects and things we can relate to. But even if most of the movies are about love, or how ones find himself through an adventure, they are all different and we don’t like them the same ways.

Sticking to an idea is more difficult I think, it’s something that we definitely needs to learn.
In general we work in a iterative fashion, it’s not about doing something, but more about redoing it and improving it to a point where we are satisfied with it.

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