Mastering Lighting - Learn how to set up photo-realistic lights in the 3D scenes

Mastering Lighting is an on going digital training course from Grant Warwick, focused on breaking down the creative and technical barriers artists face when lighting and rendering production based scenes.

Mastering Lighting

Creating realism is one of the most challenging aspects a CGI artist is faced with but the battle doesn’t end there. Once realism is achieved, creating attractive and well lit imagery  is one of the most demanded skill sets in the industry and can often only be achieved with a sound understanding of photography, color and composition techniques. On top of this a detailed understanding of what retouchers and post production artists expect is key. This is where Mastering Lighting comes in.
Using my extensive knowledge as a lighting and rendering artist, Mastering Lighting will once again push the envelope in online CGI training by breaking down and deciphering one of the most sought after and valuable skillets, digital lighting, a topic that is often the cause for confusion and misunderstanding due to the rarity of CGI artists being able to work one on one with photographers. I’ve been personally lucky enough to work with multiple world famous photographers as well as some of the best retouchers in the world and have taken as much knowledge from these experts as possible for use in my own workflow.

On top of this, Mastering Lighting will feature collaborations with some of the leading artists in the industry so that the associated scene files are of professional quality with real world use for your own personal or professional jobs.
Lighting is a highly rewarding and exciting topic and by teaching from pure production experience I hope to make this the funnest course online and expand beyond the technical explanations of Mastering V-Ray.

We would like to thank you for all your support over the last year, it’s been life-changing for both Kieran and I not without it’s fill of unique challenges and problems but we’ve come a long way in a short time and will continue to do our best not only to improve ourselves and the business but each and every artist that believes in what we are doing. 2015 is going to be a huge year for us.

“It’s good, but it’s not perfect. It’s got to be perfect!” Cus D’Amato, Coach of Mike Tyson

 A few of the Topics Covered

• Color Theory
• Composition
• Product visualization
• Architectural Visualization
• Advanced Shading
• Retouching
• Render Passes
• Bonus Passes (Enhancing Beauty Renders)
• Render Optimization
• Tonemapping HDRI’s
• Types of Lights used in production

(This list will grow in time as we develop the curriculum)

Software Used

• 3dsMax
• V-Ray
• Octane Render
• HDRI Light Studio
• Photoshop