Week 24 - Reflective Journal

This week I continued lighting tests in Maya, as well as filling out my scenes with more foliage and adding sky dome lights. I have the option to add images to the sky dome, but may look into painting my own colour gradient instead.

Seeing how the glowing mushrooms worked in the scene helped me determine where to add more. For the night scene, each mushroom has a mesh light to match, as well as point lights to add more glow and help reflect the green off nearby objects. 

I also threw in a plane as a placeholder for water, and may look into using a different materal to help imitate the way light would reflect.

Fig. 1: Spence, 2023. Night Scene Render

Looking at my day scene (fig. 2), it was looking too blue, leaning towards early morning or dusk. I played with intensifying the orange/yellow directional light, before adding a pink directional light to imitate the colours in my paint over from my previous post (fig. 3).

Fig. 2: Spence, 2023. Day Scene Render

Fig. 3: Spence, 2023. Day Scene Render with Pink Light

The pink light added more warmth and improved the scene's overall lighting.

As seen in fig.1 and fig.2, I tried adding a sphere with mesh light in to act as a moon, but found it troublesome to work out, as for some reason it behaved differently to the mesh lights I'd applied to the mushrooms. The light would stay visible in the day scene (fig.2), despite being on the hidden layer with the rest of the night lights, and the mesh light would have no effect, regardless of intensity or exposure. If time allows, I may work through more tutorials to make this work in my night scene renders.

Fig. 4: Spence, 2023. Fog Tests in Maya

I briefly experimented with adding fog to my scene, which I like the look and atmosphere of. I would like to use fog in my final renders and painting, so will do more work into experimenting with it.

Another reason to add fog would be to improve the lighting and not have the entire scene be too dark, the same reason for which I have a blue sky dome and not black. In films such as Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), the night scenes have a blue overlay (fig.5), as these scenes were filmed during daylight in order to maintain good lighting, then made to appear as night time in editting. 

Fig. 5: Buchanan, 2020. Mad Max: Fury Road Night Scene

Other night scenes in films like Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (2001) and Ghost (1990). The scene in fig.6 from Harry Potter uses a blue tint, as well as fog which reflects what is supposedly moonlight. The lamp also creates a "hard" light, that brightly lights subjects close to it, but diffuses on subjects further away, creating the illusion of surrounding darkness -- this is a technique I'm attempting to replicate in my own night scene with the glowing mushrooms.

In Ghost, outdoor night scenes are seemingly always wet, as the moisture reflects light, adding more contrast and bounce light. 

Fig. 6: Paar, 2018. Harry Potter Night Scene

I followed some YouTube tutorials by Academic Phoenix Plus on adding fog to Arnold renders. Using the aiAtmosphereVolume and a spotlight, I tested lighting a plane and cube, changing the cone size of the spotlight, harshness of the edges, etc.

Fig. 7: Spence, 2023. Fog + Spotlight Test

Fig. 8: Spence, 2023. Fog + Spotlight Test (2)

After these tests I applied the fog to my night scene, and added a spotlight in to imitate moonlight with some minor "god rays".

Fig. 9: Spence, 2023. Fog in Night Scene

Fig. 10: Spence, 2023. Adding Spotlight and Trees

For the day scene, I started by filling out the scene background more and changing the lighting slightly - mainly small changes in intensity and changing the skydome colour to have a more purple tone.

Fig. 11: Spence, 2023. Filling Day Scene

I also changed the water texture to a blinn, that reflected parts of the scene near the water. Adding an intense spotlight imitated an offscreen sunset, and putting fog in the distant trees created an idea of approaching darkness/nightfall.

Fig. 12: Spence, 2023. Sunset Light and Fog

I also changed the depth of field in both day and night scenes and tried to keep a middle area of focus to draw the eye.

Fig. 13: Spence, 2023. Night Scene with DOF

Fig. 14: Spence, 2023. Night Scene Comparison with Early Render

Next week my plan to draft camera movement in my scenes and make headway with the paintings.

References:

Images:

Figure 1. SPENCE, Nel. Night Scene Render. Private Collection: Nel Spence

Figure 2. SPENCE, Nel. Day Scene Render. Private Collection: Nel Spence

Figure 3. SPENCE, Nel. Day Scene Render with Pink Light. Private Collection: Nel Spence

Figure 4. SPENCE, Nel. Fog Tests in Maya. Private Collection: Nel Spence

Figure 5. BUCHANAN, Kyle. 2020. Mad Max: Fury Road Night Scene. The New York Times [online]. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/12/movies/mad-max-fury-road-oral-history.html [Accessed on: 01/03/2023]

Figure 6. PAAR, Morgan. 2018. Harry Potter Night Scene. Videomaker [online]. Available at: https://www.videomaker.com/light-the-night-how-to-light-a-realistic-night-scene/ [Accessed on: 28/02/2023]

Figure 7. SPENCE, Nel. Fog + Spotlight Test. Private Collection: Nel Spence

Figure 8. SPENCE, Nel. Fog + Spotlight Test (2). Private Collection: Nel Spence

Figure 9. SPENCE, Nel. Fog in Night Scene. Private Collection: Nel Spence

Figure 10. SPENCE, Nel. Adding Spotlight and Trees. Private Collection: Nel Spence

Figure 11. SPENCE, Nel. Filling Day Scene. Private Collection: Nel Spence

Figure 12. SPENCE, Nel. Sunset Light and Fog. Private Collection: Nel Spence

Figure 13. SPENCE, Nel. Night Scene with DOF. Private Collection: Nel Spence

Figure 14. SPENCE, Nel. Night Scene Comparison with Early Render. Private Collection: Nel Spence