Here we are for the second workshop day at the AcademyDay#1; today we’re starting early because everybody has already registered and has their badge!
Advanced lighting by Gianpiero
Gianpiero opens the workshop talking about the difference between the monitor gamma (2,2) and the default gamma of 3dsMax (1.0) and on how to start working in a linear way with the Linear Worflow (LWF). This means not to loose information in the image because in the process by passing from one gamma to another one results in color compression.
If we set the gamma value to 2,2 in the options GAMMA & LUT in 3DSMAX, the programm handle in different way the colors compresisng the black tones and moving the midtones from 128, 128, 128 to 55, 55, 55. We can find the new rgb value with the following formula: (oldRGBvalue^2,2)*255.
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Another important difference is to save the images as .exr o .hdr instead of .tiff o .jpg because the latter ones are clamped to a maximum value of 1. This means that the lighting information that can be saved in the file for a later regulation are cancelled.
On the Color mapping panel in Và-Ray you must set the color mapping on linear, gamma 2,2 and tick both affect background and affect colors. By enabling the V-Ray Framebuffer, we can use a series of tools to understand if our scene is correctly exposed, for example the “pixel information” with the Color value(float). This one tell us is the pixels taken into consideration in the image are overexposed (higher than 1).
To find the correct exposure values, there are some established values to choose the shutter speed and f-numbers, accoridng to the lighting we have created.
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To start lighting , let’s put a daylight system. We insert the V-RaySun as sun node and the V-Ray Sky as sky node. In the daylight system setup choose one location, for example Venice at 4 pm on August 21. The sun will automatically redirect. Let’s put the V-Ray Camera with the values previously found. Remove the vignetting (we can add it later with photoshop) and set the white balance to neutral because we’ll manage the lighting color later on.
Let’s try to improve the lighting with a hdri we like and that can be similar to the present render- Put the hdri in the domelight. The render will be different from the other one because the power of the hdri is different from the on of V-RaySun and V-Ray Sky.
Light the scene again with V-raySun + V-RaySky and do an override of the camera fov to 360 setting it like sphere. Remove the tick form the Exposure parameter on the V-Ray camera and render. Save the file in .hdr and open it in hdrShop. Now we can compare the sun and sky parameters between our basic lighting and the new hdri. For example the V-RaySun value in float is 1.110.000 while our hdri is 20. The same for the sky, the V-RaySky has a value of 30 while the hdri sky is 0.1 on average. We should now open the hdri and increase the sun and sky exposure to get to the values of our V-RaySun + V-RaySky. With the formula log(sunHDR/VraySun^2), we know how much to increase the sun exposure in photoshop.
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Wacom by Claudio Marconato
Claudio Marconato from Color Connection is our “Wacom man” today! To sum up, Claudio shot all the amazing Wacom products and explain how to correctly set the integrated software to work smoothly.
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GCedizioni by Gabriele Congiu
Gabriele Congiu, editor and Italian author of tecnical books authorised by Autodesk, presents his new works on Autocad 2010-2011 amd show how the program can render scenes with a good quality level without any difficulty. GCedizioni is certified by Autodesk ad Autodesk Authorized Publisher. His works are different according to the video content use together with written contents helping the reader to understand the various methods.
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Photography lesson by Piero Mazzoli
Piero presents some examples of commercial works to have a look at many interesting aspects on photography, composition, color theory, lighting and reflex cameras. The photography workshop was really successful and for sure will be available also at the AcademyDay#2 with new topics. Amazing Piero!