The final project for the lighting class that I took at SFSU was to do either the stage or the kitchen. I felt that I had time, and I was curious about what challenges that each project had to offer, so I decided to do both. Actually, I created the kona sunset turtle scene as a possible alternative for the final, which I busted out in a personal record of 3 days.

Kitchen

Low key, 2 lights

mental ray

final gather

Stage

Kona Sunset Turtle

Kitchen

Refference image

This is a picture of our cat Squishy(aka Bashtette) watching the sun set. The window that she is sitting next to is double pained with a gas in it that gives the room a green hue, which doesn't really show alot in the photo but shows up considerably in the low key, 2 lights image

Low key, 2 lights

This scene lit with just a volume light and a point light, which are both centered above the sink looks like it has a 3rd cool light coming from the floor like the fridge light is on but that is an accedent from the occlusion layer that was made with out a floor plane.

OOPS no floor in the occlusion layer, sort of defeats one of the purposes of having the layer which is to help ground things.

volume light with the Squishy picture in the color attribute

offset filter at .01 to blure shadows and colors.

point light just in front of the sun to cast some pink and spot light in hood over stove.

lighting with point and volume on, this image was compsited with the occlusion layer to make the first one in the series

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Diving into mental ray

Here Using a Devebec HDRI light ball with final gather to light the scene. This scene also has some lights that I had put in earlier. I need to adjust them a bit too, you can see big photons that need some adjustment.

here still trying to dial in the mental ray settings, some of these renders take about a half hour at this size, so tweeking a few adjustments can take a long time.

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Photoshop and After Effects

room fill and rim on fruit.

key

room rim

had to render peach fuzz with maya software.

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this image of my cat Squishy sets the time of day around sun set.

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Stage

The stage was another class project. The Andy model was made by John Doublestein. I did the lighting for this scene. First I went to SRJC's theater department and talked to the theater lighting pro's there. They were very helpful and told me about how the back screen is used to create differet skys, and the side panels are used to hide things.

key light is the center stage light

this is actually a bad occlusion layer, i had to do it again.

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blue fill from top and 3 colored lights on white screen in back. The back panel is white so that different colored lights can be used on it to make different colored skys for plays. All of the curtains behind the front show curtain are usually black and used to hide things on stage, unless it is a trade show or something where you might put banners on these curtains

normals map. I probably wouldn't want the middle plane in the normals layer either.

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Key

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Kona Sunset Turtle