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Thanks Mike, great explanation video! I learned a lot.

Keep up the good work.

Q! Berlin

Great stuff Mike, thanks for this.





and the answer to life, the universe and everything is... 242

Thanks Mike, very informative, but I have one question. I love the calibration method, but can you quickly explain what kind of emitter you use to calibrate? Do you use the magic 242 RGB in the color, with an appropriate wattage?

Also, you mentioned calibrating every scene as a separate entity. However, what if you have a scene that is lit with only colored light sources? Do you first calibrate with purely white emitters to get the materials right, and then change the emitters to the intended colors after calibration? Thanks again.

Emitter values are not subject to reflectivity limits... you can use any value/wattage you want. But whatever you use, that's what you calibrate to and must not alter it.

No matter what your final scene lighting is, ALWAYS build materials in a perfectly neutral, revealing environment. If it works there, it will work anywhere.

_Mike

I also found the video very helpful. Thank you very much!

Holger

This is great!

5 minutes of video, can speak so much clearer than 100 pages of text.

Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything...

"242"

Hallo Mike

thanks for your wonderful video. I’m sorry but I’m in the “non "american/english" spoken” group and I missed something.
I’m using meter units:
1 what’s groundplane dimensions?
2 what’s sphere diameter?
3 black/white map: side dimensions are standard or correlate to sphere diameter to maintain reflection aspect ratio?

Basically have I to built a standard scene like Standard Material Scene for Material Gallery?

Thanks again.

Viktor Havlicek
VM Design – Italy
___________________
Laudetur Jesus Christus

Viktor Havlicek wrote:Hallo Mike

thanks for your wonderful video. I’m sorry but I’m in the “non "american/english" spoken” group and I missed something.
I’m using meter units:
1 what’s groundplane dimensions?
2 what’s sphere diameter?
3 black/white map: side dimensions are standard or correlate to sphere diameter to maintain reflection aspect ratio?

Basically have I to built a standard scene like Standard Material Scene for Material Gallery?

Thanks again.

Viktor Havlicek
VM Design – Italy
___________________
Laudetur Jesus Christus

I presume the size of the objects doesn't matter as long as the scale of the scene is correct and the emmiters are of suitable values to illuminate the scene.

That's correct.. size and scale make no difference whatsoever.

_Mike

it's just all good... *hehe*

nice vids, Mike ! thanks !

* * *

OT:
Mike, could You tell us about Your education background ?

what could You recommend to get deeper into graphics/film ? i'd like to learn more about similar «realworld-to-cg optimizations», but normal cg handbooks don't have them very detailed.

My CG education? None formal, actually. It started just as a hobby, playing around with FormZ and ElectricImage. But to get deeper into it, what I did was try and recreate shots I liked from films, and I started subscribing to CineFex, and the first online forums for this stuff, and just talking, asking a billion questions, etc. Then when I started actually doing it professionally, I just hung around better guys and asked how they did stuff.

The most important thing by far, though, towards truly getting better is actively seeking out criticism and taking it. You have to remain objective about your work, and this is something that I see about 99% of people utterly failing at. If your goal is to produce good work, then you the person - your ego, your feelings, etc - must take a distant back seat. If you're looking for someone to stroke you all the time for your work, you'll find it, and probably won't get better for it. That's my #1 piece of advice for anyone (for anything, actually). The best feeling of pride in the world is knowing you're actually good at what you do, because you could completely listen when you weren't.

_Mike

Very informative tutorial Mike. Big thanks!

One question: Before you start the calibration of your scene, should you also make sure you have a pre-determined f-stop and focal distance? I'm thinking that these have an effect on the lighting as well. I noticed that you were zooming in an out quite a bit during the demo, and didn't appear to be using a camera - just perspective view rendering.

Maya's perspective view camera is a camera like any other one, it just doesn't have a separate interest node. But nah, the f-stop thing doesn't have that big an impact, unless you're using such extreme values and proximity to objects that you're actually vignetting yourself into some false reading. But oddly enough, during calibration you'd probably be compensating for that, too. I should've mentioned that the camera settings for the demo were Maya's Maxwell default, which is f-stop 5.6, 35mm lens with 36x24mm filmback.

_Mike

Groovy. Thanks!

Mike,

I have already said it, but I need to say it again. Thanks for this video!!

I learned a lot from your video. Many thanks, for your devotion of time and care in this opportunity to learn.