Reddit reviews Light for Visual Artists: Understanding & Using Light in Art & Design

The bad news: There are mountains of legal issues and risks an artist takes on with sharing that kind of information. Also there are many of variables from company to company, project to project: rendering package involved, in house tools, required techniques involved, client demands, time/money resources, final look goal, delivery specs, etc. Even if someone could provide production scripts, these factors make it an ineffective and possibly detrimental approach to learning.

The good news: You can start learning in much more effective ways that will actually prep you better for production! I agree with Bootylicious overall, in that you're going to get the most from making your own projects and learning to problem solve them as you move forward and hit unforeseen hurdles. Doing is the biggest, the most challenging, and the most important part.

With that said, it's not always enough to just keep trying without being equipped with the proper knowledge, you'll eventually come up against issues you can't solve just by pushing without outside information. But it won't be specific scripts that get you through these times either. Core, software agnostic, concepts are going to push you through your biggest obstacles and help you learn to ask/answer critical questions:

What image do I have? What do I want it to be? What are my resources? What approaches do these 3 answers allow for?

Assume that every company, every client and every project you encounter is going to be totally different, so learning to answer these will help make you a flexible, comp-rock-star.

Make a project with as clear of a goal as you can and start there, when you get stuck, or as you go along in general, learn from software agnostic sources that focus on the skills and theory, over sources that focus on a specific program.


I've included a few book links below + happy comping!


https://www.amazon.com/VES-Handbook-Visual-Effects-Procedures/dp/0240825187/


https://www.amazon.com/Digital-Compositing-Film-Video-Production/dp/1138240370


https://www.amazon.com/Light-Visual-Artists-Understanding-Design/dp/185669660X/

Gurney is a must have, yes, but also check out Light for Visual Artists by Richard Yot. It really goes into the science of how and why light works the way it does under many different situations.

Hey, I'm a CG Lighting artist by trade, I'll let you know some good resources that have helped me.

As a lighter, your goal is things things, Setting the mood/atmosphere, Shaping (making sure you can make out forms of the scene), and Leading the eye (I feel like there is a fourth, but I can't think of it this morning lol)

Some good books to read:

Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter

Light for Visual Artists (hard book to find, but worth finding a copy)

Digital Lighting and Rendering(new edition coming out soon)

Great resources to start and help train your eye, studying films is the next step. Picking apart scenes to understand how and why they lit the scene the way they did, studying photography is a great place to look as well.

Also if you can afford it, TD-U has a fantastic online course from a couple of great instructors to help you on your way of understanding CG Lighting. If you can afford the class it will be a great place to start. I took the class last year and it was an AMAZING resource, I didn't know anything beyond the technical understanding of lighting, this course really helped me understand the artistic side of lighting. The instructors are great and very helpful.

anyways, hope that helps, if you have any questions feel free to message me.

Study lighting a bit, I still have very shitty lighting myself but this book helped: https://www.amazon.com/Light-Visual-Artists-Understanding-Design/dp/185669660X


As for Arnold courses, the best in-depth tutorial that helped me understand it was : https://inlifethrill.com/mastering-arnold-cinema-4d-bundle/

Depends, on what you want to do. Render interiors? products? Mograph? I did them all and I still suck at pretty much all of them :)

Two resources you need to read on color: http://www.amazon.com/Color-Light-Guide-Realist-Painter/dp/0740797719 and http://www.amazon.com/Light-Visual-Artists-Understanding-Design/dp/185669660X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1419319385&sr=1-1&keywords=light+for+visual+artists

Lots of illustrations and examples, very easy to understand and yet both are no more than 250 pages. I have both of these books and they are great! I would also look at Cubebrush and Ctrl+paint. You need to definitely focus on color theory as well.

Along with learning these, also check out Andrew Loomis' books (Google Save Loomis to find pdf of his books for free). And this one -- > http://www.amazon.com/Human-Anatomy-Artists-Andr%C3%81s-Szunyoghy/dp/3833162562/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1419319599&sr=1-4&keywords=andras+szunyoghy

But once your learn color theory and look at the resources I suggested, you will definitely improve on your coloring skills. Gurney's may be aimed at painters, but it's for everyone really. I can't give much advice since I'm learning color theory but these results have been very helpful.

Light for Visual Artists by Richard Yot. I like it more than Digital lighting and rendering, although that is great for learning the software side. "Light" Is more about light from an artistic stand point and less about the software implementation.

The earlier parts of the book are on his website http://www.itchy-animation.co.uk/light.htm
The book can be found here http://www.amazon.com/Light-Visual-Artists-Understanding-Design/dp/185669660X.