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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

cinematography software

Zakaree Sandberg

Zakaree Sandberg

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Is there any lighting program, where you can design lighting in a scene with whatever lights your thinking, and get estimated ratios, stops.. so on?

so when you get on set your pretty much already set up with what you need and where to place it?
 
There are probably quite a few.
I happen to have 3dsmax installed, but its not a cheap solution, but with it comes a light rig environment that works with inverse square laws and IES profiles. You can setup any situation and work with that.
In fact that what we do when relightning specific scenes for cg/footage works.
 
looks to complex.. im really just looking for a 2d environment to work in.. put a light somewhere.. then measure my light from a specific distance.. straight on, through diffusion, bounced off different materials.. so on

mostly to figure out exactly what lights ill need to order rather than going in blind or off my own hunch
 
Problem is, light simulation will always be complex - otherwise the solution becomes more misleading than anything else. What is the effect of one diffusion fabric vs. another? How much smoke is in the room, how shiny is the wallpaper? In real life light bounces around on some many surfaces and in so many ways it really is a very tricky thing to simulate, even if the lights themselves were well-reproduced by some user-friendly software.

We use Max and e-on Vue sometimes, but to simulate results in a way that does not leave some actually very important element out is very time consuming, and, in my opinion, not often worth it unless the set designer has already created a detailed 3D view in some CAD app.
 
Working with light bounces Id say you need to end up with a GI solution, especially if you want secondary bounces and fabrics.
That said, it is possible to hire a lowbandwidth ( cost ) person that can generate all the lights you can come up with from rentals, have them in a template scene you can move around and adjust for your liking based on 2d floor plans you send over.
It can be done very fast.
However you wont be able to do it yourself and it would cost a nickle for each shot.
But that road gives you a ton of possibilities.

If this wont work you might want to look for alternative Physical light bounce rendering stups with a range of standard lights and possibility to build your own.
Either way I doubt there is some one-click solutions out there. But you never know :)
Hope someone else knows some solution that is easier than my surgestions. ( but I doubt it )

Do note if you got several shots in any given set, it will be faster and cost less to work through the various light ideas as the set then already has been build for first shot, and on that note, you dont need hyper detailed models to get a pritty good idea.
Some Engineer applications run with lux outputs for each foot in qubic space and RGB on top in analyse sequences. Might look into that..
 
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I was looking at the link, looks good for composition and such.
I would hesitate to count on the light rig though as it seems realy crude and not very accurate. But if it can work with global illumination it would be worth it on that account, else just for the other deals.

"
Question: How do I adjust the Ambient and Fill Lighting settings?​

  1. In the Object Library, click the "Lights" tab. The Lighting Control panel appears, and so do slider controls for Ambient and Fill light.​
  2. In both cases, simply drag the slider left to decrease the illumination, and right to increase it.​
Remember that ambient and fill lights do not cause shadows; also, because some ambient lighting is almost always present in a scene, even reducing both sources to zero will not result in a total blackout of your set ."


That is what they write, and I havent tried it but it seems realy ghetto first hand and not predictable at all.
Again, its assumptions from reading.

*downloading demo for inspection*
 
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I maintain that the problem is creating a sufficiently accurate representation of the set - that is enormously complex and time consuming, no matter what. Do you really want to measure every set element and accurately model it, because if its not accurate, what is the point?

Every type of real-world surface has a different amount/quality of reflectivity and no 3D app actually simulates reality - these were designed to look as real as possible, not BE as real as possible, and they contains myriad cheats to do their magic (for example most radiosity solutions will only bounce light once, at most twice, not infinitely as is the case in the real world.)

How would you measure the reflexivity of the fabric on an antique couch? Get it wrong and your simulation is wrong. What about your actor wanting to lean forward more than you thought, and refusing to play the scene differently? Suddenly all that simulation time and money is worthless as you must improvise anyway.

Anything being in any way different throws off your solution- are the extras as tall as you guessed? Has the wardrobe or hair changed, maybe an actor has more or less of a tan... and these software wrongly assume perfect consistency, for example that all 1.2 HMIs are going to be alike 100% of the time, whereas in the real world, even more so for tungsten sources, bulb age, power quality and other factors make that completely untrue.

In other words, a software sim will not provide you with any useful information different from what any experienced D.P. should be able to "see" in his or her head, just thinking about it, no computer required.
 
I would be all over something that combined 3d previz capability with the accurate lighting previz Zackaree is looking for!
 
Rob Ruffo said:
I maintain that the problem is creating a sufficiently accurate representation of the set - that is enormously complex and time consuming, no matter what. Do you really want to measure every set element and accurately model it, because if its not accurate, what is the point?
Click to expand...

Rob, I totally get what you're saying. If you could do a rough but decent previz, including lighting, that could be tweaked on set, it could still save time/money/energy...?
 
using "unbiased" aproaches gives you infinte bounces, so thats solved.
I get the impression that Zakaree Sandberg is looking for a rough quick deal, and this program that kwan linked might be good enoug despite the potential obvious lacks regarding lightning.

Regarding fabrics you can nail close to 90+% of a real situation if you know what you are doing, fabrics only deliver a small portion of inacurracy.
You can always find more details that could potentially break a shot as beeing 100% reliable. But for rough realy good estimates I think its a game you can slove sufficiently provided there is a budget for that kind of stuff.
 
Robert Frank said:
I would be all over something that combined 3d previz capability with the accurate lighting previz Zackaree is looking for!
Click to expand...

You can build this in forexample 3dsmax and render with iray near instantly, provided you got the models/shaders done. on set.
 
I have Frameforge3D Pro and it does a very good job of Previz as you are using fairly accurate lens information, you can build your sets to spec, and yes you can add lighting. As long as you don't expect too much from the lighting features, it can be somewhat helpful to know where you can put lights, that sort of thing. But Rob is very accurate that to simulate all of this ahead of time with extreme accuracy would be nearly impossible and not always worth the effort. But to get ballparks, there are solutions. Frameforge offers you good storyboarding, decent tweening, script importing, link to image editor, object relationships, etc., etc., etc.

Do be prepared to spend a few days getting used to it. There's a bit of a learning curve to do the more complex stuff. Also, get the controller. Makes life much easier.
 
Thanks for the feedback folks. I'm looking for decent previz, but not highly concerned about being 100% accurate. The idea is to be able to get as much pre-production planning done with good bang-for-buck results.

Zackaree, I hope I'm not hijacking your thread and that this is helpful to you also.
 
I am all for previz (!)

... i´d say, building the previz lighintg look to our liking and knowing from experience (or experimental testing) what to use on set to make it happen is the way to go .... (since there is an endless combination of many things determining how much light ends up in the raw ... ;-)
 
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