Q&A | Matching real-world lighting references

Q&A SOLUTIONS / FIXES / ADVICE

QUESTION OF
THE MONTH
Submitted by
John Spyder,
via email

3DS MAX

“How can I light a CG model

to match a real environment?”
This issue’s solution is supplied by the UK-based author and help out. The key task during scouting is to note down the positions
VFX animator Pete Draper. More of Pete’s tutorials can be of lights and objects in the environment in relation to one another,
FACTFILE found at www.xenomorphic.co.uk, his personal website and determine if there will be any problems later on. If this is the
FOR first time you have done this, don’t bite off more than you can chew.
3ds Max his question relates to one of the fundamental Try to avoid having a lot of things in shot that you will only have to
DIFFICULTY
Advanced

TIME TAKEN
1-2 days (including
location recce and shoot)

ON THE CD
• Full-sized screenshots
• Reference photos
• 3ds Max scenes
• Mech model, courtesy
www.3D-Palace.com
ALSO REQUIRED
HDR Shop (free from
www.hdrshop.com),
Photoshop
T challenges of VFX lighting: integrating a CG object
directly within a real-world backplate. In this Q&A,
we will explore the process of collecting data on a
live shoot – in this case, of an underground car park – then using this
data to reconstruct the environment in 3D and to light a model of a
virtual object (a giant mech robot) so that it matches the real
location exactly. The walkthrough assumes that you are already
familiar with 3ds Max and basic visual effects concepts, so if you’re
a beginner, try the other tutorials in the magazine first.
Not all of the considerations discussed here – such as whether
the environment is interior or exterior, or whether it’s day or night –
will apply to your own shoots. The basic rules, however, always hold
true: scout the location during daylight hours; take as many
measurements as you can; and call in as many people as possible to
mask out later on; and stick to open spaces, so you won’t have to
deal with a lot of objects receiving shadows from your CG model.
If you can, visit the location at the appropriate time of day
beforehand, so you can see if there are any contributing factors –
such as drunks or joyriders – that will make your life more difficult
when it comes to shooting. On the day, you really want to get in, do
the shoot right first time within controlled conditions and get out.
The next step is to bring all of the information you’ve recorded
into 3ds Max. If you’ve taken down decent notes, you should be able
to recreate a basic to-scale replica of the real environment that your
CG object can interact with. You will then be able to position your
CG camera in exactly the right place, set up virtual lights to match
the real ones, and drop in your CG model at the correct location.
Easy, eh? Let’s give it a go …

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STAGE ONE | The location shoot
First of all, you need to source a location for your
01 shoot. When you do this, you need to consider its
aesthetics at all times of the day, and see if you can
physically get the shot that you want well in advance. You
really need controllable conditions, so the light and objects in
shot do not change.
For the shoot itself, try to rope in as many people as
04 possible to help you out – with the promise of drinks
afterwards. You need to get in and get out as fast as
you can. Take any final measurements that you couldn’t
collect earlier, while the location was busy. For best results,
it’s advisable to use a digital SLR camera, so that you can
shoot and review pictures as quickly as possible.
Next, replace the white ball with a chrome one, and
07 shoot it in exactly the same position, first from a
distance (so that you can match its position in the 3D
environment), and then in close up. This will allow you to set
up reflections on the surface of your CG object so that they
match those of a reflective object in the real environment.
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Matching real-world lighting references | Q&A
Once you have found your location, take enough
02 measurements to allow you to recreate it in CG later
on. Think outside the box: in the car park, many of
the structures are mass-produced, so most of their
measurements (for example, the pillar bases and the
distances between them) are identical. Get as many
measurements as you can during the day before the shoot.
Ensure that the position of the camera is noted and
05 measured in-scene, and record the height of its CCD
above the ground. When taking the photos, make
sure that all variable features (such as shutter speed, ISO and
focus) are locked. If possible, take the pictures with a remote
or use the camera’s timer so that you don’t nudge it when
pressing the shutter. First, take your wide backplate shot.
The close-up of the ball is the key to this process,
08 since you will encase your 3D scene with an
unwrapped version of the image, to give the CG
objects something to reflect. If you can’t zoom in enough to
fill the frame, tentatively move the camera forward and zoom
in: you are trying to reduce your own reflection in the image.
By the end of the recce, you should have enough
03 information and taken enough notes to be able to
faithfully reconstruct at least the basics of the
environment. Because you have done this during the day, you
can always rough out the scene before the night shoot, which
will flag up any measurements you may have missed.
Next, take reference shots from exactly the same
06 location, using the same camera settings. First, take
a photo of a white ball (see Step 9) in the position
your CG object will eventually be located. You can set up a CG
version of this ball in your 3D version of the environment to
check that its lighting matches the photo exactly. (We won’t
do so in this Q&A, but it’s good practice to collect the data.)
Finally, measure the height of the pole each ball sits
09 on, so this can be recreated in 3D. The balls
themselves are quite easy to obtain – chrome ones
can be obtained from garden centres (normally called ‘gazing
balls’), and come with a hole in the base for fitting. The ‘white’
▲
ball is a large Christmas ornament, spray-painted 20% grey.
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 Q&A | Matching real-world lighting references
STAGE TWO | Creating the virtual environment
Use your measurements to mock up a simple 3D
10 version of the environment. We’ve done this for you,
so open carpark_lighting_start.max from the CD.
We’ve assigned a Matte/Shadow material to the entire scene,
and set each object (apart from the lights) to receive shadows,
but not to cast them. The remaining steps also rely on our
own data, but you can copy settings from the screenshots.
To simulate accurate reflections on the CG objects in
13 the scene, bring the close up of the reflective ball
into Photoshop. Using the Elliptical Marquee tool,
drag out from the middle and select the entire ball. Select
Edit > Copy, then go to File > New and accept the settings.
Finally, on a black background, paste the cut-out ball into the
new file. Save out a flattened version of this new image.
Therefore, you need to add the Latitude/Longitude
16 reflection map into the Environment slot of a Raytrace
map located within a material assigned to an object in
the scene. To make life easier later on, you can just instance
this Raytrace map throughout your scene’s materials as
required, in case you need to tweak settings such as brightness
and blurriness later.
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TDW83.qa_lead 072
The next task is to create the virtual camera. You
11 may need to convert the lens values to 35mm
equivalents to dial them into 3ds Max. Use Show
Safe Frame to ensure the render output is the same size as
the viewport image. Use your measurements to position the
virtual camera at the same point in the scene as the real one,
and tweak it until the 3D scene aligns with the backplate.
Open HDR Shop (free from www.hdrshop.com) or
14 any other software that allows for spherical to
panoramic distortion. Load in the cut-out of the ball
you just saved, and accept any settings. Next, select Image >
Panorama > Panoramic Transformations. In the resulting
panel, tell the software the source and destination types,
namely Mirrored Ball and Latitude/Longitude respectively.
One task you can complete now is to clamp off the
17 colours of the map and boost its white value, by
amending the map’s Output curve as shown above.
This is so any reduced-intensity reflections (such as those
using Falloff maps or created by reducing the value of the
reflection in the material’s root parameters) still have white
highlights. These are, in fact, reflected specular highlights.
Bear in mind that you are mainly using the 3D
12 versions of the background objects to receive
shadows; masking out CG objects behind pillars will
take additional care and attention. Next, create a virtual
representation of your chrome ball in situ according to your
measurements: again, this should line up with the backplate
as illustrated in the screenshot above.
Save the resulting panoramic image as a bitmap,
15 ready to load back into 3ds Max. For now, you are
only going to be rendering out the scene in a single
pass (you would use more than one pass in real visual effects
work), so you need the background to render as well as the
CG mech. Additionally, you need to reflect adjacent CG objects
in the scene that you will introduce later on …
To test out the reflections, add a basic
18 reflective object to the scene. Normally, this would
be a CG version of the chrome ball. However, as the
white car is more prominent in the backplate, we have
designed a basic material that mimics white spray paint and
assigned it to a teapot primitive (used because it contains
virtually every type of surface). Now for the lighting …
29/8/06 11:04:24

STAGE THREE | Lighting the scene
The first set of lights to establish should be the key
19 light or lights in the real environment. Here, these
are the lights along the ceiling. As you are simulating
an area lit with standard lights, use several instances of a
single light to create the impression of an area light shadow.
First, position a single light, then instance it to create the
remaining lights in the scene, as shown in the image above.
The final set of lights to establish are general
22 attenuated fill lights, which we have positioned
above the ceiling and beneath the floor so that
there is some ‘bounced’ light in darker areas. As these are
subtle low-intensity lights, designed purely to bring out areas
of illumination from secondary or tertiary bounced lighting,
they need not cast any shadows.
With the final test render complete using your
23 stand-in teapot, replace the object with the mech
model (provided by www.3D-Palace.com). Merge
(or XRef) in Dummy_ATMT and its child objects from the
3dpalace_atmt_mech.max file on the CD. Using the Align tool,
reposition the dummy object to the position of the teapot,
and re-scale the dummy so that the mech fits in the car park.
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Matching real-world lighting references | Q&A
With the lights in situ, tweak their settings. Because
20 there are CG objects close to them, you need the
illumination to behave realistically, so use Inverse
Square decay. Shadows should be diffused because of the
light type, which will hide banding created by overlaid shadow
maps: this is done by increasing the shadow’s Sample Range.
The lights’ colour is derived by point-sampling the backplate.
To see all of the final settings, load carpark_
24 lighting_finished.max from the CD. The final image
has a few additional instances of the mech scattered
throughout it. These are positioned carefully with respect to
the key lights for two reasons: illumination and reflection.
Because the reflection image you shot earlier was designed
to be used at a single position in the scene, it won’t work at
The next set of lights should supplement the key
21 lights. If there aren’t any in the real environment,
concentrate on setting up secondary lighting. In
the final scene file on the CD, we’ve set up the next brightest
objects in the scene: the pillars. There are several low-intensity
lights with diffused shadows, attenuated and with no specular
highlights. Each light’s colour is sampled from the backplate.
Contact us | Send your Q&A questions to 3dw.qanda@futurenet.co.uk
other locations – particularly if the objects present in the
scene and the reflections differ visibly. Ideally, you should
shoot additional reflection references for each CG object at
the position it will appear in the scene, especially if you’re
planning to tuck it behind background geometry. The pillars
won’t be reflected correctly in the shiny surfaces of a mech
unless you have the corresponding reflection image. ●
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