rubitrightintomyeyes:

le-mec:

If you want to get good at lighting, I can recommend no better practice than ANIMATED lighting. Once you understand the basic ground rules, lighting animation turns into a simple task that just takes a lot of brute force to complete.

So the first image is just me taking that pillar and showing how the lighting creeps as the light comes forward. The basic ground rule is: if the surface is facing the light, then it should be lit. Otherwise, it should be in shadow.

The second image shows where I’m applying a “proximity” rule. That means that if the light is too far away from the surface, it stays in shadow. So in this case, I take the pillar lightblob and erase the bits that are further from the light.

The third pass is pretty much those same two rules being applied to all the other surfaces with very very rudimentary shadow casting.

It certainly does get kind of tiring, but patience is a skill that gets better and better the more you stretch it.

There is so much great work and so many helpful tutorials at this person’s blog.