ASKING THE LEGENDS - LIGHTING ART

In this series, Kieran Goodson reveals what he learned from the most reputable artists in the industry, allowing us deep insight into their areas of expertise. In this Lighting Art edition, Kieran explores vital topics from composition to cinematography, film and movies to triple A titles and much more. You're guaranteed some pocket-sized wisdom to take home.

Introduction

Welcome back to my ‘Asking the Experts’ series, the series where I explore some of the hottest topics in game art with some of the most renowned and experienced environment, material and lighting artists in the business. They’ve reviewed their careers for us, unpacked production knowledge and shone light on essential workflows allowing us a look into what they do best - kinda like Top Trumps but we’re only focusing on their strongest skills and areas of expertise. If you missed the Environment Artist’s session, you can check that out here.

My name is Kieran Goodson and I’m a Junior Environment Artist at Rebellion. When I’m not that, I’m usually posting my articles, podcasts and rare portfolio pieces on ArtStation. You can also find me on Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn if you fancy following me there too.

Today, I’m going to be covering everything from lighting studies to cinematography, photons to photogrammetry and all the tips, tricks and volumetric ticks in between, without further ado, welcome to ‘Asking the Legends: Lighting Art’

LIGHTING ART IN A NUTSHELL

You think you know lighting until you meet a Lighting Artist. From the outside in, it seems pretty straightforward. Moving different lights around right, placing god rays, fog and atmospherics and perhaps some post-processing right? These are the obvious assumptions, and you’d be right, but you’d also be naive in thinking that’s the job in its entirety. In this article, I caught up with some legends of game art lighting and discovered that the skillset is much richer, and much deeper than you’d imagine. Today we’re starting with technical brainbox Brian LeLeux - LeLighting Artist at Rockstar Games.

Ground zero - what does a lighting artist do?

“There are different types of lighting artists that focus on specific areas, but overall a Lighting Artist is responsible for lighting environments, cinematics, and anything else that needs it (user interface, character selections, etc.) in a way that provides visibility, sets the tone, and guides the player, or eyes, to where they should go through the use of lights, color grading, FX, and post-processing.” 

What are the common misconceptions about lighting art?

“Lighting is so much more than just placing lights and moving sliders around. You're oftentimes trying to create a mood while simultaneously making the area gameplay-friendly and sometimes the two clash, especially as areas change in a production environment. There can be a lot of back and forth and a lot of tweaking of subtle elements.

Among those subtle elements could be all types of fog, lens flares, post effects, color grading, some particle effects, material tweaks... lighting artists tend to have control or influence over all of these. 

All of this while keeping it performant. You can achieve a look, but you also have to consider if the lighting could be simplified/cheaper. Generally speaking, the lighting artist(s) will be responsible for the lighting cost as well.”

What are the more technical aspects that Lighting Artists should understand in order to achieve the most realistic lighting setups?

“I think it depends on the two main workflows, with or without physical units. With physical units, it's a little more technical, but the setup is pretty straightforward since you're using values based around known, real world intensities that are measurable with cheap equipment. It's not absolutely required to get something realistic looking though, especially in a one-off environment with very specific lighting. 

Regardless of the method, I think realistic lighting is all about the ratio of direct to indirect lighting and balancing from exposure. It helps to get lighting ratios established before correcting the overall brightness through exposure, which maintains that ratio for the most part. Putting too much emphasis on a light's bounce can quickly throw off the lighting and look fake, while having an unnaturally high ratio of direct to indirect lighting(without auto-exposure) can look off as well. But the same can be said for adjusting exposure too much, if the ratio isn't there as a base, it'll stand out when the entire image adjusts. 

Besides the overall balance of lighting, realistic lighting has a lot of subtleties to it that you need to develop an eye for. Things like material response in direct and indirect lighting, the use(or abuse) of ambient occlusion, correct projections of local reflections to reduce obvious distortion or seams, direct specular from lights that match the light source(avoid the hideous specular orb from an area light source), and so on. I'm a huge fan of tone mapping curves with a highlight rolloff as well, as they tend to help avoid the ugly, CG crunched highlights usually seen from a simple gamma correction.

What are the more technical aspects that lighting artists should understand in order to achieve the most realistic lighting setups.”

If you want to see more technical lighting breakdowns then I highly suggest checking out Brian’s Twitter for more. It’s a goldmine.

What do you gain from relighting other people’s environments?

“With so many different environments available, you have the option of lighting in a style you may not normally do at a specific studio. It gives you the ability to branch out, try new things, and improve your overall skill set. Having access to so many environments gives new lighting artists something to get their feet wet with while building out a portfolio too.”

For environment and material artists alike, there seems to be quite a bit of stigma around using pre-existing assets and this had me thinking. Does that apply to Lighting Artists? Does it make sense to have the modelling, texturing and composition skills that an Environment Artist has if your primary skill set is lighting? There’s a particular Senior Environment Artist turned Lighting Artist turned Director that I thought I ought to reach out to on this. You may know him from his pixel mashing advice as a Polycount OG, but more likely you love and know him for his Polygon Academy channel - it’s now Environment Art Director at Counterplay Games, Tim Simpson.

THE JUMP FROM JUNIOR TO SENIOR

What advice would you have for wannabe Lighting Artists trying to market themselves for jobs?

“Don't feel the need to make everything in a scene yourself. 

There are a ton of great free example scenes from Epic and other scenes on the marketplace you can buy for 10-100 dollars. If you think about it, even spending 100 bucks on a scene that is going to save you hundreds of hours of production time is a no brainer! It will also help you stand out from the tons of other people sticking to just using the free content out there that is way more common. But of course work within your budget.

Just be aware that there are 100's of relightings of the common scenes out there already and a lot of them tend to look similar because the artists are just dropping that directional and skylight in there, doing a bake to get some nice Global Illumination going on and calling it a day. This is the most basic form of lighting! It can look great, but you want to show your creativity and ability to light interesting and unique scenes you would be handed on the job. Not every task is just using a basic exterior light rig setup. Showing a creative eye by doing changes to the level art in those example scenes to sell a totally new vibe and experience is going to be huge when it comes to standing out from the pack.

The biggest mistake I think I see at the moment is people switching to pursuing a Lighting Artist job because they think it will be less work or will be easier than getting a Character Artist or Environment Artist position. It is just as difficult to stand out from the pack as those other roles, and there tends to be a smaller group of lighters in a studio than larger team pods like Environment Art. Chasing the "easy route" rarely leads to success. If you want to be a Lighting Artist, do it because that’s the work you genuinely enjoy doing the most! It will show in your work and help you stand out from the crowd!”

Which lighting fundamentals are sharpened after years of experience?

“Being a Lighting Artist means you spend most of your time focused on the macro screen image - the overall presentation and look of the entire on-screen experience. 

This means you really need to develop high level composition and color theory skills. 

It is ironic that those two things are huge basics when it comes to making art, but most artists gloss over them once they get a bit of experience and focus too much on detail and the micro. If an image looks great if you blur your eyes and the composition and values still read well, chances are when it’s presented clearly it will still look great. The skills of leading the player’s eyes is so important. You want to deliver the 2-3 key pieces of information that the player needs moment-to-moment to help obscure and drop the non-essential info into the background.

Another huge skill that will be sharpened is learning how to show the form of 3D geometry, both in environments and characters a lot better. You will learn how to highlight the planes on a characters face, pop enemies off the background using smart placement of rim lights in the environment etc. It is easy to quickly flatten an environment with very uniform lighting, so developing an eye for form using light and shadow is critical.”

Speaking of standing out from the background, it’s easier now to directly compare your work to those of others, for better or for worse. That’s a whole other can of worms to open up at a different time. But for entry-level artists looking to grow, what can we learn from Senior and Lead lighters?

What separates the work of an expert Lighting Artist from the work of a Junior?

“The main difference I constantly see in a Junior vs Senior Lighting Artist's work is the blend of art and level design. A Junior Lighting Artist is usually 100% focused on just creating a nice looking image, this can lead to awesome results, but you absolutely have to take gameplay and player navigation into account. You can have the moodiest scene in the world, but if the player has no idea where to go or what to be looking at for gameplay it's not good game lighting.

A Senior Lighting Artist and some of the best Lighting Artists in the industry can seamlessly hide the fact they are guiding the player and leading them through the world, conveying information in combat arenas etc. If you don't notice it, that is the sign of a true pro. Naughty Dog's games are great examples of this. Their composition and lighting for almost every level is super on point - you just know where to go and where to look, without having to think about it or get lost.

A lot of Senior Lighting Artists will also spend time placing additional bounce lights and subtle specular reflection lights to make materials pop and balance the image nicely. A big mistake Juniors make is to just toss in a directional light, skylight, get a good looking angle for the light and then just consider it done. Usually that will get you 50-60% of the way to where you could push the lighting with additional fake invisible rim, fill and bounce lights to enhance the base lighting.

There is a big difference between a pretty picture, still image, portfolio shot and a fully interactive space you are walking through and fighting in as a player that feels good. The best lighting helps to seamlessly accent both the level art and level design.”

As every artist knows, creating better looking images is hard work and doesn’t come without its own challenges. In fact, I already regret phrasing it like that because as a goal “create better looking images'' is ridiculous to aim at. What does ‘better’ mean? ‘Better looking’ to who? Should you even be worrying about still images when you’re lighting 3D characters or environments- is video a better format? I suspect the answer to any of those questions involve a rigorous journey of self-learning, iterative feedback and tripping up every step of the way. Learning what NOT to do is often the best way to go and that wisdom comes best distilled after years and years of experience.

ESSENTIAL SKILLS

With Star Wars: The Old Republic, Bioshock Infinite and 2019’s hit Call of Duty: Modern Warfare under his belt, Andrew Prince is more than qualified to tell us more.

Which mistakes do less experienced Lighting Artists usually make?

“Usually what I will notice is they will over light a scene. They will put lights on every doorway or turn on every light fixture. They will also extend their light radius out as far as possible and they won’t know how to properly use static lights. This means their maps will have an abundance of dynamic lights and the performance of their scene will be horrible. You have to be wise where you place lights. You will want areas of rest and you will want your scene to be as efficient as possible. This UE4 debug mode is called Light Complexity. It is found under "Optimization Viewmodes.”

With that in mind, what are three skills Lighting Artists MUST have and why are they essential to the job?

1. Know color theory.

“Complementary colors, analogous colors, how different colors can change moods and draw the player’s eye towards a specific area. For instance, if you have an overcast scene and you want to draw the player to a specific doorway, how can you use color to do this? An overcast scene would more than likely be on the cool side of the color wheel, so I would use a complementary, warm color in or by a doorway to do so. This in turn would catch the players eye and draw the player towards this area.”

2. Know the basics of light

“You should know the basics of light and how it works in the real world. How does light bounce around a scene? How does light interact with different materials? What do shadows look like at different times of the day? What is atmospheric perspective? On the job, you might be asked to make sure the contrast ratio between your light and shadows is not too high. If your contrast ratio is too high the players can simply hide in a shadow as these areas will be really dark.”

3. Be a good photographer

“Know how ISO, aperture, shutter speed and exposure works. As a Lighting Artist you might be called upon to tune Depth of Field or asked to change the exposure of your scene. These are basic functions that you should know.”

It’s brilliant that Andrew mentions photography here for many reasons. First reason is that I can’t play games anymore because I just lose focus. I spend half the time in photo-mode and before I know it, time flashes before my eyes. But bad puns aside, the reason is because the border between photorealism and games is no longer a thing of the future. I knew Andrew had worked on Call of Duty’s: Modern Warfare which had made extensive use of photogrammetry and without encroaching on NDA territory, I asked him to elaborate.

And how does your job as a Lighting Artist change when dealing with photogrammetry assets? Are there special considerations you need to take?

“The process that I take when lighting a scene does not generally change when dealing with photogrammetry assets. I will however check to make sure the materials and textures are responding to the light correctly. Do all the textures look correct (roughness, normals, albedo etc.?) Can alterations be made to make the asset stand out more? If changes are needed, I will show the artists how they are reacting to the light and how they can be improved. As a Lighting Artist you are usually one of the last people to see assets and how they are lighting in a final map, therefore, it is your job to check and report your findings.”

By the way, how did you get into lighting and are there any resources you’d recommend for artists trying to get into the field?

“During all of my years as an Environment Artist the one thing I enjoyed the most was having control of the final look of an entire environment. This led me to focus all of my time specifically on lighting and rendering. I loved taking a blank scene and turning it into a cinematic quality experience.

For any artists looking to get into the field I would recommend studying from the masters that do this for a living. I would dissect movies and video games and try to spot how they are manipulating the lights to achieve the look that they made. There are also some really informative tutorials on light and color at The Gnomon Workshop and one of my colleagues (Omar Gatica) teaches a class at CGMA called “The Art of Lighting for Games” which is very informative and a great insight into lighting at a studio.”

Finally, when collecting lighting reference, are there specific things you look for that will help you to figure out how to build it digitally?

“When I look for lighting reference I will first get the general art direction from the Art Director. Am I lighting a scene that is set during twilight? Or is it a midday map with a lot of atmosphere? I will then start looking through various movies or real-life images that pertain to this information. For instance, if I'm called upon to light a twilight scene with very little artificial light I will go and look through movies such as Sicario or The Revenant and grab screenshots to use as reference. I will also do a Google search for “Twilight light” or “Twilight scenes” to see if anything interesting pops up. 

During the reference gathering phase I am not necessarily looking for anything that will help me light it digitally but I will break down these images later on in terms of how many lights I can use in order to achieve the same look.”

Googling “Twilight scenes”?! Andrew - if you’re telling me you’ve fought through waves of silly vampire face Robert Pattinson in pursuit of the perfect lighting reference then you’re a champion and you deserve more credit than you’ll ever receive. No one should have to put up with that. God bless. 

With Twilight very much in mind, my next guest Guillaume Deschamps-Michel, Lighting Artist at Ready at Dawn, and speaker at Artside, actually knows a thing or two about lighting vampires.

CHARACTERS VS ENVIRONMENTS 

(Honestly, even I can’t believe how I’ve pulled that segue off - you can’t make this stuff up, it just writes itself lol) 

What considerations do you need to make when lighting a character, compared to an environment?

“A character will for sure need a different rig and set-up compared to an environment. On my side, I like to light a character with only dynamic lighting as I find this more intuitive and you can iterate faster. Also you will need a specific rig to match your idea and the result you want to achieve. You want your character to be lit following a mood though there are some important things to know regarding character lighting. Key lights, fill lights and backlights are some important elements that you need to set up to make sure you will correctly showcase your work in the best way possible.

The key light will be your main source of light spilling directly onto your character. The fill light will be used in addition to the key light to lighten the shadows and create contrast between your main focus that is your character and the background. The backlight, or rim light (depending your main light source and angle) will be used behind the character to help draw the shape of the subject. Then of course you can use more lights to help give your own touch and highlight what you think is important. To me, I like to take really close up shots and this setup works really well. I often use a lot (maybe too many) lights but it is mainly because I want to have full control of the rig and create tiny details.”

TRUSTING YOUR INTUITION

When the lighting in the scene doesn’t ‘feel right’ or give off the desired atmosphere, what are some of the things you do to tackle the issue?

“First of all, it’s important to say that a big part of our work as Lighting Artists is to gather references. I will not begin a project without references. It can be pictures of mood, target reference from a game or color palettes. I like to organize all of those before starting something. Sometimes I like to go without any idea of what I will do and it can give some nice results, but keep in mind that reference work is important. 

With this in mind if a scene doesn’t look how I want I will first of all disable all the post-processing and color grading except exposure, just to be sure that I am looking at my base lighting. Then I work on color, adding or deleting lights, creating highlights where it’s important and also my fog if I use it. After, I try to balance contrast to have good visibility in my black areas, avoiding pitch black even if I really like the strong contrast. I usually work without post-process or color grading until the very end of every project. 

The main issue that I see sometimes is trying to fix color or contrast issues with post effect or grading. Do not use grading to make a red look green. Grading is the final effect to balance and give the final touch to a project.” 

In your RDR2 fan art breakdown, you mention you “add some life to the picture”. What can artists do to “add life” to a scene?

“This is a really important topic to me. Artwork that gets my attention are the ones that manage to make me feel something. It can be from a lot of things, for example in my RDR2 fan art I tried to do this with the fire and the lamp on the wood bridge that makes you think ‘maybe someone is here’. Good set-dressing in a scene and what you decide to show in the composition can make you think about the story behind it. 

As advice, I would say to always think about what you want to show and then in your composition get people’s attention and make them think about what could have happened in your scene.” 

Finally, are there rules of thumb when it comes to choosing which lights should be dynamic and which should be baked?

“This is a vast topic and I think everyone has their own workflow regarding this. First of all, this will depend on if you plan to create a static image or a video. 

A video will showcase more things so you will certainly put dynamic lights and moving objects in there to create a natural feeling to the scene. It also depends if you plan to go for an indoor scene or outdoor scene. For me, outdoor scenes are always dynamic - never baked. For a static image, you may usually use only baked lighting with some dynamic lights if I need extra detail so I don’t have to rebake everything. 

For a video that will showcase movement, it's better to use both baked and dynamic lighting. This way you’ll be able to use the Global Illumination (GI) from the bake to have a really nice lighting base before going into details. You will begin to set up the mood and ambience of the environment with baked, static lighting and in doing this, you’ll use the GI from the bake to get nice bounce lighting and achieve the proper look that you are aiming for. After, go into more detail and set up lights that you think should be dynamic to create nice moving shadows, or details that do not need to be baked as you already have a base bake from your static lighting. At the end, this gives you nice GI with the freedom to set and have nice dynamic shadows on objects you want to interact with. 

A quick example can be a lamp in a room. You can have a baked light to create the GI bounces and a dynamic light to get the shadows and a bit of volumetric for something you can interact with. Of course this method means no dynamic changes to the lighting. However, these days you have new methods to have GI even with dynamic lights like Screen Space Global Illumination (SSGI) or ray tracing, but if you are looking for a specific mood, baked lighting is still on top for good results combined with dynamic lights.”

What was brilliant about talking to Guillaume is that he’s evidently tried it all. Indoor scenes, outdoor scenes, urban, organic and even characters too. At the end there, he touched on the idea that every Lighting Artist’s process is different and it depends heavily on the setting and desired mood. 

I was recently listening to a brilliant podcast episode with CGSociety where Boon Cotter, Lighting Artist at Naughty Dog, dove into his lighting history on Uncharted. He showcased some drop-dead gorgeous interiors and I knew I had to have his input on this article. After congratulating him on the launch of the highly anticipated The Last of Us Part II, I shot some questions his way about his lighting history.

BREAKING PURE PBR?

In your CGSociety podcast episode you said you "break PBR when you need to”. Can you run us through examples in your work where you've done that and the reasons why? Generally speaking, is art direction prioritised over pure PBR?

“Approach PBR as a means to quickly produce lighting results that obey the laws of physics. That’s all. It’s not an expectation or a goal, just shorthand for describing how light and materials work together in the real world and the technology we use to simulate it.

When we create art – particularly photorealism, or in that ballpark – this is super helpful, allowing us to fairly rapidly produce a relatively natural, realistic result. However reality is usually pretty boring and full of its own limitations.

A quick example: In one level in The Last of Us Part II we have a character chasing another holding a torch. It’s dark, it’s raining, everything is wet and shiny. I wanted the torch to illuminate a fairly large area, however this produced extremely bright specular highlights in puddles and on more reflective surfaces. We requested the option to scale the specular contribution of light sources independent of the diffuse. For this particular scene I turned the spec down to 20%. It’s not physically accurate, but it is much more visually appealing.

Knowing when and how to break the rules is as important as knowing why the rules exist.”

 Are there lighting cliches that you love (i.e. placing light around the corner to guide players) and cliches that you dislike seeing?

“Cliches are another kind of shorthand, and they can be incredibly useful because they often lean on a long history of cinematic vocabulary that audiences understand. The ‘light around a corner’ thing is about contrast, making the lines read well. You can see a wall, you can see an opening, they’re both very well delineated. I can’t say off the top of my head that there’s any cliché I love or hate. I even dig lens flares!

Most of the more difficult part of lighting for games is all about the contrast. Is the path visible? Are enemies readable? Can the player understand the flow of the environment? You don’t want the player to stall and eliminate tension with frustration, or become lost, or to be killed by someone (or something) they can’t see – that isn’t a nice feeling.

I mean, there’s even a place for the classic ‘light shining through a vent onto a solitary health pickup in the middle of a dark room’ thing. It’s like slowly opening the curtains in a horror film – you kinda know something will happen, you know it won’t happen when you expect it to, and THAT creates tension. There’s a lot of ways we can really quickly communicate ideas to viewers/players using these tropes.”

What considerations have to be made for indoor lighting compared to outdoor lighting?

“Outdoor lighting for the most part is relatively simple in comparison to indoor. A sun, a sky, some fill lights for harsh shadows. I’m sure there are cases where the opposite is true, but at least working on the games and other projects I’ve been a part of, indoor lighting is exponentially more challenging.

Have you ever watched a behind the scenes on a film where two characters are sitting by a window having a chat over coffee? There’s probably like 10… 20… 50 extra lights and gobos and reflectors and stuff going on in that scene. Shaping an indoor shot is difficult.

Sometimes you’ll strike it lucky and this particular room in this house of 12 rooms looks gorgeous with the afternoon light falling in the way it does, with the ambient softening the walls, with the warm bounce light of the sun striking the ceiling. Those times are rare!

Most often you’re going to spend weeks (or months) adding extra lights to fill dark corners, fake extra bounce light, exaggerate contrast, pick out details, highlight enemies, direct the player… And then you have to do it in a space where the player has control over the framing, so you can’t just throw it all out of frame and what’s happening off-camera. Honestly, this is the part of lighting where I often feel like a failure. I don’t think I’ve ever lit an interior that I’m super satisfied with, except MAYBE Cassie’s bedroom in Uncharted 4, and only if you look at it from the doorway haha!”

At what point do you feel the job is done and you can move onto doing post-processing for the last 10-15% of the scene?

“Who told you the job gets done? Nothing ever gets done. You eventually just run out of time and tearfully abandon it to the wolves. Haha!

Art is never done. But we aren’t artists. We’re production artists, and production is all about getting stuff done, so you get ok at deciding when something is good ‘enough’ and moving on to other things. If you don’t, you end up with one pretty well polished room and 227 turds. No one wants that.”

One pretty well polished room and 227 turds? Sounds like the House of Commons lol. 

“I try to make sure I give the player a “WOW” moment from time to time, peaks and valleys in the visual tension.

Like this hallway you’re running down? Ok, it’s probably fine with some functional lighting. But when you crest the hill and see the view for the first time? Yeah you want that to be MAGICAL. It’s like a rollercoaster. You can’t make every single moment blow someone’s socks off, so you pace it, look for the beats you can make super rad, and let the transitions be more understated. Oftentimes this will extend beyond lighting and involve other disciplines working hand in hand to elevate a scene beyond the sum of its parts.

I think it’s kinda like… you remember seeing the original Jurassic Park? Back then, filmmakers had to show restraint, so those moments like the first time you see the T-Rex are just insaaaaaane. It’s much easier these days, I think, to make a film that is “bad” due to a relentless onslaught of cool. OH LOOK AT THAT LOOK AT THIS OMG LOOK AT THAT LOOK AT THAAAyawn. At some point, you just kinda get tired.

I try to make sure my lighting follows a similar principle. It should never look terrible, but it’s ok that sometimes it is functional and other times it – hopefully – makes you lose your breath.

Post-processing… I’ve had some scenes where post-processing is more like 90% of the final look. It’s probably useful to talk about what post-processing actually is: 

It’s the stuff that isn’t the baked light result, which is, basically, everything haha! It’s exposure, contrast, tint, bloom, fog… There’s SO MUCH that goes into lighting that isn’t placing lights and tweaking intensity values.

I find it helps to think of lighting artists more like a DoP (Director of Photography) role. The additional tools in our pipeline allow me to drastically fine-tune a bake into a huge range of results. So the base light bake? That can be super quick for a simple outdoor scene, or months and months of fine tuning light placement for complicated interior. The post-processing? That never stops. I could open all my TLOU2 levels right now and tweak them all and make them… better? Different? Better? The tweaking never ends.”

When do you work with colour? Do you work with neutral lighting all the way through the lighting phase, then play with colours in the LUTS?

“It depends what you mean by neutral. If you mean monochromatic lighting… It’s rare I’ll light without SOME color in my light sources. If you mean more natural? Yes, for the most part I approach lighting with the goal of first getting the most realistic, natural result, and THEN pushing it to the more (or less) colorful, artistic, in-game shot we’re going for. Sometimes it makes sense to use a big blue light source to scream “MOOOOON” at people, because we’re well versed in “blue light means night time”. But sometimes it actually works better to light with warmer tones (the moon is reflecting sunlight after all) and then add subtle desaturation and tint in the LUT. It’s very much a case by case situation.”

It’s awesome to get seasoned lighters like Boon talking about these topics because their answers come from years of personal work and game productions, which in of themselves, are vastly different despite requiring the same skillset. Post-processing is a common thing to get carried away with half-way through the job. Environment Artist at Respawn Entertainment, Leah Augustine spoke a little about working with the lighting before anything else in her environments.

LIGHTING BEFORE LUTS

Leah, your Snowy Forest scene is an example of a prime portfolio piece. It is simple in composition, realistic in material response and the lighting sells itself. What’s your typical thought-process when lighting a scene?

“When I create an environment I always keep two things in mind: composition and mood. Lighting is key to selling those two things. 

I always start my environments by quickly blocking out the scene and setting up my cameras. This allows me to really focus on my composition early on in the process. Next, I do a quick lighting pass with only my directional light and sky light. The reason why I do this is because light and shadow play a big factor in drawing the viewer’s eye. I use this as another way to refine the composition. It also helps establish the mood.

From there it’s just an iterative process. As I build the assets and materials for the scene, I’ll adjust my lighting and camera angles as I see fit. I always reserve color grading and any post-process adjustments for last. I do this to avoid overcompensating the lighting because of strange color adjustments.”

Your portfolio suggests a deeper interest in cinematography and lighting - do you have any particular inspirations and if so, why are you attracted to that aesthetic?

“Before I found myself in game dev, I initially went to school for photography. Even though I don’t practice photography anymore I found that I still use a lot of the skills I learned from it in my work as an environment artist. In my opinion, I think it’s critical for game artists to expose themselves to art from other mediums. When you think about it, the game industry isn’t that old and we can pull a lot from other art forms that have had more time to develop.

Both cinematography and photography are very beneficial for environment artists to study.  They teach environment artists a lot about composition, lighting and atmosphere. I recommend checking out the work of Roger Deakins and Emmanuel Lubezki, but there are many more amazing artists as well.”

That’s a hot beat. Cinematography. Let’s mention that because with more and more gameplay trailers looking suspiciously like cutscenes and pre-rendered cinematics (you know the culprits), our favourite games are frequently sharing the look and feel of the big screen. Hits like The Last of Us, Red Dead Redemption and God of War taking the world by cinematic storm prove that the silky silver screen is still a sexy sleeve for storytelling in games. Try saying that a few times.

FILM, GAMES & UNREAL ENGINE- A THREESOME WE NEVER KNEW WE WANTED 

We get it, films are influential on games. THINK AGAIN. 

The influence of games and real-time technology is beginning to find comfortable footholds in movie and TV production and our two worlds of digital entertainment are very much colliding. For the most part it has been the practical requirements that have separated games and film. Real-time vs rendered. UV’s vs UDIM’s. Gameplay vs errr … Guillermo del Toro? Strike that, he was in Death Stranding. But you get the idea - different strokes for different folks. 

The likes of Substance, SpeedTree and Megascans being shared resources for both industries is an interesting dynamic and it’s the folks like Matt Workman and (unsurprisingly) Epic Games that are taking it further, combining tech from both industries in big brain ways to get the best out of both worlds. 

TV and film directors can now harness the ability of real-time engines to rapidly change production design, shifting entire sets around or change dynamic lighting on the fly like your everyday level artist. 

If you don’t see the impact of this or understand its relevance to games then think of it this way. The film industry invests in game tech. Game tech further explodes and is able to rapidly develop. Demand for more powerful hardware grows. New hardware comes around and the limitations of current gen platforms are lifted, unlocking another cycle of creative possibility. It means more mind-blowing engine, lighting and rendering tech on the way. In theory. I may be dramatically oversimplifying the process and naively optimistic about this but it’s worth thinking about. 

*** Couldn’t have been timed any better. Literally the day after writing this segment, Epic just dropped their Unreal Engine 5 Real-Time Demo running on the PS5. This is just proof that day-by-day game tech is becoming more capable of achieving the visual fidelity that films and VFX houses have been able to reach in recent years. This time, with the time-saving, iteration-friendly, polygon-rinsing benefits of being rendered in real-time. That’s good business for real-time natives like games but also attractive feats for film. I imagine with this new tech shortening pre-vis phases, the virtual production set may explode in popularity altogether. 

The bells and whistles are great, but what’s most beneficial to game artists are the procedural next-gen features that automate, speed up or outright remove the limitations of traditional game rendering as we know it. Time after all is the most precious resource. 

Bonus homework: I was on the pilot episode of Insert Topic podcast - a round table discussion on the Unreal Engine 5 release and its impacts on game production. Thought this was an article about lighting? My point is this:

With more studios having dedicated cutscene teams and the two industries slowly colliding, cinematics aren’t going anywhere. Finding lessons in other fields is always a good idea to cross-pollinate knowledge.  Which principles are mutual? How can we light our own environments by studying frames from film? What can we learn from a Director of Photography (DOP)? All of this culminated with my catch up with Fabien Christin, a Senior Lighting Artist at Blizzard who kindly delved into his past experience on Battlefield V at DICE for us. 

CINEMATICS

Being the Cinematic Art Lead on Battlefield V must have been an incredible opportunity to flex the DOP muscles. Which fundamentals from cinematography did you use and which would you recommend artists to learn?

“I could probably talk for hours about that subject! Of course it is important to learn about composition and color theory, I'm sure that every artist has already heard of the rule-of-thirds, the different color schemes… But there is one thing that I care a lot about and this is balance. Balance of colors, balance of details, balance of contrasts. You always want to follow some sort of 70/30%, or 70/25/5% rule.

It is important to not surcharge an image just because you can. I often see images where the eye can't rest on anything as everything pops with strong complementary colors, everything is highly detailed with specular highlights, with strong unjustified rim lights.

There is beauty in naturalistic and soft lighting, in the underexposed, in using analogous colors, in the negative space. You want to lead the audience's eyes through the image by separating the characters from the background and land on that little eye specular highlight. I pay a lot of attention in making sure the lighting accomplishes its mission while keeping a very natural look.

Balance is also valid for framing your shot, you want to give rhythm between simpler medium close-up shots so that the next wide shot is as striking as possible. Analyzing the work of world renowned Directors of Photography like Roger Deakins, Jeff Cronenweth, Chung-hoon Chung is always a great source of inspiration.

I also like to break the rules and try to surprise the audience. For instance you can create interesting visual tension by lighting or framing the scene in an unexpected manner. By removing the leading room in front of the character so that they look outside of the frame, by creating harsh contrast lighting and losing information in the dark. I wish we had more time to explore this on Battlefield V.

What have you learnt during your time working at DICE? 

“When you work at DICE, you are surrounded with extremely talented artists who are really supportive and inspiring. There is a special culture (probably from the famous Swedish flat hierarchy) that gives you the freedom to dive into something if you think that you can make it better. Everyone is happy to learn from each other and constantly pushes the quality up.

When I joined the company, Jhony Ljungstedt (Art Director on Mirror's Edge: Catalyst and Battlefield V) directly trusted me, and this really motivated me to give my best.

Mirror's Edge: Catalyst was maybe a smaller title, but it had a lot of ambition, and the team had to pioneer many new features that were not present in Frostbite, as the engine was mostly designed to create Battlefield games at that time.

We were transitioning to a new Physically Based Rendering (PBR), so I was able to reuse come of my experience from Killzone Shadow Fall that also used PBR, but I had to do a lot of research and development on how this would work with a dynamic time of day and an open-world city where every surface is reflective. This was the first time I was completely involved in the development of the tools and the rendering engine features, and I learned a lot about the tech.

We also wanted to show the main character Faith a lot more than in the first game. She is an iconic character, and we wanted to see her in cinematics that would help tell the story. A lot of work went into making the tools that would allow us to render the cinematics at the best quality possible, and into the character models and shaders to make sure they would hold up in close-ups, in dozens of different lighting scenarios.

Outside of the technical aspects, this was the first time I was responsible for 50 minutes of cinematics, so I had to learn a lot about cinematography and character lighting and be able to direct two lighting artists who helped me with this task. This first experience eventually led me to supervise Battlefield 1 and Star Wars Battlefront II lighting and rendering of the cutscenes, and finally get to lead a small art team dedicated to Battlefield V cinematics.”

And which hard and soft skills do you need in order to lead a team like that?

“In terms of hard skills, I'd argue that it's rather important to have a lot of experience in your field before becoming a lead. Having hands-on experience and knowing what it is to be in the trenches will help you make well-advised decisions and earn the trust of your team members more easily.

Having said that, when you are in a lead position, you will probably get less time to practice (because... meetings), and there will be artists in your team that will know more than you about the tools, that will be quicker and better than you at lighting... and it's totally fine! You need to trust your team members and create an atmosphere where they feel empowered, where they have a sense of ownership over their work, where they can continue to grow and learn. This will also help to attract the best talents out there and build an even stronger team.

Other than that, communication and transparency are important to prevent any conflict. As a lead, you will have to make hard decisions at some point. First you will want to shield your team from the negative repercussions as much as possible, but when it's not enough, being transparent with your colleagues helps avoid any misunderstanding.” 

You’re now 12 years deep into your career in games. What advice would you give to someone just starting out?

“Always analyze the illustrations, paintings, movies and games that you like. If they are strong images that give you emotions, it is not a happy accident. Don't be afraid to use them as reference, and learn by doing quick studies.

It is also beneficial to analyze the images that aren't as striking. Creating a list of dos and don'ts always help defining a direction.

Also, stay humble and curious. This is the key to keep learning and become a better artist every day. This also makes you a nice person to work with!”

TRANSFERABLE TOOLSET

Another lighter with plenty to say about TV and film lighting is none other than Brian Mullen, Senior Lighting Artist at Insomniac Games. 

DISCLAIMER: None of the shots in this section belong specifically to Brian. He did, however, work on AMC’s The Walking Dead as he’s about to describe. If you’d like to see his game lighting work on Marvel’s Spider-Man, check out his ArtStation page! 

Which skills have you brought to your job in games from your background in film, tv and photography? How have these skills been useful?

“I think my previous career and undergrad degree in photography has been the biggest unexpected help in my career to this point. I worked as a photographer off and on part time for years out of college, and I honestly hated it. Taking pictures is fun, sure. But as a business, it wasn’t for me and for years it felt like wasted time and money. 

The weirdest thing I realized last year though, I started looking through some old wedding photography that I had done. I would always set up the same way: white balance my camera and start scoping the venue out for shots before anyone had arrived just to make sure my exposure was set correctly. Looking at these “setup shots” there is an obvious line I see between what I found aesthetically pleasing from a color, lighting, and composition standpoint and what I do now when I start setting up lighting in a game level. What I understood about the role of lighting and composition of making a good photograph must have burrowed somewhere into my brain because it keeps showing up in the work I’m doing.

There’s more to it than the aesthetics though. Many of the tools that we use have measurements and workflows that are based on what a photographer would really use. The process of calibrating my exposure in a game engine isn’t really all that different than what I was doing as a photographer. A lot of the same technical setup reasons why a person might not look flattering in a portraiture setting are the same things I see when I'm trying to light a cinematic.”

“As far as my background in CG, it’s a little harder to draw parallels to what I do now, but they are there. I used to light CG elements that needed to seamlessly blend with live action elements. Michonne's sword in The Walking Dead or neighbouring houses in an episode of Parenthood are two examples that come to mind. The goal wasn't to make the most beautiful thing I could, it was about trying to look as real as possible and trick the viewer into not knowing that this stuff wasn't there when they filmed. While there is definitely an artistry to that work, the rules are different. Less about creative control and more about creating something visually believable. It’s fun and it’s challenging, but it’s a different job.”

Here’s a great example I found from Mulan (2020). Study the light sources in the frame, then pay attention to the key and fill lighting around the characters. They don’t match up but it’s hard to notice because this is the lighting language of cinema. We’re able to read this fairly dark scene because it’s been lit with careful consideration. Brian continues on to say:

“The benefits from that role though are in my understanding of a complete pipeline. I was a CG Generalist so it meant that often when I had a shot to do, I was handling all aspects of the shot. Depending on the shot one artist could be tracking, modeling, rigging, animating, shading, and lighting all the CG for a series of shots. Was I good at all of these things? No! Was I okay at all of these things? No again! But given how fast TV deadlines are, you learn to work efficiently, when to seek help from others, and how to do what it takes to get a shot done. 

Now this isn't exactly what the question asked but I do think it’s worth pointing out this mentality of "doing what it takes to get a shot done". I don't believe it works particularly well in games and is one of the stumbling blocks I've seen for people making the transition from film/tv into games (I certainly stumbled). While I might cheat a few things to get a shot to look good for a TV show, you benefit here from a non-interactive experience for the viewer. The camera is always going to be locked and it won't be different so who cares if that light I added makes no sense or that shader is definitely not PBR. It looks good. I have 14 more shots to do this week, I'm moving on.

Outside of cinematics, I rarely can control what a player is going to look at. I know the intention and I can use my lighting to lead them to what I want them to see and do, but at the end of the day the player is choosing what to do and see. This goes beyond just having a phantom light that the player might find by looking around - it’s about finding those weird reflections of lights that you might not want the player to see. It’s about making sure that your bounce light is balanced correctly so that the character doesn't look overfilled and flat or under lit and ghoul-like. It’s a bit of a learning curve but it's definitely a lot of fun.”

Which resources would you recommend artists to check out that have helped you in the past?

“For me, I grew up an absolutely movie nut. I’ve seen way too many movies, and some of them way too many times and I love to pick apart, from a visual standpoint, why some of these movies still look great 10 or 20 years on. It’s what drew me to photography in the first place because I was obsessed with cinematography. This isn’t going to be the same for everyone, but I think a love of cinematography can help you so much as a lighter. We’re often the last department still working on the final image and so much of what we do can elevate or degrade the visuals and storytelling. 

The other thing I’d recommend is getting a camera and just start taking pictures. You don’t need to be good, but I think you’ll start to learn what makes a good photograph and what makes an okay one. You’ll learn how hard it is to get that composition, balance, and color just right in a way that maybe you always knew when you saw an “okay” photo, but you didn’t quite know why.

By the way, no one asked but movies with amazing cinematography; check out Mad Max Fury Road, Drive, Midsommar, The Last Black Man in San Francisco, Children of Men, Amelie ... honestly I could go on and on. Watch movies. They're amazing. Even (especially?) the bad ones.”

So we’ve covered environment, character and cinematic lighting but there’s one big area I feel hasn’t been touched on. An area that has its own particular workflow and is cited to be the future of gaming. It’s virtual reality and is something Ellen Shelley, Lighting Artist at Hangar 13 has expertise in. 

VIRTUAL REALITY

Lighting for cinematics is one thing. Lighting for VR is a whole other thing. What are the pros and cons of both?

“VR games are incredibly performance heavy. You have to take every aspect of these games into account in order to achieve an efficient frame rate. A drop in frame rate in a conventional game might not be a deal breaker, but in VR it causes users to experience motion sickness. Due to this, it’s not uncommon to cut a sporadic sprinkling of foliage, or that extra sexy dynamic light. It’ll mean the difference between a flip book or a game. Therefore, as you can imagine lighting for a VR game is a lot less forgiving than a conventional one. 

You have to think very carefully where you place your limited dynamic lights, usually placing them on parts of the game that’ll give most bang for your buck, e.g on Hero Props or key moments. 

Best VR practice in UE4 is to mainly use static lights with the occasional dynamic, and if you must use more than one dynamic, check they don’t overlap. For VR your global illumination will have to be baked and (for now) can wave goodbye to enabling all ray trace options like a WWII army wife on a station platform.

When it comes to lighting for trailers your lighting is driven less by optimisation restraints and more by Art direction. Art direction determines how many lights you use to achieve a desired look; you aren’t limited to a set amount of lights per say, but it’s good practice to nail the basics down first. Placing a huge amount of lights is never a good idea, it can cause complications further down the line when receiving feedback, or for others that have to work on your shots.”

Out of VR, trailers and conventional games which is your favourite to light for and why?  

“I’d have to say lighting for conventional games is my favourite, but that’s not an easy decision as lighting for trailers has a lot less limitations and can therefore showcase some really stunning lighting. There is something really rewarding about lighting for conventional games. For me, it’s showcasing the environment artist’s work in the best light (pun intended) and subtly leading the player around a level for a rewarding experience. 

VR has a lot of promise, however for a lighter you can encounter many obstacles and this can often be frustrating. That’s not to say you can’t achieve great results in VR, on the contrary, I have seen some beautiful VR games but there’s a lot more to take into consideration as optimisation is always king. 

It’s an exciting time to be a lighter for conventional games. Ray tracing is producing some gorgeous results and is really pushing the quality bar of next generation games. For instance, the Dynamic Global Illumination showcased in the UE5 tech demo got me and my lighter friends really excited (we wear biker jackets). 2021 can’t come quick enough, I want nothing more than to get my gremlin hands on these awesome new lighting tools. That being said, VR is still being developed with performance and optimisation constraints being gradually ironed out. So even though nothing has been directly said in regards to what’s in store for VR using UE5, I don’t think it’ll be long before lighters are lighting VR games more like conventional ones. Or at the very least, being allowed to use one extra dynamic light.”

OUTRO

And cut. Thanks Ellen for ending on such an awesome note and thank you to all the artists involved in making this article possible. Just before I end I wanted to point you towards a few lighting resources that I love to reference. 

FilmGrab - An online library of 100,000+ film stills which has some truly awesome filters to use. You can search for movie screenshots by the movie title, the director, the DOP and even production and costume designers. Not enough? Well browse using a year, a genre or even an aspect ratio. Ultrawide is eye candy. Hell even just hitting “Films A-Z” and having a look at the cinematography from some of your favourites. It’s pretty awesome to see how the colour grade changes over the course of the movie too. 

FilmSchoolRejects - A blog covering everything movies but one particular feature I find insane is the ability to search by shot type. If you’ve got a particular shot in mind and need some movie inspiration, this is the one for you.

Thank you very much for reading this article. I hope it serves as a tome for lighting art wisdom from some very talented folks. Join me in Part III where I interview the devs with the biggest balls in the business. Material Artists. (because that joke hasn’t been made before yawn). We talk about the flex culture surrounding 100% Substance Designer pieces and if that’s normal practice in production. At the height of the article, we go over the single principle you can apply to any material to make them more rich and convincing. To finish, I’ll be scanning through the age-old debate on presenting materials in-engine or in Marmoset. Don’t let it go past in a blur. 

PS: Quixel - if you’re reading this I’m available for contract as a Lead Pun Artist and maybe can do some scanning on the side. Won’t work for exposure. I’m not a photographer, but I can picture us together.