BA Film Blog: Temple Interior Lighting

The whole temple interior is now complete! And we managed to complete it within the time given in the schedule (10hrs sleep over four nights). For the past two days Rob, Dan and Myself have been constanlty developing the lighting, we first started with the main chamber early thursday morning. My initial idea was to use flame lit torches as the temples main source of light, but due to time constraints and lack of technical knowledge in creating the desired effects, it was easier to use the time of day change featured in the canopy establishing shot (day to moon lit night). With this idea in mind i wanted to make the temple very dark and shadowy, creating a mysterious and dangerous atmosphere. This type of lighting would contrast the lighting from both jungle sets effectively. To decide on a main source of light we used the illusion of moonlight passing through holes in the temple ceiling, this created a similar highlighting effect used in the jungle. The ambient lighting needed to reflect the time of day outside the temple, so we decided to use similar colour swatches i.e. blues, purples, silvery greys. Even with the ambient light and directional (moon) light the temple still lacked the dramatic feel of the jungle. I decided to use spot lights to focus the audiences main atentions to areas like the altar set, rock platforms and entraences. One lighting method adopted from the jungle was the environmental fog, this created a much more mysterious and misty atmosphere, camera compositions gained depth and took the attention away from the bottomless dark pits around. The fog almost takes the harsh polygon edges away from distance areas of the set, the saturation is distance set up so that audience focuses more on the action happening in front of them, rather than into large areas of dead space and vast chamber structures of the background (provides a balance). The total number of lights used in the main chamber was x1 ambient, x1 EnviroFog, x5 Spot Lights (two of them stronger in intensity to highlight enterance and altar set, one of them to highlight the explorers face at the altar set and the other to highlight walkways and actiona areas), x1 directional light to create purple/silvery gray moon lit pockets of light. With the spot lights we used a higher Penumbra angle to soften the drop off/harshness of the lights, but doesnt effect the overall intensity. These same lights were then duplicated and imported into the rock chamber and trap corridoor, the spot lights tweaked to highlight rope swing, broken walkway and entrances.

The following renders show some of the lighting tests that we created whilest lighting the temple interior:

Lighting Test Render - Single spot light at 0.4 intensity, trying to produce a very dark and gloomy set, dramatic highlights, etc (Maya Software Rendering).

Lighting Test Render - Three main spot lights, all at 0.8 intensity, very high penumbra angle and slight drop off, highlights main focus points within the set, lighting still not balanced, needs ambient lighting (Maya Software Rendering).

Lighting Test Render - Addition of EnviroFog and a strong ambient light intensity, colours used in lights are blue, purple, silvery greys. Saturation distance must be increased and fog height needs to be lowered. Very dramatic so i like it, but completely takes the focus away from the altar set area (Maya Software Rendering).

Lighting Test Render - First person camera shot lighting test from trap corridoor. Really like the darkness of the corridoor, the way it contrasts the main chamber set, keeps the focus on the chamber (end goal for our character). The main problem is that you proberly wont be able to see the explorer character running and jumping around the traps (Maya Software Rendering).

Lighting Test Render - We started to adopt the same directional lighting idea ultilised in the jungle, this time using the moon light as the main source of light. Lighting must always be justified with a main source(s) to ensure it makes sense (linking correctly to the day to night canopy shot earlier). A stronger ambient, less fog and the use of the original spot lights from the previous tests were used. Very happy with the lighting development, perhaps the ambient needs to be increased so that the rest of the set is slightly seen more. This render is close to being the lighting i would like to go for.

The final render shots of the main chamber and the rock chamber worked really well, they provided the adventerous atmosphere that i have been striving to achieve throughout the film project. The textures looked even better when lit, some textured walls were lost to large shadows, but the dark effect over ruled the need to see every texture i created. The only problem we encountered when lighting the temple sets was the ability to keep areas of the set quite dark whilest keeping the set light enough to see the explorer character. But as we had to stick to a tight deadline we all agreed to lighten up the temple sets and spend time after the hand-in using post production effects to dark areas like the rock chamber and trap corridoor sets in order to achieve a more dramatic effect.

My favourite lighting in the temple interior has to be the enterance corridoor start section, this lighting idea has survived through from the first 2D animatic we created at Christmas, the idea of a dark, merky corridoor, overgrown with plants and tree roots, and a strong source of light producing a dark outline of the explorers body on the floor. The way the shadow moves up the corridoor to rest over the skull carved into a stone slab. Below show some of the lighting tests for the temple interior, including a few final renders: