Lighting and Modeling

Weeks 5–6 Dates: 10/02/25-10/15/25

Lighting

These past two weeks, my job has shifted to be focused on lighting and modeling.

The team had a few ideas in mind about what the lighting might look like. But mainly, there was a general idea that we wanted there to be god rays.

The main sources of inspiration my professor and I were drawn to were these images:

And after speaking with the director, Todd, I received these images to use as inspiration:

There were a lot of different color temperatures and moods I was given as reference, and so to make sure I understood what everyone wanted, I wanted to do a few quick tests before messing with the master file.

I made a mockup of the set in Maya, since I was able to run it better than Unreal on my at-home computer. I was mainly testing for what color temperature and brightness the team wanted to go for.

These are the results of my lighting tests.

I kept it simple with an ambient light to fill the room, an atmospheric fog, and a point light for the god ray. There were discussions of the main character having his own personal light to light up other areas and so I used point lights for those.,

The group was split on what they liked best, but in general, there was a push to make the scene moody and dark. However, after speaking with Nate (Director of Photography) and Robin (VFX Lead), I learned that the XR stage requires the images on screen to be brighter rather than darker, otherwise we risk seeing the paneling in the camera.

Keeping all of this in mind, and with a note from the professor to move to Unreal as soon as possible, I began to try out the lights in the virtual set. I used much the same I again presented a few different options to gauge the team's thoughts.

The team seemed to prefer the first image, with the moodier lighting. There was some discussion about making the lights darker, but the concern for the XR stage paneling again came up.

On Stage

My team and I went to the stage to try out the set and see what needed to change.

I spent most of the day on stage, troubleshooting the lighting. There appeared to have been an error somewhere in the transportation of the file. The lighting was showing up completely different in Unreal while we were at the stage. After a while, I was able to remake what it looked like previously. However, the set appeared different on the LED walls of the stage and in the monitor for the camera. I, along with a few others, spent some time creating something that looked good in the camera.

After the lighting tests had been completed and the LED wall tested, I handed the job of lighting off to Robin and was moved to modeling.

Modeling

I am responsible for modeling the sconces and the lighting fixtures for the set. I found some possible reference images for the light and ran them by Connor, the UE Lead.

Connor and I agreed that the third image was the best for the sconces and so that was what I modeled.

Next, I'll UV the model and texture it after seeing if the team likes the look.