subject: Spend Quality Time On 3d Lighting [print this page] Spend Quality Time On 3d Lighting Spend Quality Time On 3d Lighting
Spend quality time on lighting, as good lighting can bring the most boring of models and textures to life, or it can kill the most vibrant of designs. Again, render often here. During the lighting phase, you may find that the mood lighting you use is dulling the colors of the textures, so be sure to adjust the textures. Now, if the project calls for a still, a final render is in order. If the project is an animation, make sure that the storyboard is well worked and understood. If the animation calls for sound-sync (matching motion to sound), then building a dope sheet is an important step.
Create your dope sheets to match your needs. Dope sheets are basically a way to map out the motion planned to the sound planned over the frames needed, and will be covered in detail later. Once you have mapped out how the timing works, you need to start putting time into your project. Animation is sometimes called 4D, with time as the forth dimension. How you time your animations and how you design the movement is what gives animations personalities, what makes them interesting, and what makes them art.
Since the last half of this book is devoted to animation, I'll leave this discussion until then. The key is to remember that animation is also a means to a finished project, and will obviously undergo revision after it is rendered. When all of the rough footage from animations is finally done, you will probably have a variety of QuickTime, AVI, or other formatted "clips" (depending on how many shots are planned in your storyboard). The time has come to figure out which parts of the animation are truly needed to drive the story, and which need to be left on the virtual cutting floor.
We all fall in love with our projects, especially when we are pleased with a new technique we learned or when it is going well over all. However, audiences do not always share our love of new found techniques, and are usually bored if the elements we include do not facilitate in pushing the story forward. Plan some good time for editing. Good editing does not come quickly or easily, and usually several different editing sessions are needed to trim away unnecessary clips that made it past the storyboard cutting stages.
