Who am I ?

Hi everyone, welcome ! My name is Chris Brejon. I am a lighting supervisor with 20 years of experience in the Computer Graphics (CG) industry. After many years traveling the globe from one studio to another (Animal Logic, Weta Digital, Illumination, Framestore, Ilion…), I think this is the right time for me to share my knowledge.

What is this book about ?

I started to write this book in February 2017 as a simple Google doc. Over the years it grew to over 130 pages and the feedback from my colleagues was pretty positive. In October 2019, I decided to make my book available to everyone for for free.

This book will not teach you Maya, Guerilla Render or any software because there are already dozens of websites doing that. I want to talk about timeless principles and how to apply them in CG lighting. Hopefully I will be able to go beyond the ultimate answer to everything: “it depends” and provide some personal insights.

Marc Bigeast, a former teacher at Supinfocom, once told me: “As a general rule, one shall speak about what he knows.”

This is what I am trying to do with this book.

Requirements

During my writing, I have assumed that most readers are used to work with a modern render engine using global illumination and physically-based rendering (PBR). If you are not, I would invite you to get familiar with these notions first.

From the Substance PBR guide: “Key characteristics of PBR are energy conservation, fresnel, specular controlled by the BRDF and lighting calculcations are in linear. […] PBR removes the guesswork and provides a workflow for creating consistent artwork, […] assets will look accurate in all lighting conditions.”

Why a book about Cinematography ?

• Because you can definitely teach lighting ! It is a skill that you can learn through theory and practice, conversely to what some people say.
• To share a vocabulary : if someone asks you to do a “counterchange” or a “shatner light“, it is easier to understand these cultural references.
• Because no matter where I work, Australia, France or Canada, I generally see the same challenges: holistic approach, rough to fine, sequence lighting…
• Because 90% of CG movies want the same “Pixar look“ with a PBR approach and path tracing, we can definitely come up with some rules.

Pixel Cinematography: The use of words alone is inadequate to describe visual concepts.

I’ll do my best to use real examples to illustrate my thoughts.

Really ? Some rules ?

These rules are here to help you, NOT to limit your creativity. They have guided me successfully on different productions such as “Planet 51“, “The secret life of pets” or “Lego Batman“.Traveling the world from one studio to another has allowed me to take notes comparing workflows, and I have come up with this “universal” recipe.

This book mostly concerns PBR cartoon movies. If you want to do cell-shading or stylized rendering, it will probably not help you as much. This a critical point: I will mainly focus on Hollywood cartoon movies with a budget of approximately 70 million dollars.

Finally, it is important to note that each production and each company have their OWN needs, culture or budget. So you definitely want to adjust these rules depending on your art direction, schedule and render farm resources.

Great quote from the Substance PBR guide: “it is important to know the principles and use the guidelines without being slaves to them.“

Truth.

Acknowledgements

You can use the best shaders and algorithms but in the end, it always comes down to the people you are working with. They are the ones whom I stole these rules from. This book would not have been possible without these AMAZING people:

• Sandip Kalsy and Matthias Menz both work at Weta Digital. Their amazing masterclass on cinematography had a major influence on me.
• Barbara Meyers was the Lighting Supervisor on Planet 51 at Ilion Animation Studio. She gave me my first job in the industry and taught me about the “top Light”.
• Alfonso Caparrini was my lead on “Planet 51″ and is now working at Pixar Animation Studios. He was the first to teach me how to shape a character and to light a shot.
• Thierry Noblet was my lighting supervisor on “The Secret Life of Pets” at Illumination. He introduced me to this amazing technique called “Sequence Lighting“.
• Victor Pajot was my Lead on “Minions” and is now a lighting supervisor at Illumination. He has been very patient and supportive of me over the years.
• Craig Welsh was my Lighting Supervisor on “Lego Batman” at Animal Logic. His dedication, generosity and love of cinematography made this movie a memorable experience. His blog is the best thing I have ever read in our industry.
• Grant Freckelton was Production Designer on “Lego Batman” and he just blew me away with his genius vision.

I owe these people so much.

Last but no least

I would also like to thank:

• Nicolas Prothais is an animator at Disney. His knowledge and skills have been very helpful for the writing of this book.
• Alex Fry for his help and availability. The Gotham Lens is the best Nuke node I have ever seen.
• Benjamin Legros and Philippe Llerena from Mercenaries for creating the best Render Engine I have ever used: Guerilla Render.
• Jonathan W. Rodegher for reading the book, correcting mistakes and helping me on chapters 5 and 10 about layering and compositing. His help has been much appreciated.
• Tristan Le Granché for pointing out many mistakes and improving the book overall. His requirement level was very motivating.
• Andrew Hepp, Damir Filipovic, Samuel Maniscalco and Paolo Giordana: my Animal buddies for their support !

Production proof

The purpose of this book is simple: to highlight the BEST of each studio I have worked at. All the concepts we are going to see in the next chapters have been used and validated on many feature films. I have come up with my own recipes, but remember that it is up to YOU to come with yours as well. I hope you will enjoy the journey we are about to start together !

In a way, I am now passing the torch to you.

Cinematography experience

We do NOT talk that much about cinematography for animated feature films. This is probably my main frustration in the industry. On Planet 51, I used to joke about: “we talk more about air conditioning and specular highlight than lighting.“

In most studios the lighting crew barely evokes the story when starting a sequence. Generally our main concern is to have a readable and pleasant image with nice colors and shaping on the characters. I wish it were different, but we are not there yet.

As Alberto Mielgo used to state on his website: “however mainstream animation industry is boring. EXTREMELY boring. […] We work on solid boring pipelines to produce the same safe, family friendly films to sell Happy Meals and toys at Walmart“. However some new producers in the industry may start changing things…

There is only one project where I have worked with a “real” cinematographer: Grant Freckelton on “Lego Batman“. Therefore I will try to focus on my own experience, what I have seen directly with my own eyes.

What is CG Cinematography ?

A cinematographer is responsible for the look of a movie. In CG, he may be called  “Production Designer”, “Lighting Supervisor” or “Art Director” depending on the studio or production. He has four main tools available to make his work:

• Light (direction, intensity, hard/soft…)
• Color (contrast, brightness, saturation, grading, artificial, natural, acid…)
• Camera (steady, zoom, dolly, lenses, focal, depth-of-field, long, medium or close-up shot, ratio…)
• Film Stock (picture formation, size, color, brightness of the noise, temperature…)

It is not rare to have two cinematographers on a movie: one for camera work (layout) and one for lighting (photography).

The cinematography language is based on context:

• The moment (where/when, night/day, interior/exterior, weather…)
• The characters (rich/poor, emotional/intellectual, emotional journey, story arc…)
• The intention (what message to convey ? Which emotion should feel the viewer ?)

While we assume that computer graphics do have things in common with live-action and 2d, 3d is also a specific visual language. With its own rules and particularities.

How are we going to use all of these tools to tell a story in the best possible way ? Hopefully this book will help you achieving that. Thanks for reading !

Copyright disclaimer

I am showing many movie examples in this FREE guide. The doctrine of fair use should apply here:

• Non profit educational purpose.
• Borrowing small bits of material.
• No harm done to the copyright owner’s ability to profit.
• Reproduction of the work is for commentary and criticism.

For legal reasons, I have to put this notice in the front page of my book. I will be using some examples from Dave Walvoord‘s talk at Siggraph 2019.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author. Copyright is held by the owner/author(s). SIGGRAPH ’19 Courses, July 28 – August 01, 2019, Los Angeles, CA, USA ACM 978-1-4503-6307-5/19/07. 10.1145/3305366.3328063