REVERSION Feature: Principles of Set Lighting

Today, we will be releasing the second VFX document "Principles of Set Lighting".
For me, though, the alternate title could very well be: "Principles of Scene Coloring".

For REVERSION, we wanted the images to appear "serious" but we knew we didn't want them to be photo-real.  This is partially by choice, but also partially due to the fact that we knew our limited resources wouldn't allow us to attain full photo-realism.

To that end, we took our inspiration more from how light and shadow is treated in traditional animation where they are literally "just colors" and how Stage plays use colored lamps to create atmosphere in spite of the limitations of sets on a stage.  We took note of these and then leveraged two strengths of using CG animation: 1) limitless scale for detail 2) limitless color control.

We called this approach: "Starting with the Art instead of Reality".

The document will show you research and implementation to do this type of lighting.  I do not think every film can use this technique.  But it was definitely a good technique for REVERSION.  It also reduced our reliance on time-consuming features like Ray-Tracing.

What is not mentioned I think in this document is that we also relied on a lot of "Color Scripts".  Painted images that help baseline the look of each scene.  This allows the Art to have precedence over Reality.

Here is the second VFX document: "Principles of Set Lighting"

(Click on Thumbnails for Full-Size Images)

Are you ready for the trailer premiere?  So are we.  Just ten days to go before our trailer hits the web.
 

In the meantime, we have two new stills from the new 11-minute short film.  The first image shows our Unknown Soldier accessing a panel at what is clearly the lobby that we revealed in our earliest updates.
 

The second image is taken from another part of REVERSION and shows a portion of the interior of the Security Room.  This is a place where "sonar video records" (SVR's) are retained, as well as conventional real-time video surveillance. 

In the film, sonar recordings of all angles of an event (where you can look around an event from a single recording) play a key role in the film.

Some Stills From the Short Film

Click on Thumbnails for Full-Size Images

With the 30-second trailer for REVERSION set to hit the web middle of April 2012, we will begin showing some stills from the final 11-minute film.

The stills above are taken from two separate points in time while the Soldier is exploring the now-abandoned Ethercorp facility.  The danger lurks somewhere in the corridors, maybe even behind the walls...