Faking it

This week I have been working with a light rig to fake global illumination and continuing with project work.

Fakey, fakey

I spent some time at the beginning of the week exploring techniques for faking global illumination. Using a dome light rig I managed get pretty close to the IBL render, in terms of the overall lighting effect, as shown below. The main post image is the IBL version. (Note, both images should be considered work-in-progress).

I also investigated file formats, as I was curious about the diskspace vs CPU compression overhead. It was interesting to see just how much of a difference in size there was between the formats; with TGA using over 150 times as much diskspace as PNG in my test scenario. That was definitely more of a difference than I was expecting, with some massive implications on I/O and RAM usage when compositing. Food for thought.

Expressing myself

On the project side, things have been progressing. This week I wrote an expression to automatically rotate and wobble the wheels of a train, which I should be able to use in an animation very soon.

Much to my annoyance, I found that I couldn't use some previously filmed footage due to a lack of additional plates to use for faking reflections on a metallic object. So back to the drawing board for that one. When I say drawing board I really mean let's break out the camera and film it again. Another lesson learned.