Collecting

So over the past week I have been collecting as much research as possible.

I subscribe to 3D Artist magazine which has lots of tutorials inside. I have literally ripped out all the tutorials to do with lighting with lighting in Maya and 3DS Max and filed and archived them (after reading them of course). Even though some of it is not relevant, it has given me a good insight into lighting and a better understanding.

The next thing I am going to do is to do some of these tutorials to get some desired effects because HDRI lighting begins with good lighting setups.

I have also managed to find a book called the HDRI Handbook. There is a new version coming out in August which is obviously too late so the first version will have to do. It is still a very good starting point. From the reviews, I have discovered that it is for photographers and CG artist so thought it would be a good idea to get hold of it and have a read. I have actually bought the book because I have not been able to find anyone that has it or a library with it in. It will be useful to have anyway as I am interested in photography so can only improve that as well.

Talking of libraries, I went to the library at Ravensbourne but had no clue where to start. There are lots of books about lighting but almost none that were relative to CG. I had a good root around but then decided to go elsewhere. All the books I found were far too big to rifle through, especially as not even a chapter would help.

I have also looked at some photography magazines. This was mainly to get a better understanding of HDR. The CG tutorials and magazines tend to not explain what it is as they assume you know. I looked into articles about HDR images just to get a good basic understanding of HDR. I did not really learn much as I knew what it was already but it helped me understand how to explain it better.

I have looked on the internet for existing tutorials. I have found several but they are very hard to understand. This is purely due to the technical language. I have no idea what most of them are saying most of the time so I soon realised that the first port of call was to look up some of the vocabulary.

This is my main focus for the next week. That and getting a simple scene setup so I can play around with some basic lighting tutorials to then build up to creating a HDRI lit scene.