Let There be Lights!

Today was my first few days on Cinematography. Right off the bat I was being exposed to words I hear all the time but had no real idea what they meant. Shaders, albedo, occlusion, light maps, masks, tiling, and a bewildering array of more. It’ll be a long while before I really get what these mean, but being able to adjust their parameters in real time is giving me some intuitive ideas about them.

I was introduced to the concept of a light probe. A “simple” one like this looks almost digestible, but an example of a full version was absolutely mind blowing. The amount of work and detail that needs to go into just getting the lights working in a simulated environment is truly hard to take in.

Right now, I am hoping that what I am seeing is really just the equivalent of the first time someone sees a giant mixing console, before realizing that it is mostly just learning the first first channel and then knowing that its just duplicated 31 or 47 or however many more times, for the most part. But its a lot to take in! Seems a lot to keep track of and even form a useful prediction with.

And then there are reflection probes.

Throughout this course, something that draws my attention again and again is processing cost. Working in the audio engineering field, I am constantly aware, as things have to be calculated at least 44 THOUSAND times per second(!), that any small inefficiency is going to mean latency, or clicks, pops and garbling of the audio. I long realized we had an ally in game development, who had similar concerns, especially around lights, shadows and number of shapes, among other video factors. Once upon a time, a well developed digital audio workstation computer was completely opposite one set to run 3d games, as DPC latency was thru the roof to allow for these graphics, but today, they are much more aligned, and lately, we even use the GPU to render graphics in audio plugins. Watching these techniques to maximize efficiency in game lighting is eye opening.

Again, we are onto this whole “clever” thing. So many ways to make the viewer see what the developer wants them to see, without actually drawing it! Familiar territory indeed.