Lighting Fundamentals for VFX 2025

This course will introduce you to the fundamentals of lighting for VFX.

Course schedule
28.04.2025 - 18.07.2025
Tutor
Brian Chinnery
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This course will introduce you to the principles of digital lighting to create film quality images

Lighting Fundamentals for VFX is a live/online course where we will take you through the process of capturing your own set of VFX data, creating a HDRI and a series of lightmaps from bracketed photography and then pushing the HDRI through a VFX pipeline for shot lighting.

For those that cannot make the live/online sessions, they will be recorded and uploaded to the CAVE platform, so you’ll be able to work through the teaching at your own pace.

 

 

This involves grading the HDRI, extracting individual lights, match lighting th HDRI to a shot using the grey and chrome spheres. We’ll also look at creating a Nuke template for processing the HDRI and for shot lighting.

 

 

To also improve the overall lighting, we’ll cover plate projections, AOVs and renderLayers. Lastly, we’ll cover creating a basic comp, black and white levels, lens distortion and adding grain to the shot.

 

 

This course is the part of our CAVE 2025 Summer Programme, and continues on from our Spring Term where we teach you how to build an asset and push it through the VFX pipeline to create a number of believable shots. You can enrol on this course as a standalone, or if you’d like to develop a wider skillset, you can do so by joining us for Term 1 on Modelling Props for VFX 2025  and  Surfacing Props for VFX 2025.

 

Throughout the course, we’ll be exploring real-world lighting, and running a number of experiments to garner a better understanding behind the physics of light. By doing so, you’ll be able to design your lighting with greater purpose and implement this into your digital lighting workflow.

Students who enrol on the course will also have access to our on-demand course, Introduction to Maya 1001, to ensure you are ready for the course from the offset.

Industry Support

We are happy to announce that this course is being supported by Foundry. For students enrolling on the course, you’ll be provided with a 95% discount for Foundry products.

Throughout the course, we’ll also have guest speakers from a number of VFX studios joining us to provide you with an industry perspective on Lighting for VFX.

Course Details

  • Type: Online
  • Level: Beginner
  • Format: Live Zoom meetings
  • Term 2: Summer
  • Duration: 12 weeks
  • Schedule: 28th April 2025 - 18th July 2025
  • Workshop Session: 3hrs. Date TBC.
  • Feedback Session: 2hrs. Date TBC.
  • Tools: Maya, Nuke, Arnold
  • Prerequisites: Introduction to Maya 1001
  • Course Access Time: Lifetime

Learn production-tested techniques for processing HDRIs and using the data for VFX shot lighting

Industry partners

Lessons in this course

  • Week 01. How Lighting fits into the VFX Pipeline

    We'll kick things off by exploring how lighting fits into the VFX pipeline and the inputs and outputs we are expected to deal with when looking to render our CG elements for compositing.
    Available on: 2025.04.28 9:00 am

  • Week 02. The Physics of Light

    Before we get a little too carried away in CG land, let's take a step back and explore the physics of light. By doing so, we'll be able to better manipulate our digital lights and follow workflows established by the onset crew.
    Available on: 2025.05.05 9:00 am

  • Week 03. Capturing Onset Data for VFX Lighting

    In this lesson, we will capture a standard lighting dataset for a VFX shoot. We'll look at shooting the main plate, reference plates, the HDRI, photogrammetry, set measurements and reference photography of the light rig.
    Available on: 2025.05.12 9:00 am

  • Week 04. Prepping our Onset Lighting Reference

    In this lesson, we'll look at what a lighter can expect to be provided with for a VFX shot for lighting. This includes the set scan, witness cameras, HDRIs and additional onset reference. We'll also look at creating a first pass of our latlong HDRI map.
    Available on: 2025.05.19 9:00 am

  • Week 05. Refining our HDRI in Nuke

    Here we will look at setting up the Nuke template to further push our HDRI. We'll also cover how to extract lights and grade the HDRI. We'll then move on to testing the light rig using the grey and chrome sphere and aligning the lighting to the shot reference.
    Available on: 2025.05.26 9:00 am

  • Week 06. Blocking our Shot and Rendering our AOVs

    Now that we have a first pass HDRI, let's look at bringing all the elements of the shot together to create a first pass render and output our AOVs for testing in comp.
    Available on: 2025.06.02 9:00 am

  • Week 07. Creating a Basic Lighting/Comp Template for Testing

    In this lesson, we'll create a template in Nuke using our AOVs to test our lighting and check we have all the relevant AOVs needed for the comp.
    Available on: 2025.06.09 9:00 am

  • Week 08. Refining the Light Rig and Plate Projections

    With our HDRI good to go, we'll look at refining our light rig by taking advantage of blockers and gobos. We'll also look at setting up a relighting workflow in Nuke along with using plate projections for more believable lighting.
    Available on: 2025.06.16 9:00 am

  • Week 09. Balancing Render Noise and Render Times

    With the bulk of our shot lighting coming together, let's take a look at how to how remove render noise whilst maintaining a decent render time.
    Available on: 2025.06.23 9:00 am

  • Week 10. Procedural and Deep Render Layers and Creating a Deep Slap Comp

    In this lesson, we'll look at creating rendersLayers using wildcards and material overrides. We will also look at deep render layers and then how to go about using them in Nuke.
    Available on: 2025.06.30 9:00 am

  • Week 11. Bringing it all Together and Basic Compositing

    In this lesson, we'll bring all the elements together, create a basic comp and push our shot by macthing white and black levels, colours, adding lens distortion and grain.
    Available on: 2025.07.07 9:00 am

  • Week 12. Finalising our Lighting for Review

    In this final lesson, we'll look at making our final lighting tweaks, creating a slapcomp and submitting the results for review.
    Available on: 2025.07.14 9:00 am

Course Information

  • Course Type: Live, Online Zoom meetings
  • Schedule: 28th April 2025 - 18th July 2025
  • Workshop Session: 3hrs. Date TBC.
  • Feedback Session: 2hrs. Date TBC.

Tutor: Brian Chinnery

Lighting Supervisor

Brian Chinnery has worked in CG since 2010, first in advertising as a generalist and then as a lighting artist in VFX movie projects for companies such as MPC, Scanline VFX and ReDefine/DNEG. On the teaching side Brian has worked for Technicolor Academy, ( at the time the official training program of MPC, Mister X and The Mill ), where he trained multiple classes of recent graduates and artists to become lighting artists in one of those companies. Passionate ( some people say: obsessed) about lookdev and lighting, when he doesen't do CG you can find him stuck looking ad the caustics on a glass, or taking pictures with his camera.

Early Bird Offer: save 20%

Enrol before 20th April: £334.99 (Standard Course Fee: £419.99)

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FAQs

  • How will this course be delivered?
    This course will be delivered live and online via Zoom. Each week, we'll run 1 workshop session and 1 feedback/Q&A session. On occasions, you may be presented with some pre-recorded content (for example, if we are on an external shoot) but for the most part, the primary content will be delivered live.
  • What day and time is the live workshop?
    Date TBC.
  • What day and time is the live feedback/review session?
    Date TBC.
  • If I cannot make the live sessions, will they be recorded and made available for viewing later on?
    Yes. All live sessions will be recorded and made available on the course lesson page. This usually takes us around 24hrs to edit and upload the video recordings.
  • Can we pay in instalments?
    Yes, depending on the length of the course, you can pay an initial deposit and then spread the remainder of the cost over a series of months. If you are enrolling on multiple courses, we'd be more than happy to create a custom payment plan for you.
  • Is there a discount if we purchase multiple line/online courses?
    Yes, we are happy to offer a 10% discount per course for enrolling on 2 courses, and a 20% discount per course when enrolling on 3 or more courses. Please get in touch for more info.
  • Will we have lifetime access to the recorded course content?
    Yes, you will have lifetime access to the course content via our CAVE platform.
  • Will we be required to complete exercises?
    Each week, we'll be setting an exercise. You will be treated as adults, so it will be on you to complete the exercises. We understand that time is precious and you may have other commitments, which result in you missing an exercise or possibly falling behind. If so, do get in touch and we'll be more than happy to support you in catching up and developing your skills. We will be using SyncSketch for the review sessions, of which you will be able to access as a CAVE Academy student.
  • Will there be a final assignment?
    Each course will have a slightly different outcome but overall, yes, you will be tasked with creating an 'output' for each course. For Modelling, this may be a final model plus model turntable renders. For a Concept Art based course, this might be a series of production quality images. For every course, you will have an output for your portfolio (should your work be signed off by the tutor).
  • Will any support be provided outside of the live sessions?
    Yes - we use Discord for out of class discussions and if you have any other issues, you are more than welcome to send us an email directly. And if required, we'd be more than happy to catch up via a one-to-one Zoom session.
  • Will there be any support after the course has finished?
    We'll be more than happy to continue supporting students after the duration of the course as they work on their final assignment.
  • Will data be provided for the courses?
    Yes - we'll be providing data where required and dependent on the course. The majority of our course content is project-based and created using CAVE IP (scripts, concepts, models, textures, HDRIs, video footage, etc.) of which you will have access to. Please note that the data should not be shared externally for any purpose.
  • Will software be provided for the course?
    Where possible, we will provide software at student rates. For example, for any students enrolled on our live/online courses, we can provide access to the Adobe and Substance Suite, and students are able to access the Foundry products at student rates (95% discount). We will also be providing access to Flow Production Tracking (ShotGrid) and SyncSketch. We are in discussion with Maxon and Autodesk for student licences but currently cannot provide these apps.
  • Will we be working within a specific colour space?
    We will be working within an ACEScg colour space with an sRGB viewing LUT (out of the box Maya 2022+ setup).

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