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.

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: On-demand
Level: Beginner
Lessons: 12
Duration: 30+ hours
Format: Video on-demand
Tools: Maya, Nuke, Arnold
Prerequisites: Introduction to Maya 1001
Course Access Time: Lifetime

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.
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.
Week 03.1. Planning our Shoot

In this lesson, we will plan our shoot and also capture a series of set reference HDRIs and panoramas.
Week 03.2. Capturing the Shots

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.
Week 03.3. Shoot Summary

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.
Week 04.01. Organising our Onset Data

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 prepping our onset data into organised folders.
Week 04.02. Processing our HDRIs, Panoramas, Lightmaps and Photoscan

Here, we'll process our studio HDRIs and panoramas. We'll then look at creating HDR lightmaps and processing our photoscan of the set.
Week 04.03. Processing our Shot Data

In this lesson, we'll look at prepping our shot data in Resolve and Nuke and our shot-captured HDRIs. We'll then package up the data, alongside the shot geometry and first pass camera lineup, to be passed on to the Lighting department.
Week 04.04. Creating our v001 Handover Package for Lighting

Now that we've processed our onset data, let's look at packaging the data for Lighting. Here, we'll organise our processed shoot data, prep our Nuke file and the set scans, block out our camera placement in Maya, and create a handover package.
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.
Week 06. Extracting our Lights from the HDRI

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.
Week 07. Render Layers, Reference Balls and Light Map Updates

In this lesson, we'll continue developing our light rig by matching the grey and chrome spheres. Using the spheres, we'll adjust the exposure and colour of our light maps, whilst using the Render Layers toolkit to work efficiently.
Week 08. Creating our Maya Render Template and Nuke Slapcomp Template

In this lesson, we'll develop our Maya render template so we can easily update our scene and output passes, and look at creating a lighting slapcomp template in Nuke for easy assessment of our renders and supe reviews.
Week 09. Projection Workflows

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.
Week 10. Assessing our Lighting and Real-World Shot Examples

In this lesson, we'll assess our lighting and look at how we can use our Nuke lighting template to adjust our lighting. Following on from this, we'll explore a number of real-world shots and how they were lit.
Week 11. AOVs and Dealing with Noise

In this lesson, we'll look at updating our assets to include textures and look at how we can deal with render noise.
Week 12. Bringing it all Together, AOVs and Basic Compositing

In this lesson, we'll bring all the elements together, render out AOVs, create a basic comp and push our shot by macthing white and black levels, colours, adding lens distortion and grain.
Bonus. Introduction to Lighting in Maya and Arnold

This lesson will introduce you to the Arnold Lighting tools in Maya.
Bonus. Introduction to Compositing in Nuke

This lesson will introduce the concepts of composting in Nuke.
Bonus. Shooting HDRIs and Panoramas

In this lesson, we’ll cover the process of shooting HDRIs with a full-frame Canon camera, a fisheye lens and a Ninja Nodal for the purposes of lighting. Following on from shooting HDRIs, we'll focus on using similar techniques to capture panoramas for the use of texturing, camera projections and digital matte painting.

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, Mr. 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.

Course Fee: £399.99

Format: Video on-demand

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Lighting Fundamentals for VFX 2025

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

This course will introduce you to the principles of digital lighting to create film quality images