It was good to be back with the DFX students at National Film & Television School recently, where CAVE Academy delivered Onset Data Acquisition training. Over a couple of days, we covered shooting HDRIs and environment textures.
It is always nice to work on a fantastic looking set (in this case designed by Production Design students at the NFTS) to give the VFX students more of an understanding of real-world application. It also allows you to see how VFX artists can learn from set designers when building CG sets.
A few examples being: you only need to build what will be seen by camera, build physical sets with different levels of details, and most of it is painted plywood!
So if you are wondering why your CG metal wall shader does not respond to light in a similar manner to the metal wall from the film plate, then maybe, just maybe, it was never metal in the first place!
Thanks again to Ian Murphy for the invite.
