Hello everyone!
Recently, I've been experimenting with various lighting techniques for anime-style 3D characters, so I'd like to share some of my findings.
The thing is, I've been bothered for a while by how anime-style 3D characters tend to become dark or look dull when you apply colored lighting to them.
What I was aiming for was the atmosphere of lighting you see in TV music shows. I worked on creating something that would be a middle ground between realistic and anime-style visuals.
Focusing on Light Expression
This time, I particularly focused on the expression of "light" itself.
You often see spotlights and beam lights in 3D live scenes, but personally, I often feel like they look somewhat dull or muted.
It feels more like fog than light. Like everything is wrapped in mist, you know?
So I experimented with various approaches to make it feel more like actual light.
Rather than changing the screen contrast, I made it so the changes happen through the lighting itself. I think the light rays no longer become dull when they pass through the scene.
I also made changes to the character lighting.
When you simply try to add color to anime-style 3D characters with lights, they tend to become dark.
So I adjusted the lighting to be able to add color while maintaining the luminance.
By applying blue color while maintaining luminance, the characters no longer become dark.
I also worked on the lighting to add dimensionality to the characters.
This is designed so that dimensionality comes from the lighting effects without changing the shaders.
By doing this, it can be used universally without having to change shaders for each character, which I think is pretty convenient. I'm planning to write about the detailed technical aspects in a separate article.
I haven't quite reached the expression I'm completely satisfied with yet, but I've gotten the basic design to a pretty good point, so I thought I'd summarize it for now. I guess this will do for now!