Lighting Study for VFX Pipeline

The main goal of this project was to understand and practice lighting a CG element for integration into a VFX pipeline. I was provided with a plate, an HDRI, and footage containing both spheres.

I began by painting out most of the lights in the HDRI using Nuke to isolate the environment light for the shot. Then, I cropped the original HDRI to separate each light into a square aspect ratio and added an alpha channel to each. This allowed me to use them as Arnold HDRI Quad Lights inside Katana.

After setting up the lighting, I matched the CG spheres to the provided plates to ensure the CG prop would integrate seamlessly into the shot. Finally, I completed the compositing of the CG elements inside Nuke.