3D Lighting: History, Concepts, and Techniques (With CD-ROM) (Graphics Series) [Hardcover]

Arnold Gallardo (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 15, 2000 | ISBN-10: 1584500387 | ISBN-13: 978-1584500384 | Edition: 1st

Is there something missing from your 3D images? Do they lack vibrancy and realism? If so, the problem may not be with your images, but with the lighting behind them. Mastering the art of lighting in 3D graphics is a challenge facing even the most experienced professionals. With the hands-on techniques and guidelines provided in these pages, however, you'll learn to illuminate your work and add new depth and detail to your images. From the history of lighting, to the detailed fundamentals of 3D graphics, all of the concepts needed to improve or refresh your lighting skills are covered. The general lighting techniques and information provided will serve as an indispensable and timeless resource.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The majority of computer graphics books are either too general or too application-specific. The field of 3-D computer graphics possesses tremendous depth, and any aspect of it is worthy of a focused career. In large studios, artists concentrate on just one phase of production, be it modeling, texturing, animation, or rendering. If you're interested in learning about the field from this perspective, read 3-D Lighting: History, Concepts & Techniques. It's a pleasure to peruse, because it shares the large-studio focus.

The book does feature examples, project files, and some instructions for specific applications, but mostly it's about concept and theory in computer imaging. For the most part, it avoids application-specific discussion. This is a good thing--any experienced artist uses more than one application, and can easily port this information from one app to another.

There are eight chapters in all, starting with "The Nature of Light" (how light works) and "The Physiology of Seeing and Perception" (how we see light), and moving on to "Fundamentals of Photography and Cinematography" and "Color and Materials." But it isn't until chapter 5, "Computer Graphics," that the book gets into the specifics of how 3-D applications treat light and color.

These first five out of eight chapters are only the first 130 pages of the book. The remaining three chapters, encompassing over 310 pages, are the heart of the book: basic lighting, applied techniques, and dealing with various lighting situations. Filled with numerous specific and conceptual examples, these three chapters describe techniques and principles that can be applied to virtually any scene using any program. It would be fair to call this section of the book... enlightening.

Breaking away from a computer-centric mentality, the book's Appendix A discusses the physiology of the human eye--its physical makeup, how it works, and how it converts what it sees to a signal understandable to the human brain. Appendix B offers a short history of photography, including how the focused image is burned into the chemical surface of the receiving plate.

The only real drawback of this book is its lack of color images. While there is an eight-page color plate section in the middle, this is hardly enough to sustain a book that's devoted to lighting and color theory. And, although the accompanying CD-ROM includes most, if not all, of the pictures used in the book, it is not nearly as helpful as having color pictures in the text. The liberal use of black-and-white images throughout the book is almost an insult to a book about color and light.

While application-specific reference books have their place, there are far too few that focus on specific concepts. Lighting is as important as texturing, animation, and rendering, and 3-D Lighting: History, Concepts & Techniques is thoroughly important to the field. --Mike Caputo

Review

"...the ultimate reference guide for learning the why's and how's of lighting scenes in your 3D application...[A] must-have book..." -- Richard H. Schrand, Technical Reviewer

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 489 pages
• Publisher: Charles River Media; 1st edition (January 15, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1584500387
• ISBN-13: 978-1584500384
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 7.8 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,753,083 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Wish it had been more useful..., April 5, 2001

By 

Jens Hass (San Jose, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: 3D Lighting: History, Concepts, and Techniques (With CD-ROM) (Graphics Series) (Hardcover)

This book looks and reads so much like a textbook that it made me think back to my high school biology class. It's a big solid book, and walks through definitions of a lot of terms and concepts, but unfortunately it wasn't very useful or relevant to rendering 3D scenes.

I wish that more of the sections had been tied together or made relevant to 3D graphics. For example, the lengthy chapter on the anatomy of a human eye could have been copied from an encyclopedia or anatomy book, and just seemed pasted-in to this book, without leading into any conclusions or techniques related to making your own images.

Some of the most important parts of the lighting process (that I'd like to do more of in my projects!) weren't covered at all - there was nothing about matching the lighting from real-life background or combining and compositing your renders with real footage, there was nothing about casting and receiving shadows and reflections from real-world scenes, or rendering multiple layers and compositing them to build more realistic surfaces.

The actual images and sample scenes in the book were very basic - the author never moves to anything more sophisticated than lighting that same statue head and model of his desk scene, none of the images in the book are any more challenging or professional. (I give this book 2 stars to reward the author's effort, but if I were grading this book on how useful it was to me I only would have given it only 1 star, because it didn't teach anything new or useful.)

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent depth of information, and a gem of a reference., December 27, 2000

By 

Elizabeth (Baker, LA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: 3D Lighting: History, Concepts, and Techniques (With CD-ROM) (Graphics Series) (Hardcover)

It is rare to find a single book, especially one that relates to some aspect of working with computer graphics, that covers its topic as thoroughly as this one. Too many books that I have read devote only a small and very basic section to lighting 3D scenes. Because of this, I believe many aspiring 3D artists view lighting as just that--illumination. Already this book is changing my perspective on the importance of careful consideration when lighting a scene, and to use light not only to illuminate objects but also to flavor a scene with mood and style. Rather than only teach you where and how to place lights, you will learn something of real light behavior, color theory, photography, and more, as they apply to 3D lighting.

The tutorials are well-done and not unnecessarily numerous. Although mostly in black-and-white, the images throughout the book are excellent, and the CD thankfully includes color versions of the book images as well as demos and plug-ins.

I would recommend this book to anyone, regardless of experience, especially if you have considered scene lighting to be a "final touch" more than an integral part of scene design.

3.0 out of 5 stars Great insights but a caution to 3d Max 4 users, October 3, 2001

By 

DJM (Cambridge, MA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: 3D Lighting: History, Concepts, and Techniques (With CD-ROM) (Graphics Series) (Hardcover)

I found Mr Gallardo's book extremely informative on the history, theories and science of light. Also, the light array models used in the tutorials gave me some nice insights for my own work.
Unfortunatley when I went to use the tutorials I found that the required plug-ins of the third party texture creator (Dark Tree) didn't work with 3D Max 4. The demo for the upgrade of this product wasn't available and I had to try to simulate the tutorial using Max's on material editor. I'm dissappointed that the author did not use these materials in the first place. I would also caution anyone utilizing these tutorials to have a decent computer to run them on. Some of the exercises use a lot of grouped lights along with raytracing and it can take some time to see the results.