FIGHT NIGHTS!! - Foot meets Face (and an update!) (Patreon)

I swear there is a magnetic pull between inept fighters faces and their superior's soles. Clara here could probably identify any fighter on the roster just by inspecting the winkles between their toes (and no doubt the taste of the sweat)....

Editorial - Apologies output has reduced lately, I've been experimenting with different lighting techniques and its become a frustratingly slow 'adjust and render' process with no real clear improvements. For any renderers out there, My normal process is to use a HDRI and section planes to do most of the illumination and then add some simple planes out of sight to simulate where the lights would naturally come from. Whilst this gives good coverage, i find the images look a little washed out and artificial as the primary light doesn't come from overhead spot lights as you would see in reality. I guess one of main limiting factors with IRAY (and presumably with similar engines) is they don't bounce the light too well so unless a character is facing directly at it, the light falloff is too pronounced; crank up the wattage and everything else gets washed out. Also, with 'global' lighting its harder to create special effects such as god rays, images with indoor/outdoor areas, dark/moody environments (and don't get me started when you use section planes and want to do a shot from directly overhead!) 

My goal is to use mesh lighting and dispense with environmental lighting (unless its to simulate actual natural light) whilst overcoming the issues above. The work flow i think will be create lighting in the environment that you would in reality and then use some 'trick' ghost lighting to mimic the bounce lighting and get rid of any weird shadows the 'real' light often creates. 

My main motivation for making there changes now (and all you non renderers if you've made it this far can wake up!) is I'm thinking up a few stories which will see action outside of the ring and arena where the lighting is very controllable.

Would be interesting to hear anyone elses' experiences with lighting and if anyone has any techniques/advice they're willing to share. Also, in terms of story output, happy to hear any ideas. I'm trying to think of a scenario which can be 'serialised' which includes fighting, kink, and bare feet! lol. The fighting world obviously ticks all these boxes but always looking for other ideas....