There is more to lighting a scene than simply running a simulation of real-world parameters. You strive to achieve certain visual goals so that viewer appreciates the scene. How the lighting will enhance or detract from a shot depends on how well you accomplish these goals.

1)      Making Things Read

3D rendering is a process of producing two-dimensional images that depict three-dimensional scenes much like photography, cinematography, and painting. You need to define your models with careful lighting To give your renderings solidity and presence, and to fully communicate the 3D form of an object or character to an audience. This process is called modeling with light, because it is your 3D lighting that defines object’s 3D form.

2)      Make Things Believable

There are many visual styles in which a Computer graphics can be rendered. Some projects require photorealism while other projects are stylized to create more illustrated or cartoon-like looks. However, whether or not the visual style you adopt is photorealistic, your lighting still needs to be believable to the audience.

For example, if there is a beam of direct sunlight entering a room, the viewer expects the sunlight to be brighter than the light of a table lamp.

Key to creating believable lighting is studying real life. Photographers can go on become a good Lighting artists. Before you begin with lighting a scene , try to study how light behaves in situations similar to what you will be rendering.

Collect reference images that you can study to see how color and light would appear in a real scene.Your collection of reference images can be useful throughout your project to compare with your renderings as you design and adjust your lighting.

To make the scene believable artist should compensate for the failures, flaws, and limitations inherent in your rendering software

3)      Enhance your Shaders and Effects

You add lights to a scene to help communicate the identity of different surfaces and materials. For example, you might create a light to add highlights to a character’s eyes to make them look wet. You can create many effects by adjusting surfaces and textures on 3D objects. By careful lighting you can bring out shader’s best attributes. For eg – You create a gold ring and test the shader before you start lighting a scene. It is the duty of Lighting artist to ensure that the ring looks like and glitters like gold.

4)      Maintain Continuity

A project where many people are working on 3d lighting, maintaining the continuity remains the key concern . All shots should look seamless when merged in a editing software. Maintaing continuity becomes problematic in Visual effects where you match 3d lighting with live action shots. During a day shoot, a weathermay be overcast while filming one shot, and be brighter or have moved in the sky when another shot is filmed. While adding CG models in live action shots background lighting is used to make the shot believable. Sometimes you will need to adjust the lighting current shot to the lighting of  adjacent shot to match it seamlessly.

5)      Grab viewer’s attention

In a well-lit scene, your lighting should draw the viewer’s eye to areas that are important to the story, animation, or key parts of the shot. This is where Composition and Staging plays an important role.

6)      Emotional Impact on Audience

When your audience is watching a movie they should not consciously see the lighting in a movie.They should feel it. You can achieve this by creating a mood or a tone that enhances the emotional experience of watching a movie.

Lighting artist should know what kind of output he is trying to achieve.It is an artistic process, grounded in the tradition of cinematography, which in turn borrows a great deal from painting. However, mastering the craft of lighting a 3D scene is, at its heart, a timeless skill whose value will not go away with any new button or switch added to future graphics software.

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