January 2020

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In Ubisoft Bordeaux, Understanding Light

Sub Roles of Lighting Artist at Ubisoft

Image used in featured image is by Cottonbro

In case you didn’t know there are sub specialist within the growing lighting artist career. That means they are often focused in one area of lighting such as game lighting, dialogue lighting or cinematic lighting. Each of these also has their own sub group but the person deals with it themselves, not another person in the other department. At least in Ubisoft case.

Game Lighting

Photo by Suludan Diliyaer

In Game Lighting you generally light the game based on where you put the light sources with emphasis on gameplay. You generally have to think about the optimization and frame rate more than the other lighting artist in the other areas. That often means you can’t have that nice reflection or shadow. It means you can’t have too many lights close to each other, or have their range overlap. I am simplifying the challenges but a lot goes into game lighting. Since I mostly do real time lighting with GI and 24/7 it makes things even more challenging. That means I need to check how the light affects everything throughout the whole day. It gets even more complicated if the player can shoot the lights, now I have to check what happens during less light.

Dialogue Lighting

Photo by Jonathon Borba

Dialogue Lighting comes in many phases and groups. In short it means the player is playing the game and entering a dialogue, those dialogues often have their own lighting. A common lighting is three point lighting. Since this occurs at specific events such as missions, it also happens during 24/7. In other words, you need to consider the light the game lighting artist put in, and the light dialogue put in. You then have to disable, add or adjust your own lighting to ensure the frame rate doesn’t drop but the characters are nicely lit. In my case the sub tools for this process is different than the main tools for Game Lighting. In other words, I use some unique editor and properties to do this type of lighting.

Cinematic Lighting

Photo by Elijah O’Donnell

Cinematic Lighting also comes with its own sub groups such as in game cinematic or recorded cinematic. In this case you would generally clean up the lighting from the game so you start blank and light up your own believable setup that works with the environment. Like all of the lighting roles here you generally keep track of optimization as mentioned during Game Lighting. However, in my case the fps can go lower and I would have more freedom to place out fake lights in comparison to Dialogue Light which might have 1-2, and game lighting which generally has 0 fake lighting. When I say fake lighting I mean additional lights. In this context for me anyway, we also use a different sub tool to handle this method of lighting.

Conclusion

I would say they all use principle of lighting, color, composition and storytelling but there are different restrictions and methods in doing so. So, having the basic non-technical knowledge about light, color, composition, framing, leading lines and storytelling can go a long way.

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In Life skills

Things we aren’t taught in pursuit into technical careers.

Although this article uses game industry as an example, I think it works for most technical/artistic careers.

You know when you are doing exactly what you want, you are happy and content with your work? You know when things don’t get your way? You know when you have to do something completely different? You know when you just finished a project and there is a transition over to a new project, that can often take months?

During that period and series of event something happens to most of us. We go through psychological challenges. We are wondering if we should stay or move on. We might become negative and complain a lot. We might not see things in a very positive manner anymore.

It can also be that you want a raise, a promotion or feel things are unfair. For some it can be the long hours but in this case we are not talking about crunch time. Whatever it might be we all have or will go through this emotional and psychological challenge. And that is sometimes what breaks a person. It is sometimes what decides whether you are a professional or not in the game industry.

You might be thinking that the definition of professional game developer is if you work fulltime or released a game. Interestingly enough, some veteran will say it is not until you are laid off, go through these challenges and how you deal with it, that defines if you are a professional game developer.

Since I started a decade ago I have been part of many failed projects, companies and also seen people give up for whatever reason. We can argue that once you are in the game industry there are different types of professional game developers. You have the one going into the game industry, the ones who are in the game industry and the ones who “failed” and managed to get back up over and over.

That is where I have seen many fail, because they gave up. We can argue that is because we don’t really learn enough about mental aptitude, psychological strength and emotional control when we grow up. Especially during education, training or coaching. The focus has been technical skills in my experience.

So if you spend hours everyday just being technical or artistic, when are you training your body? Your mind? When are you learning to think? When are you making time to experience difficult things? How often do you purposely go into uncomfortable situation, or turn your life around knowing you might fail miserably? And how often did you rise up stronger, and kept trying things out?

If you do get in this situation remember that you are in control of yourself, and only yourself. Remember that only you can change yourself. Make an effort to learn what you can do better in non-technical areas. After all we are working as a team with other human beings. The technical part is mainly a way to create something, to express something and not the only thing that matters. And more importantly you should have a vision, plan or road map for yourself. No one is going to make one for you. Not your teacher. Not your parents. Not your mentor. Not your boss.

In short, we should all strive to improve our communication, reduce our assumptions and learn more about how we deal with failure, disagreement, conflict and unpleasant situation. In the long run, I believe that will decide who falls and rises to the top. Whatever that top is for you.

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