Explanation on Lighting.

[Ken]

If you enjoy creating AWESOME WHITE LIGHTS everywhere on your tag just to have someone go up and say, "looks like shit dude", then you need to learn that lighting is not just a shitty white brush dot on the canvas. Lighting is a bit more indepth than that, and there are various kinds of lighting that you could possibly apply to your tag. Since you're not really doing shit like painting/CGing due to the fact most of you faggots don't have a tablet, you really only need to focus on one lightsource. Of course, that COMPLETELY depends on the stock of the tag, and effects you are adding. For basic use, you want to analyze the stock prior to actually adding a ****ton of effects and random splotches of shitty white brush dots everywhere.

1) Say you're a Paramore fag and what to make a tag using this stock image (http://www.weeklyreader.com/readandw...aramore2-1.jpg), how would you effectively manipulate the lighting to best suit your tag? First of all, look at the god damn picture before you do anything. Where's the light originally coming from? You will basically have to work with the light coming from that direction since it looks a lot more ****ing natural. In this case, the light is coming from roughly a 45 degree angle in relation to the front of her body, and therefore, if you were going to put some shitty white brush dots anywhere, put them in the bottom right corner of the tag (assuming you don't horizontally flip the stock) so that it doesn't look like a shit ass tag. If you put the lighting from the top left or bottom left, you're basically ignoring the stock itself and just creating cruddy effects that no one except for blind faggots will enjoy.

2) Don't ever just use the colour white. I've seen it so many god damn times it makes me want to puke. Want to know why you should never use white? Because pure white light would blind the ****ing shit out of your retina AND it looks like crap on a tag. You're probably asking me, or your shitty self, what colour of light to use. The colour? I couldn't give a rats ass about the colour you use. You could use a green light and I wouldn't care too much other than the fact it'd probably look worse than the diarrhea that comes out of my ass when I eat shitty food in foreign countries. Whatever colour you choose is fine, but it's how you apply the colour to make it look like real light. If your lighting is really, really, really saturated, then the areas where the light hits the stock have to be the colour of the lighting as well (let's use green since I already mentioned it). If the light is really intense, it's fine to use white (I use off-white which is close to white, but not exactly white), but it should radiate the colour as the light ventures off from the centre of the source. Here's an example using one of my old tags from 100 years ago.

Tag:


Yes, the light looks white, but you can tell that it would be light from the Sun since it radiates a yellow colour as the light intensity weakens. By understanding how this works, you can make tags that have a lot of lighting to look a lot more natural than if you were to just put white. Also make sure that when you add lighting, don't just leave the stock as is. You will want to manipulate the stock a little so that it works with the lighting. Understanding colours is a great asset when working with lighting. If you take a look at the example, the light is yellow, so I had darkened the shadows of the stock and given them a blue/green hue. If you had a red light, then you'd want to have shadows that were slightly more green.

3) Lighting from effects that you create are also important too. Say you had a stock of some guy looking down at his open hand, so you created some kind of ****awesome red energy ball or fire. What would you do? You'd add some lighting around that specific area so that the effect becomes integrated into the tag, and just isn't sitting there. Being able to effectively integrate such effects is what makes a tag that much better.

4) Lighting cannot only add a more natural feel, but add depth if used correctly. Say you had a tag that was all renders and was really busy, but despite all the 3D effects, it looked flatter than your average asian girl. Well, by adding lighting and shadows to certain areas, it creates a sense of how some things are closer and farther away from each other just by how you integrate the lighting. You can create a sort of "tunnel" effect with proper use. If you take the previous example with the monster and intense sunlight, you can observe how the intense light creates a sense of depth. Since the light is so bright and shines inwards towards the viewer, it gives them the sense that the light is far away, and everything else in the tag is much more closer, effectively creating depth.

5) Lighting is not without shadows. Light and shadows go hand in hand, but there will be times when the shadows just won't work.

All in all, everything I've said only works if you practice and are creating a tag where lighting is necessary. Some tags just look shit no matter what kind of lighting you put in, and the moment you remove it, it's amazing. Just because it looks nice doesn't mean you should put it in practice all the time. With my current sig, there is no light source whatsoever, yet it still looks good. That's mainly due to the simple effects and composition. If I were to add lighting, it would just look horrendous. And remember, lighting does not only effect the stock, but everything around it as well.

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Edited since I hated my old one.

[♥]

lol visible spectra.
Welcome to Chemistry 101, really. Common knowledge, but if I'm not mistaken, and I very well might be, when magnesium is ignited the light it gives off is pure white light that is strong enough to blind you. Not necessarily natural, so it might just be a moot point.

[Ken]

I think you're right Ray, we burned magnesium once, but the magnesium strip was extremely small. Even then, it was white. No visible spectrum emitted from it... I think. Haven't seen it since grade 10 ._.

[♥]

Yeah, that shit is mad fiyah.
But since there really is no natural fire just stomping around looking for magnesium to light up I don't think it could really count as a natural white light. Still cool though

[Ken]

Oh yea, definitely.

I wanna burn Methane. Wonder what colour it emits.

[♥]

Depends.
If you're burning a pure aqueous methane solution then it doesn't really emit a color unless you soak a wood splint in it, and the fire is just a deep orange. It's much more awesome to make bubbles out of a methane solution using a funnel. Using a firestick(which could just be a simple candle tied to a meter stick) you can have fireballs at will if you stick the bubbles with the candle.

[Ken]

Ohohohoho, lucky spic. You got to do that in chem >: Our school is too retarded to do that.

But we did put some Alkali metals in water and observed the reactions. Oh god it was awesome.

[Xidon]

There are white suns (there are also yellow/red/blue ones) D: right before they turn off (the other solution is that they explode >=D)
And there is a thing called white light in nature, it is a light that contains all colors of the visible and to our eye unvisible spectrum, if you point a beam of white light through a glass prism it would decompose into a rainbow, O.o rainbow, wait this is the way a rainbow appears! that means the sun is whites! No it emits white light, but do to the angle on which it shines on a part of Earth, then you consider the thickness of the atmosphere, moisture...bla bla bla, it goes into different colors!
To be short there is white light, only we rarely see it as only white, so we say there is no such thing. Soo since we rarely see pure white, it shouldn't be in sigs, couse it will look unnatural and tell us that you don't know how to make a proper light source, rather you just brush white over a area and it looks like crap lol.

[Milkman]

Pure White LEDs have been invented =/
But they heat up faster than you can say Pure White LED.

[Xidon]

yeah so we still use the red, green, blue combo >.<

[♥]

Originally Posted by Milkman

Pure White LEDs have been invented =/
But they heat up faster than you can say Pure White LED.

I told you before that there has been no pure white LED

"Blue LEDs can be added to existing red and green LEDs to produce the impression of white light, though white LEDs today rarely use this principle. Most "white" LEDs in production today are based on an InGaN-GaN structure, and emit blue light of wavelengths between 450 nm and 470 nm blue GaN."

"The newest method used to produce white light LEDs uses no phosphors at all and is based on homoepitaxially grown zinc selenide (ZnSe) on a ZnSe substrate which simultaneously emits blue light from its active region and yellow light from the substrate."

"A new technique developed by Michael Bowers, a graduate student at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, involves coating a blue LED with quantum dots that glow white in response to the blue light from the LED. This technique produces a warm, yellowish-white light similar to that produced by incandescent bulbs."

And a prism simply breaks up whatever light you're shining into it. Doesn't mean it specifically has to be white light.

[Xidon]

umm yeah.... so move this to intel discussion? XD

[♥]

Nah, me and Ken just went a bit asian on the thread.
It's still a lighting tutorial.

[Xidon]

This tutorial need moar pictures! or else no one will read it
the sunset one is pretty nice :D

[Ken]

This isn't a tutorial about how to incorporate lighting, it's a "tutorial" to explain lighting so you can use it better.

Originally Posted by Sparkle Motion

And a prism simply breaks up whatever light you're shining into it. Doesn't mean it specifically has to be white light.

Exactly. If you've ever done an experiment with spectroscopy, you'd notice that it'll break the light into a line or continuous spectrum. By theory, a white light creates a perfect continuous spectrum, but if you were to shine an incandescent or fluorescent light bulb through a spectroscope, it would create the same effect, however, it would probably be slightly off from pure white light.

Think of it this way. A black hole in space is completely black. No light emits from it at all. It sucks everything in. Pitch black.

Pure white light would be the complete opposite. It would reflect every single colour in the visible spectrum at such a brightness that we'd go blind by glancing at it. Without light, no human being would venture into the darkness. If there were no stars, no moon or any kind of light at night, we'd stay holed up in our caves just because we wouldn't be able to see anything. We see because of light. Without light, we cannot see.