Matching Photographic Lighting in Maya

We talked to user Andrew Daffy about how he used HDR Light Studio with Maya and V-Ray to light a recent commercial for BUGABOO, matching the lighting for the video to the lighting style of the print campaign.

Here is the final 'directors cut' of the spot:

Daffy said "This commercial spot for BUGABOO buggies, which I directed and created entirely in Maya, needed to align with a pre-existing print campaign. I’ve never before approached a job by getting the lighting done first. For this project, it felt essential.

Getting the lighting style agreed quite early on in the project turned out to be beneficial to Daffy’s workflow:

“Matching and signing off on what they had, allowed us to get into the rest of the job quickly without the need for the ‘proof’ too far down the line. We only had a short space of time for the project too, so we decided to walk our client through the entire creative process as transparently as possible."

"HDR Light Studio was the choice to enable solid, professional, and fast lighting. It was a dream to use, and virtually tangible. I could grab lights and shift them around faster than a gaffer could move them physically on a set. We were able to recreate Bugaboo’s own press images of their buggies perfectly. Screen capturing as we went, which can be seen in the video accompaniments, they could witness the process having already signed off on the ‘proof’."

"HDR Light Studio allowed lighting to be locked down at an early stage, and focus on the animation, previz, cloth sim, edit, etc. and it looked contextual along the way, as opposed to greyscale. I’m about to use it again for a VR project. Here goes… "

Thanks for talking to us Daffy.

The project was directed by Daffy London and produced by Ellen Utrecht at Miketeevee.

Here's a behind-the-scenes video showing the development of the project - including the use of HDR Light Studio.