Robots Blossom – Project Update 015

I know I was asking for trouble seeking the god rays of all god rays at this stage of my limited lighting skillset but I thought, that’s how you learn right? 

Today was a slow go. I was only working a half day anyway so I was already looking at a smaller window to make some project progress. On top of that, from the full composition test pass I completed yesterday, I realized I had some lighting issues I was going to have to tackle (see the above note about the god rays and lack of skill). There were two key issues. The first, I was getting these strange light pops showing up in my DaVinci Resolve renders. The other issue, was my lighting setup is way too hot. You can see the Waveform view in the screenshot below. The lighting is blowing out of the top! Still, I hope I can massage that part. It was the first issue that left me scratching my head on the cause and subsequently how to fix it.

Without further ado, Unreal Engine 5 Rect Lights. These were the culprits. I have a couple of Rect Lights set up in a key area of the scene and they were causing the light pops. I will need to adjust them accordingly but the loop I have to work through to adjust them is, adjust the light, render from UE5, add to DaVinci Resolve. It’s an unfortunately lengthy process due to the rendering part. It was also a lengthy process to try to identify this issue as was I went through multiple render passes for this part as well. So, I may pick it up tomorrow or I may switch back to the jaw and eyes animation. The animation tasks are more straight forward for me. Sometimes I find switching tasks helps me to avoid getting bogged down. 

The second lighting problem, the blown out environment light, may not be that much of a problem. The only issue I really saw based on the full composition test pass was a different lighting flash that was coming from the Directional Light source. I may be able to cheat the camera or adjust the light source just enough to keep it out of scene. Fingers crossed.

The screenshot below is blurred out as previously noted, but you can still see some bright white light coming through in the Timeline viewport. You can also see my cruddy Waveform 🙁