[dark viking music] Hey, Gleb Alexandrov here for CreativeShrimp.com! after watching this video you'll learn
to take your 3d lighting skills to the next level by using reverse key lighting, this
technique is so easy to implement and so elegant that once I discovered it I use it all
the time. I think you should definitely add the sliding technique to your books alongside other
techniques that we talk about in our Cinematic Lighting course, which you can check by
following the link in the description. reverse key lighting or as it's sometimes called
upstage lighting or narrow lighting is a really simple technique originated in theater productions
and often used in cinema productions as well, the technique which helps lighting look more
three-dimensional and cinematic by utilizing a fairly specific key light placement, which you'll
be familiar with after watching this tutorial. before we begin of course this is not the
only way to set up cinematic lighting, this is an examination of a technique that
works, but there are other techniques. alright to cut the story short not all lighting
directions create the equal illusion of depth, as a rule of thumb the key light set up the camera
side creates arguably less impressive shadows and just less shadows in general, thus creating an
image that is slightly more flat than the image produced by the key light placed slightly behind
or at an acute angle to the subject, which helps to emphasize depth and dimension and accentuate
both 3D forms that you have carefully modeled and material properties that you spent so much time
setting up. of course every technique should be used with intention and should be motivated but
if you are looking for versatile lighting setup which just looks cinematic, then here it is. we
have prepared a .blend file that would ease you into this technique so if you want follow along
with me, we have a simple scene here, a skull stuck in the mud, uh, the main or the key light because
this technique applies to the key light and a bunch of cameras, you can see three of them here,
they have their own collection called camera. currently and for the most part of the
video we'll be looking through this one. the viewport should be set to Cycles real-time
rendering and obviously we have Cycles in the render settings as well, with the experimental
feature set turned on to enable sweet displacement effect, because our ground shader uses true
displacement. as a bit of a fill light I'm using the environment color, the strength can be
tweaked here, I'm keeping it fairly subdued just to fill in the shadows ever so slightly, hence the
strength of just 1. the hero light of this setup will be the light_key_01a, it can be found in its own collection. it is a good old area light, nothing special about
it if we have a look at the light settings, a neutral white light with a power set to 100 Watts
not to dim, not too powerful, um, everything else basically is set to their default values, including
the default spread of the beam shape. I thought I would mention how I'm going to be positioning the
lights throughout the video, basically shift+ right click to drop the 3d cursor somewhere
and then with the light being active I press . on the keyboard to set the pivot point to 3D
cursor then, it can also be found in this menu. um... finally I'm gonna press R to rotate the light
and then X, Y or Z to give it an axis of rotation. like this. and now we can easily target the
slide by orbiting it around our 3D cursor. once again R and then Z for example
to constrain it to the z-axis, um... I think it is really easy and
satisfying to move lights in this way. so with this information out of the way
we can jump into setting our key light. so what is so cool about reverse key lighting?
you see when the light is on the camera side like here for example it almost lines up perfectly
with the camera direction, it leaves very little shadows, we can say that the frontal lighting
tends to be flat, although it has its own uses. then what happens if I slide the light slightly
off to the side, the lighting becomes slightly more three-dimensional, right? or off to other side
for that matter, basically the more angle we give to our key light the more three-dimensional it
becomes as a rule of thumb, now we can say that it is a side light in relationship to our camera and
the skull and as a side light it starts producing some definition in the shadows, here, here and here
we can already see some nice shadows being drawn let's keep rotating the light until it crosses
the line where it's almost behind the subject, if we keep doing that look what happens, look
at these reflections popping up suddenly, like it is the same material but now we can see
beautiful reflections, on the skull as well as on the ground and like there are shadows everywhere
out of a sudden! now if we draw the line of action like this we'll notice that the key light is no
longer on the camera side, like we began with, its position has been reversed and it's now standing
on the background side instead. and that's why it's called *reverse* key light, we can see the
reflection now because the rays is emitted by this light bounce off the ground and can actually
reach the camera, in addition to that all these shadows now following the camera direction as well,
we basically shoot into shadows, I usually picture it this way when I think of reverse key lighting,
shooting into shadows, you can place the light wherever you want now, directly opposite the camera
or slightly off to one side and maybe we can push it further back like that, the cool thing about
this light setup is that only like... I don't know... 10 to 20 percent of the surface is lit and everything
else is shadows, a huge amount of surface approximately 80 percent is in shadows illuminated
only by the environment fill. and because we film into shadows we can see the transition from
light to dark now and this transition... uh... the one that I'm marking with the arrows here
is what makes it look three-dimensional. let me zoom in a little bit to show how this
type of lighting helps to flesh out the 3D shapes, okay here we go, it just looks... 3D :) let's
compare it to a more frontal light direction yeah can you see that? there is still some
volume picked up by that light but mostly that definition is gone, the colors now got an
extra pop, but the volume is gone. let's bring the light back to the back side and I bet you
can tell how the 3D quality might have come back. we can play with the exact position of the
key light to amplify or decrease this effect depending on your intention I guess, but there
is no doubt it's a more dramatic look now. the same applies not only to the main object,
to the skull in this case, but to whatever is illuminated by that light, the mud, the ground, the
bricks on the ground, the details in the mud that got lots of transitions from light to dark, that is
the type of the moody look that you can definitely expect from this setup, one of the cool things that
you can do with the upstage lighting is to make it sort of wrappy by increasing its size, a nice large
and soft light when placed like that kind of wraps around the models for a really nice effect, after
the size has been increased, the power should be compensated like that, I think three times
stronger we'll make it up for the exposure loss. I really love using a soft key light in the
upstage mode, I think it looks really appealing and just brings out all the best qualities of
the shaders except the color perhaps as it mostly brings out the shape, okay, one more advantage of
reverse key lighting I wanted to mention is that it helps to establish a nice hierarchy of values
between the foreground and the background layers. the surfaces facing the camera don't receive any
exposure from our main lamp so they remain dark, so you get that classical separation of a darker
foreground and lighter background. again if we were shoving light from the camera direction it would
contaminate those foreground objects, effectively ruining... or let's say, complicating the tonal values
hierarchy. I think that could be one more important aspect of reverse key lighting as a technique
but I think that is just lovely. I'm fanboying or fangirling about that light setup but it's just
too good when you need that kind of depth for free as a bonus to shadows and reflections that also
sort themselves nicely when the light is conducted from this angle, it just goes very nicely from dark
to lighter to even lighter, so on and so forth and at the same time like we have mentioned we get all
the benefits of nice reflections and deep shadows. let me disable the overlays as it's a bit
distracting... I think we have discussed the main pros of reverse key lighting and how to set it
up really easily, so feel free to pause this video and play around with it in Blender, but I actually
recommend watching it to the end because there's still one thing left to discuss that is kind of
crucial to get most out of this lighting style. another question worth mentioning, does this
technique apply to the soft light only? not at all! the light can be softer or harder, the only
thing that matters when we go for upstage lighting is the light direction and this is it. it can be
a harsh desert sunlight situation and still it will look arguably less flat with the key light, the
sun in this case put behind at an angle, the exact angle is up to you obviously, it's an artistic
matter, yet it's a really versatile technique which I'm sure you'll fall in love with if not already :)
oh yeah you can do a fun experiment, watch your favorite movie and try to recognize this lighting
style in some shots, I bet you'll find quite a few! so yeah, it can be hard, it can be soft, it can be
a mixture of both as long as you sorted out the direction, once the light is shining from here to
there, from the background direction all the way to the camera, it will most likely just work. now it's
important to mention that if we have more than one shot so technically for example if we have three
cameras like we do here and some of these cameras crossing the line of action then the reverse key
light setup would have to be adjusted for each new camera, that is if you wanted to maintain this look
throughout the film. you can switch between the cameras by selecting one and going Ctrl Numpad 0
for this camera, this will make it an active one. just like this... alternatively the cameras
can be switched from the scene menu, as a quick reminder we have three of them, let us
inspect the second one, yeah as we can see because the camera switched sides, the key light is no
longer reversed, on the contrary now it is kind of frontal or at least it shines from the camera side,
let's put it like that. now the third definition of this lighting technique would come in handy
I mean that's narrow lighting, which means the same as upstage and reverse key lighting, we call
it narrow or short because the light should hit the narrow side of the actor's face, not the broad
side like we have it here, if the skull is an actor. never mind... now the light falls squarely on the
broad side, the one that is closer to the camera, and guess what, as a result this subject may appear
broader to the viewer, at least that is a stereotype that unironically refers to the foreshortening
effects of the short light, which is partially true, not that it matters much. but anyway we want
to see the short side illuminated, right? what we do is dead simple, I'm just gonna drop the 3D
cursor here again and with our light selected R to rotate, Z to constrain the rotation to
the z-axis, so yeah, if you want to maintain the reverse key lighting look then you would have
to update the key light placement in every new shot, it will look fine most likely even in
montage, while technically it's nonsense that the key light is jumping around yet it should be
okay. now let me quickly adjust the fill light in the environment settings, because I feel that
it's a little bit too strong for my taste. it kind of negates some of the
benefits of the deep shadows we've got, um that would be a shame. so yeah the formula is
really simple, the light jumps back to the back of the scene in every new shot to hit the short side
of whatever way of filming, the shadows fall off in our direction very nicely indeed, the backlighting
picks up all the beautiful edges everywhere, everyone is happy, everyone is sipping coffee, easy
stuff. there is a caveat to reverse key lighting, it is not always clear where the back side is,
especially in the shots that don't have a lot of depth and no room to squeeze that light behind
this subject, like this shot in the camera number three, so it's a tricky one to set the reverse key
lighting up, it is not clear where the shorter side of the face or skull is but still camera is not
perfectly top down, there is an angle to it and so it's possible to draw the action line and put
the light on the opposite side, let reflection be your guide. in other words if the camera is on
the side A the key light should be on the side B. that brings us to the end of the video, to sum
it up we have taken a look at how to improve the cinematic qualities of lighting using reverse
key lighting technique, it goes without saying that direction matters a lot when it comes
to lighting and some directions are better at creating an illusion of depth and roundedness,
of course it goes without saying that no single technique is a silver bullet and it should
be motivated to work best and so on and so forth and there are scenes and shots that call
for a completely different approach, but I hope that you'll have a lot of fun integrating
this technique into your projects. as usual don't hesitate to share your images, results,
videos with us, it is always appreciated! :) oh a short snippet before we go! try it for fun.
I call it Dynamic Reverse Key, select the lights and the camera and in a moment I will roll it all
around our 3D cursor... watch this... R, Z and let's go! whoa!!! the light that is always in direct
opposition to the camera, I think it is pretty neat. [dark viking music] thank you for watching this video! if you want
to learn more, much more in fact about upstage lighting as a part of so-called framework
then I recommend watching Wandering DP channel, in my opinion that's one of the best if not the
best and definitely most clear and straight to the point sources on that subject and it's
totally applicable to 3D before you asked. thanks so much for watching, that was Gleb
Alexandrov for creativeshrimp.com, if you liked this tutorial, feel free to follow the link in
the description and check out our full lighting course called Cinematic Lighting in Blender,
it is an extensive Blender lighting course for 3d artists who want to take their lighting
skills to the next level and make cinematic, moody, expressive lighting. drink more coffee and we
will change the world of computer graphics!
