If anyone's curious about how similar lighting techniques might be applied to 2D forms to bring them to life in 3D, check out this spotlight on Netflix's "Klaus" by Insider: https://youtu.be/BlU49dJhfcw
The animators worked with developers to create a tool that could intuit which portions of a character sketched (and later painted) in 2D might be lit by the scene, with additions of ambient lighting to the scene as a whole. Animators could then manually tweak that lighting by drawing in regions of light, including small marks on the eyes or on the outline of a character's face to act as specular highlights.
Some of the graphics in the final cut are in fact 3D rigs lit more conventionally, but the majority are 2D--and the effect is beautiful! It very much carries (albeit to a much more professional degree) the same spirit as paper prototypes in design: it makes the artistic process more human and accessible, all the while offering an imaginative surface for future improvement and production.
If anyone's curious about how similar lighting techniques might be applied to 2D forms to bring them to life in 3D, check out this spotlight on Netflix's "Klaus" by Insider: https://youtu.be/BlU49dJhfcw
The animators worked with developers to create a tool that could intuit which portions of a character sketched (and later painted) in 2D might be lit by the scene, with additions of ambient lighting to the scene as a whole. Animators could then manually tweak that lighting by drawing in regions of light, including small marks on the eyes or on the outline of a character's face to act as specular highlights.
Some of the graphics in the final cut are in fact 3D rigs lit more conventionally, but the majority are 2D--and the effect is beautiful! It very much carries (albeit to a much more professional degree) the same spirit as paper prototypes in design: it makes the artistic process more human and accessible, all the while offering an imaginative surface for future improvement and production.