OSL Help?

[ScottRadom]

Hey, I\'m thinking about trying OSL for the first time. Anyone advise a good place to take a look on the internets? I\'ve found all sorts of great theory articles but a walk through or WIP of someone actually applying the color would help me immensely!

TY people!

 

[Crayfish]

Shawn RL does greeeeat OSL! I dont know if he made an article about it, but im sure he made an article....

My advice, paint and make stuff up, usually gets some result hehe. But really just paint something the color you want and apply that color where it will hit and light stuff up. Thats the basic idea behind it, and something tells me that theres more to this technique im sure.

Paint and make stuff up!

 

[uberdark]

shawny can you hear me?

hehehehe.

 

[Shawn R. L.]

HERE I AM TO SAVE THE DAAAAAAYYY!!

Read the article, try to get your fig going then post a WIP and remind me when you get it there. I\'ll try to help.

 

[ScottRadom]

Cool, thanks Shawn. I forgot about your article! I even read it back in the day when it all went over my head, and I think it\'s even part of the CMON thingy I downloaded! Thanks, will do!

 

[Gilvan Blight]

You should re-open the OSL help thread. That was always a great read, especially when you had a couple people working on different projects at once.

 

[ScottRadom]

Where\'s the article? The only one by Shawn I can find is \"on being an artist\". Which I read..... and it was decidedly UN-helpful on OSL. But still a good read.

I even remember the article, it had a big tank that looked like a ball of doom blowing over some alien thingy\'s with a shock wave, right?

 

[Shawn R. L.]

Oliver Saugsage Liincon

 

[ScottRadom]

Awesome!

 

[Beelzebrush]

Originally posted by Crayfish
Shawn RL does greeeeat OSL! I dont know if he made an article about it, but im sure he made an article....

My advice, paint and make stuff up, usually gets some result hehe. But really just paint something the color you want and apply that color where it will hit and light stuff up. Thats the basic idea behind it, and something tells me that theres more to this technique im sure.

Paint and make stuff up!

Unless you specifically want to have a coloured glow.... then it\'s best to just make elements nearer the light source lighter but with more exaggerated highlighting. Lighting from a flame or torch, lightbulb etc looks better without trying to make a yellow/orange glow.

Shadows will also be stronger to reinforce the effect.

Edges and folds also tend to pick up more light so highlight upto your strongest highlight Also, don\'t be afraid to make large jumps in contrast with specular highlights... not everything is smooth and diffuses light, so using abrupt highlighting is actually quite useful for describing different materials.

Also, it\'s cool to incorporate a shadow somewhere on the base.... and make sure you either photograph it against a dark background or ps one in after... it makes a lot of difference!

Here\'s a mini I painted for IP a while back which kind of illustrates what I mean.

 

[ScottRadom]

So the advice is to use white to indicate the light source? That\'s sort of the universal rule for a non colored light?

Cool. Great article too Shawn!

 

[Beelzebrush]

No... don\'t use white... just highlight your figure as normal closest to the light source but make the highlights more extreme and brighter. Make the shading darker and stronger too.

Actually, thinking about it.... it\'s probably the shading that makes a convincing OSL effect.

Shawn does the same thing... there\'s no \'coloured\' glow... it\'s just extremes of light and shade...

*edit.... I\'d forgotten how good that is Shawn... bloody brilliant actually! The blast effect is inspired!

 

[ScottRadom]

I\'ll defo post some pics when I get the model to that point. It\'s the Gamezone mage, and having done a little work on it last night I\'m no longer 100% on the idea.

The thought was to try something new and have the mage reading a glowing magic book and go for an effect like the trunk of the car from\"Repo Man\" or the suitcase from \"Pul Fiction\". But the old man\'s pose doesn\'t suggest it to me. I thought the spec\'s he\'s wearing might look neat done as sunglasses to help him look at the book but the pose is sculpting so well to me it really looks like it just suggests age and squinting to read with failing eyes and not ambiguous enough to suggest what I was thinking.

Might still do it, and if not then for sure on my next AoW Orc Shaman fig.

 

[Crayfish]

Well using darker shadows depends if he wants it to be darker, obviously if its a light scenario everything should be toned down abit including the highlightning.

This being said i have never really used this effect, although I am intrigued by how this work, and i might just have to experiment a little with it.

And about no coloured glow depends, if the glow is coloured it will have that effect.

And yes that scene is amazing! One of the best osl out there!

 

[Beelzebrush]

Originally posted by Crayfish
Well using darker shadows depends if he wants it to be darker, obviously if its a light scenario everything should be toned down abit including the highlightning.


And about no coloured glow depends, if the glow is coloured it will have that effect.

I\'m not sure what you mean by toning down the shading and highlighting? It\'s the highlighting and shading that makes OSL work.... both need to be stronger and more \'extreme\' than usual.

I did say that unless you \'specifically want a coloured glow\'.

A lot of first-time attempts at OSL fall a little flat due to using a coloured glow where it\'s not needed.... ie when being lit by flame and making the OSL effect yellow and orange.

That\'s what I meant.

 

[Crayfish]

Oh, should explain further.

Mostly OSL is used in a very very dark and dramatic way, so that almost everything else except that which is lit up by the osl is in complete darkness. This is not something you have to do to make this effect, thats all im saying, but if you want still have a lightning from the sun or something plus an OSL you have to tone down the OSL to make it realistic. Something we all know is that a torch doesnt light up as much (well it does it just doesnt show) in daylight as it does during complete darkness. So if you have another light source(daylight, dawn whatever) + OSL the osl will be toned down. This is obviously depending, the thing can be turned against the zenithal lightning making him in shadow and the osl in the shadow which will lead to heavy shadows and heavy lightning whilst the back of the model will have zenithal lightning. And sorry for not seeing the thing you said about coloured glows.. my mistake =)

This technique will be very hard if you are going to do it with a scene that is not in darkness. It will look more dramatic if the rest of the model is like Beelzebrush\'s model (very nice btw, i had not seen it before! that rocket is ace!)

 

[Beelzebrush]

Ahh... ok I see what you mean. Actually, if you were going to try and make an OSL effect in daylight, I\'d say you\'d be better off reducing the darkest shadows but keeping the highlighting strong and localised. The shading/highlighting obviously depend on the situation

 

[ScottRadom]

Thanks for all the help guys. I\'ll get the model to where I think it would be mostly finished and sort of evaluate if it would be suitable from there. But I still wanna try it on something for sure very soon, so I\'ll keep tabs on this no matter what way I go with this specific model.

Thanks guys!

 

[Shawn R. L.]

Unless you specifically want to have a coloured glow.... then it\'s best to just make elements nearer the light source lighter but with more exaggerated highlighting. Lighting from a flame or torch, lightbulb etc looks better without trying to make a yellow/orange glow.
Shadows will also be stronger to reinforce the effect.
Edges and folds also tend to pick up more light so highlight upto your strongest highlight Also, don\'t be afraid to make large jumps in contrast with specular highlights... not everything is smooth and diffuses light, so using abrupt highlighting is actually quite useful for describing different materials.
Also, it\'s cool to incorporate a shadow somewhere on the base.... and make sure you either photograph it against a dark background or ps one in after... it makes a lot of difference!

Excellent points. OSL - object source LIGHTING. Often the focus will be on making things look lit by adding more light but you put it so well - it really is the shadows that carry 3/4 of the load.

Here\'s a 2D piece I did a while back. Upon looking at some of the Old Masters work I saw that the light source and the lit were often WAY apart tonally. In a strange way, it made the light source even brighter. Very finikey balance. Facinating.

One by \'DA MAN!!\'
If you put your hand over the window, notice how dim everything else is.

 

[ScottRadom]

Shawn, your painting is brilliant! That blasty thing is amazing, and the 2D is great. Have you got a web gallery anywhere of your 2d stuff? I am really inspired to try OSL now, but re-evaluating the model I am working on I don\'t think this mounted mage is the place to start. I don\'t think this piece should be done in the way I had the idea for. The mage is hunched over way too much for me to think he\'d need to be on a glowing magic text. I\'ve got a 70mm Iron Man and and AoW Orc Shaman I wanted to try it on. I\'ll have to blow through this Gamezone piece to get to those. Thanks all so much!