The question you all have asked me the most was: How do I do my lighting, is it in-game
or maybe post-process.
The answer is: it is done in-game.
There are a few things I use to achieve that sweet lighting and
I'm going to tell you about them today.
What I've noticed is that most of us, sims filmmakers,
don't think enough before starting to film.
Even though we spend so much time on making sims, sets, writing out the story or trying
out animations, we often forget about one of the most important things: lighting.
I know that lighting in sims is far from perfect.
The options are limited (LOOK AT ENB OPTIONS)
Sims will never be a realistic game such as The Witcher or Dishonored
BUT sometimes limitations are actually good.
Look at the whole Sims 2 community, people who make custom content, movies, comics and
all that stuff.
We have this one game that is 13 years old and
we're still making something great out of it.
The first part of this guide is about finding inspiration and studying.
Watch movies, find new photos, look at game graphics and of course look at paintings.
If you encounter something that catches your eye, ask yourself a question:
What is so interesting about this picture?
Why do I like it, why are my eyes drawn to the subject of the photograph, what is so
attractive in this color scheme, what emotion does it remind me of?
Take notes whenever you feel like you need them.
You are more likely to remember something when you write it down.
A good exeercise is to watch your past movies and write down what you liked about them and what
mistakes you should avoid doing the next time you film.
Also, try storyboarding.
I used to hate it, but now I find it quite useful as It helps you avoid filming similiar
shots and plan out the story ahead of time.
I think everyone should try storyboarding at some point.
When you are caught up in building the sets, making sims and all that stuff, it's very
easy to forget what was your story about in the first place.
The best part is that you don't have to be excelent at drawing.
Storyboards are only there to help YOU out,
so don't be stressed out about your drawing skills.
I recommend you use pinterest to find inspiration.
What I love about it the most is the „more like this" function.
It's so helpful, especially when you are building a set and you need more reference images or
when you are making a mood board and want images to fit a certain type of aesthetic.
Some youtubers create great and very helpful content
regarding movie-making, lighting, color theory.
And I highly recommend you check out these channels:
Channel Criswell,
Sean Tucker (sorry for mispelling in the vid!)
Every Frame a Painting,
The Art of Photography,
Film Riot
and Super Eyepatch Wolf.
Also, if you ever like a movie, go search for a behind the scenes footage or watch interviews.
You can actually learn a lot about setting up lights or filming in general.
If you don't GUNMOD'S lighting system installed go do it right now.
It gives your game lighting that is so much better than the original one.
I think it's a basic thing everyone should have in their games.
Use scriptorium or install it manually.
The second one is OMSP, which comes in handy when placing lights..
If you have apartment life installed you can use this button to shift them up or down.
Three point lighting is one of the oldest lighting techniques used in shooting video
and essentially it consists of three lights – a key light, fill light and back-light.
The key light is the main light source in your scene.
The fill light is the light that "fills" the areas in shadow.
Back light, sometimes also called the hair light, is a light source coming from
the back which purpose is to separate the character from the background.
This kind of set creates a an image that is both well lit and not flat.
Even though a lot of filmmakers use all of the three lights, you have to remember that
it is important to experiment.
I think that sims's lighting system isn't realistic enough to be using 3 point lighting
all the time.
It's just not flexible enough and adding too much light makes the image overexposed.
I usually stick to 2 light sources and occasionally throw in some back light.
However, Sims 2 still has a wide range of lights to choose from.
In this tutorial I separated them into 3 categories:
low intensity (a good fill light),
mid-intensity (good as a key light for more moody scenes or as a backlight)
and high-intensity (a strong key light).
And here's where OMSP comes in.
Put your light sources on top and regulate the height.
With OMSP you will also be able to tilt the lights.
It can sometimes change the look completely, especially when you are using spotlights.
Every light source in Sims is different when it comes to the color of the lighting.
Use that wisely so you don't have to redo the white balance in post-processing.
Most of the movies I've made recently use colored lights.
It's a stylistic choice that not everyone likes, so I'm not pressuring you to use colored
lights when filming.
I recommend you try out different types of lighting and experiment- film during the night
or film during the sunset.
Setting the mood of the scene is all about lighting.
Also, an extra tip for making „natural light" seem more interesting.
Place a colored light outside the window.
For example, use a blue light during the night to create an effect of a bright, full moon
night.
Maybe your sim has neons outside their window?
Throw in some colored lights to make it seem like the neons are really there.
Maybe you're filming during the sunset and want it to be very vivid.
You can mix orange and red light and place it outside.
To demonstrate how I use lighting on set I've made two short movies I'm going to show you.
After you watch them I'm gonna go over how I set up the lighting in both of them.
For this one the set up was quite easy.
I had a lot of neons on the first floor of the building, so the emitted a lot of red
light.
Blue neon on the side required a little bit more, so I simply put mid-intensity blue light
inside the wall.
This way it lit the wall and the surroundings without showing up.
Even though the neons on the first floor emitted a lot of light- it was quite weak and didn't
lit the sim and the car properly.
The next thing I did was place a colored spotlight on OMSP, tilted it so it faced my sim and
the car.
This way the set became more realistic.
The indoor shots were way simpler.
The only thing I did was place a red neon INSIDE the room, so it was a little bit brighter
than with just window light.
Also that low intensity light in the room- I decided not to use it.
Here the set was a little bit bigger so it required more light, especially because of
the neons that were only pictures, not actual lamps.
I did the same thing as with the blue neon in the previous scene.
I placed colored, mid-intensity lamps IN the walls so they illuminated the walls outside
the building.
I also used one green spotlight that I tilted using OMSP.
I placed it really high so you can barely see the green on the metal roof, but I thought
it would give the building a little bit more dimension.
I also placed a blue light right here (pointing) to make the neon look more realistic.
The room also got brighter because the light source was close to the window.
Inside I had a few light sources.
The moon neon was also only a picture, so I placed a low intensity light behind it to
brighten up the furniture.
There is actually a neon tube above the fridge.
Because it emitted areally weak light I decided to brigthen it up a bit by adding another
low intensity light behind it.
It lit up the furniture while leaving the walls dark.
The scene with the falling stars obviously had more blue light in it.
I simply placed a blue light above Brian.
Colors in movies can deliver much more than we think.
Certain color schemes can create melancholic mood, they can make us feel discomfort, share
loneliness, joy or sadness with the character.
I get a feeling that a lot of times we use very similiar color schemes in our sims movies
without really thinking about it.
I used to do it all the time before my break from youtube.
Indeed, they were quite pretty and calm, but it wasn't because I knew I wanted my movies to look
like that.
It was because I didn't know how to use other colors and make color palettes that would
look good.
When I took a break from youtube I got very serious about studying painting, photography
and moviemaking- and I think you can clearly see my improvement in managing colors in my
first movie after I've come back.
I'm sure you've seen the TEAL ORANGE scheme a few times already
It's the most popular color choice in blockbuster movies like Avengers or Wonder Woman
They make things pop because they are so called complementary colors.
Placed on opposite sides of the color wheel, they are colors that highly contrast eachother.
Complementary colors are also red and green as well as violet and yellow.
It doesn't mean we should only use these 3 particular schemes.
Other color harmonies are a triad, split-complementary, monochromatic, analogous.
Choosing a color scheme doesn't mean changing only lighting, but also adding makeup, clothes
and scenography that fits your desired color palette.
I recommend you study this a little bit more by watching these two videos, as I won't be
able to explain this topic better than tonyverse films and channel criswell.
Remember that every color has a meaning to it.
For example, blue is associated with depression and loneliness, red with love, anger or blood,
yellow with sickness, green with nature and so on.
Use it to make your story more meaningful.
My recent discovery is a twitter account that posts color palettes from movies.
Go check that out for some more inspiration.
I have only very basic knowledge about postproduction, so I'm just going to show you how I edit my
own videos.
I usually use the Magic Bullet Looks plugin for basic color grading.
I usually use curves for contrast, lightflex for dat faded look, diffusion if I have a
lot of bright objects (like neons), haze flare so the light reflects on the other side of
the footage and Colorista to edit the colors.
Next thing I do is save the preset and add it to the whole track.
This will allow us to play with depth of field effect later.
First apply blur directly to your video.
Now with the mask, things get a little bit more tricky, but it's still easy.
The apply to FX option should be set to YES.
You should also tick that white square next to the MASK.
Then, proceed with making your mask.
Next I like to apply a little bit of feather so the mask doesn't look too sharp.
I use gradients a lot as it makes the footage look a little bit more realistic.
I usually place them on a separate track, set the blending mode to overlay and lower
the opacity to about 70%.
I've wanted to do a MEP for some time now, but I've waited for that one special song.
I've chosen one song from OFFONOFF latest album.
It's not an easy song, because of the rap, but I think it's worth tring out as mep material.
I want it to be something fresh and challenging, and also I want to test if anything I've said
today was worth making a whole tutorial.
As always, one person gets one part.
After I confirm that you are in the project, you will receive a link to google drive, where
you will find the music AND a mood board like this one.
As you can see, it will contain a color scheme, a few objects that you should use in your
part, a suggestion when it comes to the appearance of the characters.
Obviously, you don't have to copy these pictures and make them in sims, rather take inspiration
from them.
I want you to think a little bit longer than usually about your color choices, settin up
the lights, choosing wardrobe for your sims.
The parts are quite long 42-45 seconds, so you'll be able to tell a short story.
I welcome all sorts of cool effects like DOF, experimenting with color grading,
masking light (like this here),
you can use different types of black bars:none at all or very panoramic,
do what you want!
BUTT you cannot insert text.
The story is up to you, but you will find a few pictures in there that suggest the theme
-passion, sadness, breaking up- the interpretation is up to you!
Please don't tell the others engaged in the project about your moodboards as I want this
to be surprising and fun for everyone.
All the videos, mods and some additional stuff are linked in the description below, so go
check that out.
If you liked the video like it, share it, so other sims directors can see it.
Thank you so much for watching, it was herbalwhite, stay chill.
See ya!
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