Learn 3D Lighting for Free with Jeremy Birn

Anyone who wants to learn the art and craft of 3D lighting in Maya would do well to watch this excellent series of videos by Pixar lighting expert Jeremy Birn, hosted at Vimeo.

The videos are recorded in an older version of Maya, so there will be a bit of a gap between what you are watching and the latest version of Maya that you are running.

But, the basic principles of lighting remain unchanged, even though the interface is a bit different.

Birn is the author of Digital Lighting and Rendering (see image above) which you can buy at amazon. His credentials in our industry are pretty much as good as it gets, having worked for many years as a TD at Pixar, and having lit shots in movies such as The Incredibles, Ratatouille, WALL-E, Toy Story 3, and Monsters University.

You can find his videos, hosted for free at Vimeo, here.  Needless to say Escape Studios have a great deal of online material available to our students, to supplement and support our regular scheduled classes.  But we still encourage all our students to make maximum use of a wide range of online tutorials. It's amazing what you can learn now online, as long as you have a workstation and an internet connection.

The Escape Studios Animation Blog offers a personal view on the art of animation and visual effects. To find out more about our new BA/MArt, now recruiting for September 2017, follow this link.   To apply, visit the offical page here.