Rendering - Light, Form & Materials

In this tutorial I give a brief introduction (almost 40 mins) overview of light, form, and materials. I talk about some of the differences between ambient and direct lighting, how important it is to have a good understanding of the 3D shape and form of what you're rendering, and the nitty gritty of surface materials and how roughness can affect reflectiveness.

As I'm painting the knight I started out describing almost everything I was doing (this is my first time really recording myself talking so there was a good learning curve) and mostly after I had demonstrated some of the concepts I mentioned earlier I move on to mention little things that pop into my head as I'm working. I talk extensively about approaching what you're looking at and rendering as a mirror and trying to imagine what will be reflected onto the spot you're looking at using a good understanding of what angle the plane is at in relation to you (the viewer's perspective) and what part of the scene you would see were that surface a mirror. What will that surface will look like based on the environment around it, the material it's made of, and the lighting scenario?

In the parts I'm not talking and just painting I sped it up to 3-4x and tried putting nice music in there. My brother and friend Taylor (aka Doof & Grub) were awesome enough to let me use their music for these spots, their stuff is amazing. I also threw in a few of the shitty songs I made a couple years ago when I had a drum set and was learning guitar :)

The video is 960p, almost 4 and a half hours long cut into 4 sections: Intro/crash course, the head and helmet part 1 & 2, torso & hand, and da legz. The whole package is just under 4 GB.

I put an insane amount of hours and loving into this, just the painting part was over 10, and editing and exporting was multiple times that. I really hope this helps people get a grip on rendering and painting in photoshop (the secret is you just zoom in 300% and noodle for hours on end). I think this is an awesome investment for beginner ~ intermediate, maybe even ADVANCED artists wanting to pull off a realistic style through simply painting alone.

Doof & Grub: https://doofandgrub.bandcamp.com/releases

no-fii: https://soundcloud.com/no-fii

Here's a little preview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pL0R-BEW1IM

This is a little tiny 7 minute chunk out of the over 4 hour long tutorial that will hopefully give you a good idea of what the whole thing is about. I chose a good spot where I was explaining a pretty challenging piece of the armor and how to think about the light bouncing around on it. It's also got one of my brother's tasty licks in it :d