Chris Campbell · Lead Lighting Artist

Yes, exactly. So for example, especially for demonstration purposes, we want it to look as good as possible. So I'm turning on shadows quite often. But probably, I guess, 80% of the lights that we're placing generally don't cast shadows. And the basic thought process there is that if it's some kind of ambient light or it's just acting as a fill for the environment, you don't always need to have shadows turned on. For example, let's say that this was quite bright. Let's make it a little bit brighter. This is again one of those things where, when you don't have ray tracing and the methods that offline renderers use, you have to fake a lot of things. In this example, there's no bounce light coming from this light here hitting the floor and then shining back up. If I turn it off and on, there's no difference in this part of the frame. What we'll do sometimes is we'll add a bounce light or a fill kind of light. And in this case, I'll just extend the bulb a little bit so it's a bit softer. I'm thinking that I want the light source to be about as big as the cone of this light hitting this pile of dirty laundry on the floor. So I'll bring that down to about there. And then lighting is pretty much all about ratios. So it's all about how bright is your key light and then how bright are the subsequent bounce and fill lights and that kind of stuff to create contrast in your scenes. So right now this fill light is just way too bright. So I'd bring that way down, and probably even more than that. And so now it's very subtle, but it just adds a little bit of that greenish light bouncing up into the ceiling and against these areas. And this light, because it's so subtle in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't need shadow casting, to go back to your initial point. Key lights, shadow casting. Fill lights, no shadow casting.

Jared Huckaby · Host

It's always a hard balance, because in an ideal situation, of course, every single light would be shadow casting and ray tracing would be on everything. You take it to the point of looking awesome, and then you often have to scale it back by degrees to get to the point where it's performant.

Chris Campbell · Lead Lighting Artist

Yeah, exactly. I mean, obviously, we try and replicate the real world as much as possible. And in the real world, I'm not sure I've heard of a light source that doesn't cast shadows. That would be interesting. So that's obviously the goal. But then the realities of computer graphics tend to get in the way of that sometimes.