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Description
When you understand light and shadow, and you learn how to work with these elements using only basic tools, you gain a higher level of understanding. How you see things and how they should look of course is still based in reality, but there exists a magical layer which we call artistic expression. Through this layer we express our vision. When we can control our tools to a fine degree, many magical things become possible.

It is why I like wrestling with these scenes and only using basic lights to illuminate them. The more I work with them, the less I need or want canned solutions for lighting. It is like working with only three or four colors while painting, and having to mix to get your tones. You need to understand how to mix paint and how to get darker and lighter tones using your thinning agent or pigments. If you were to have every color and tone available, you wouldn't learn as much, and you would 'give up' that part of your art to the paint manufacturers.

Knowing how to mix and how that works with the bristles of a brush, you can get interesting results, like loading up one part of your brush with one color and another with a different color, and let them mix as you draw the brush down the canvas. You know how this works, and if your goal was the get a red and a yellow feather to slowly mix into orange by the end of the stroke, you will have done your job. There is no paint you can buy that does this. There is no tool that will make this stroke possible. You needed to study and play; and learn how this brush works, and how the paint works.

In 3d it is the same. If you rely on what you buy in the store you will know little. You need to build, play, create, and change every setting. There is no magic button or thing you can buy to make things look great. There is only you. Never trust anything, break things, change them, and make your own lights and marerials. Make you own models. Rig something. Change things. Nothing off the shelf should be good enough. You need to break those crayons.

Description
When you understand light and shadow, and you learn how to work with these elements using only basic tools, you gain a higher level of understanding. How you see things and how they should look of course is still based in reality, but there exists a magical layer which we call artistic expression. Through this layer we express our vision. When we can control our tools to a fine degree, many magical things become possible.

It is why I like wrestling with these scenes and only using basic lights to illuminate them. The more I work with them, the less I need or want canned solutions for lighting. It is like working with only three or four colors while painting, and having to mix to get your tones. You need to understand how to mix paint and how to get darker and lighter tones using your thinning agent or pigments. If you were to have every color and tone available, you wouldn't learn as much, and you would 'give up' that part of your art to the paint manufacturers.

Knowing how to mix and how that works with the bristles of a brush, you can get interesting results, like loading up one part of your brush with one color and another with a different color, and let them mix as you draw the brush down the canvas. You know how this works, and if your goal was the get a red and a yellow feather to slowly mix into orange by the end of the stroke, you will have done your job. There is no paint you can buy that does this. There is no tool that will make this stroke possible. You needed to study and play; and learn how this brush works, and how the paint works.

In 3d it is the same. If you rely on what you buy in the store you will know little. You need to build, play, create, and change every setting. There is no magic button or thing you can buy to make things look great. There is only you. Never trust anything, break things, change them, and make your own lights and marerials. Make you own models. Rig something. Change things. Nothing off the shelf should be good enough. You need to break those crayons.