Foundations & Design Tracks overview
Understand the role of a Lighter and Compositor
The fate of any production lies in the hands of its lighting and compositing artists. It’s here, in the final stages of the post-production pipeline, where all the pieces of the puzzle are finally brought together: from concept design, modelling, and shader work, through to animation, look development, and FX. In the right hands, lighting and compositing enhance everything that has come before, with carefully managed lighting bringing out the best in each frame and the compositing ensuring a seamless marriage of scene elements. Badly judged lighting or botched comp work, on the other hand, is something nobody forgets in a hurry. Developed and taught by mentors with extensive industry experience, our Lighting/Compositing Track features a set of intensive classes that teach students the ins and outs of lighting and shading using physically-based raytrace renderer Arnold, how to harness industry standard node-based compositing tool Nuke, and also provide an introduction to the science, technology, and art of lighting for video games. Upon completion of courses in this track, students will be ready to pursue a career in lighting for fx, animation or games development, or in compositing for fx and animation work.
As you complete each course, you will receive a certificate of completion for that course. In order to qualify for a course certificate of completion, students must complete at least 80% of the class assignment during the duration of the course.
The role of Lighting Artist/Technical Director exists across the visual effects, animation, and video games industries and is one that demands strong artistic abilities alongside a good amount of technical knowledge. For, while the work notionally involves the wrangling of geometry, lighting/color reference, HDRI maps and shader settings, this is really a role more concerned with artistic direction - balancing, accenting and enhancing the lighting in each frame for the optimum visual result.
The Compositing Artist, meanwhile, works at the very end of the fx/animation pipeline, combining every disparate digital and (if appropriate) practically filmed element into one virtual space, and - crucially - striving to make the entire process invisible to the viewer.
Foundations & Design COURSES
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As you complete each course you will receive a certificate of completion for that course. In order to qualify for an in course certificate of completion, students must complete at least 80% of the class assignment during the duration of the course.
Learn from award-winning artists who've worked at top studios around the world
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Richard Pereira
Very thorough and informative lectures and critiques
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Sandra van Gasteren
I really loved how Frederic started with the basic info about lights and shaders, and worked his way up to the advanced stuff. It was really clear that way
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Susanna Leu
I am glad I have taken Fredric's course because he made the course interesting, which is really helpful for me to memorize all those difficult technical controls of the software. He also gave helpful artistic advice. Those improved my skills a lot.
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Ryan Davies
The course left me with an overall impression of how Nuke thinks and how to keep it happy. I've already seen great improvements in my own projects because of Nuke and Nick's course.
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Andrew Malvasio
Very happy with this course it was exactly what I was looking for to get me jump started in nuke
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Hayden Matheson
My instructor was very detailed when explaining the functions and steps to complete the desired task. He didn't just give the techinical reasons but shared his expierence from an artistic point of view. His personality and approach to handling students is friendly and met with enthusiasm. Assets of a great teacher.
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Divya Jadhaz
Behnam Shafiebeik is really a great instructor. He made the process of learning Nuke for production quite simple, by breaking it down in to parts that could be understood and exercised in a weeks duration.
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Minah Kim
It showed me broader aspects of 3D compositing so far. I think this was my first lectures that actually go over many different topics that are used in the industry.
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John Griffiths
Omar is a superb artist and teacher. His lectures and feedback were easy to follow and helped to highlight areas of weakness in a submission. Omar showed us multiple ways to tackle lighting in different environments, the maths behind it, and tools to achieve results. It is a great course for anyone who wants to find their feet in the area but also pushes them to try new workflows and experiment.
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Ben Keeling
Omar is a super nice guy and a brilliant teacher. I enjoyed our interactions across the course and in general I learnt a lot.
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Andreia Vieria
The instructor was very good at explaining tasks and answering questions. Feedback from the assignments was always on time and never felt rushed.
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Viktoria Rogoa
It helped me better understand things I was struggling with before. I learned many new interesting things that I didn't know before the course. It gave a valuable information and skills that I can confidently use in my future projects
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