Poser Portrait Lighting Mastery

When you experience lighting in the “real world” it tends to just well—happen! Without much effort from, the sun rises, you flick a switch, or you open the curtains and there we have it, light! You may put some thought into where you place a lamp, how you angle the blinds, or where you aim a torch, but much of the time your experience with light is generally a passive experience.

Things are different in the 3D graphics world, where we’re wanting to maximize a scene that we have carefully set up. It’s to optimise the elements of mood, a character’s expression, the textures and objects or certain areas in the scene.

Have you struggled with:-

• The skin of your character looking waxy or lacking realism?
• Your character looking flat in a render, needing depth?
• Mastering Firefly or Superfly to bring out the best for your portrait render?
• Making the most of skin textures?
• Understanding and applying different types of lighting?

Tony Qwade, who has been using Poser since version 1,  shares his comprehensive experience in overcoming the above challenges and bridging these gaps with this two session course. He’ll answer your questions and demonstrate solutions live from his desktop with over 3 hours of training.

Software used in this webinar course:-

• Poser Pro (90%)
• Photoshop

You’ll Learn…

Types of lighting

For each type of lighting we’ll talk about setting up and the prime advantages and disadvantages in relation to lighting characters for portraits.

• Spotlights
• Infinity light
• Volumetric lighting for atmospheric portraits or scenes
• Point light
• Image based lighting
• Area light

Light sets

• How to make characters “more 3D”
• 3 point
• 2 point
• Recommended pre-built light sets

Highlighting a Character’s Expression and Strengths

Every character has aspects of them that need highlighting in a portrait, especially the eyes.

• What story do you want to tell about your character?
• How to highlight the eyes for the greatest effect
• How to draw the eye in order around a portrait image

Creating a mood with lighting

Prebuilt Scenes that include light 

• Optimising a prebuilt scene
• Two issues that prebuilt scenes sometimes have

Render engines and lighting

We discuss the advantages of each render engine in relation to character portraits.

• Superfly – Still images and Realism
• Firefly – Animation
• Careful with choosing shaders

SEVEN Case studies (Session 2)

• 4 x Firefly portraits
• 3 x Superfly portraits

Postwork Tips and Tricks (Session 2)

Highlighting features of a character in portrait

• Making a difference with the eyes

The premium ticket includes:-

• Free Bonus webinar Poser tutorial : Mastering the Morph Tool By Charles Taylor (Nerd3D)
• On-line exercises to reinforce your learning from the webinar recordings, as part of the Digital Art Live learning framework.

Webinar Dates, Times and Duration

Date : Saturday 30th May

Introductory Session

Time : 20:00 BST (London)/ 12:00 PDT (Los Angeles) / 15:00 EDT (New York)

Duration : 30 minutes

Main Session

Time : 20:30 BST (London)/ 12:30 PDT (Los Angeles) / 15:30 EDT (New York)

Duration : 1 hour or longer depending on Q&A

Date : Sunday 31st May

Time : 20:00 BST (London)/ 12:00 PDT (Los Angeles) / 15:00 EDT (New York)

Duration : 1.5 hours or longer depending on Q&A

About the presenter : Tony Qwade

Tony Qwade has been a Graphic Designer and Animator for over 20 years. He has worked for the corporate, entertainment, and small business markets. Some of his clients include Disney, Warner Brothers, and Sony Interactive. He has a passion for character design and has been a user of Poser since version one.

“Although I use other creative tools in my day to day, Poser has been my go to for creating characters and is a one stop shop for character creatives and animators and has tools which are relatively easy to learn and master if given the time…time spent learning the software and all its nuances is time well spent. I’ve used it as an art tool as well as in my professional workflow…”

He currently works with book authors actualizing their characters, Graphic Novel Writers as both a 2D and 3D illustrator, and independent film makers where character animatics and scene layouts are perfect fit for Poser. His own current projects include developing a sci fi animated web series based on his own short stories and some other authors in sci fi/fantasy genre, which is his other passion.