I’ve had to come to terms with some hard facts as the digital tools we use continue to mature. One of those being the fact that the tried-and-true method of 3-Point lighting is not always the best choice for a cinematic look and in some cases can work against achieving such a look.

What exactly is a cinematic look? 

This is a loaded question as it can be subjective to personal taste but in a general sense, cinematic is a rich blend of atmosphere, lighting, shadows, and other aspects but not necessarily in color as black and white can be cinematic in the right hands.

Definition of "Cinematic" from the Macmillan Dictionary Blog

Definition

• relating to films

Origin and usage

• The adjective cinematic is often used to describe a film or director’s style and techniques in filmmaking.

Examples

• The cinematic style that is employed in the art of filmmaking and visual storytelling, in general, refers to the composition, colour, type of film, camera, lenses, costumes, set design, hair and makeup, filters, editing, effects and music used. The more iconic the cinematic style is, the more memorable it makes the film after viewing. Directors and other people involved in movie making commonly become known for their specific cinematic style.

As you can see cinematic is much more than lighting but poor lighting leads to a poor scene and it’s one aspect we have a lot of control over. Most of us in the Rendo community have put together many renders with lighting being very important so this is nothing new to many here and that could be the problem. 

A lot of Renderosity community members have been doing digital art since digital art was a thing to do. Some of us started out with flat lighting, whatever was stock because we had so much to learn but once we grasped its importance, lighting became a constant source of more learning and improvement. What worked on the last project is not good enough for the current project. 

Three-point lighting is a good place to start in many cases, but we don’t always have to use all three. Sometimes we may only want two of the three lights to get a particular effect. Maybe even just a backlight or rim light combined with ambient lighting can be enough compared to all three and the ambient lighting piled on top. Or maybe point or omni-style lights are lighting up a room which will require specific placement like overhead for room lights. 

While the Key light is certainly important… hence the name… it can wash out a scene, making it lose depth and possibly giving off a cartoony vibe. The less depth perceived the more the look will shift towards cartoony or two-dimensional. This applies to single-image renders, image sequences, and video.

If you are not sure where to start, you use a three-point light setup initially until you get all the light sources in place. Then you can start toning down or eliminating some or all of the three-point light rig.

For some shots, for portraits particularly you would want to use three-point lighting but for creative purposes the system may be long past its prime. A subway platform, for example, would use omni or point lights for each light source whereas an outdoor scene relies a lot more on atmosphere and ambient lighting setups.

Those you that have read some of my past articles know I’m big on rigs and rules, like three-point lighting and the Rule of thirds but this old dog has had to learn some new tricks the past couple of years to achieve the rich, full cinematic style viewers are coming to demand. Pixar quality was only a dream not that many years ago but we have blown way past that level with modern tools. 

It’s time we look past what we’ve learned so far and experiment with more natural, multi-source lighting, so we can look forward to more cinematic renders.