"Digital Lighting and Rendering" by Jeremy Birn is a book I just got from the mail the other day (it's the second edition one.) So far I've only had the time to read about 50 pages of it and I'm already learning so much stuff from it.


If you are a serious 3D artist, I urge you to read this book. It's a tad expensive, but it's worth every penny.

It was only listed as "recommended reading" for my Materials and Lighting class but quite honestly, it should have been mandatory. It covers all sorts of knowledge from film lighting, 3D lighting regardless of packages, etc... It explains how lighting works from an artist standpoint and what you can do to simulate it for whatever feel you're going for (dunno about you, but I'm sure as hell listening to advice from a technical lighting director from Pixar.)

Even if you don't want to do 3D lighting for a living, all of this information is important to know: a good teacher of mine once said that even if you're just doing a 3D modeling portfolio, if the lighting setup is crap then it's going to make your models look horrible (briefly put: you're still going to be jobless.)




You know what you must do, _{fellow-3D-artists-who-still-don't-understand-jack-about-lighting}!