![]() ![]() They'll just create a new material with the Shot Lighting priority and that will be picked by the tool-no need for manual assignment and handling of that material. Say that a lighter needs to tweak some specific values for their shot, without affecting all the other shots and sequences. The tool will pick the most relevant material for you depending on the files that exist in the project. One of them is the cascading materials system, which is used to assign the correct materials to all the geometry pieces in a scene, with a priority-based system: you've got 4 priority levels for a single material: LookDev, Foundation Lighting, Master Lighting, and finally Shot Lighting. ![]() J: We use a lot of custom tools, which have been built thanks to Unity's flexibility to create in-editor tools that look like built-in ones. Q: Did you have to build anything custom just for Sonder? If so, why? And how did it turn out? This allows much faster iterations, and thus in the end, higher lighting quality. Lighters see how the final frame they're working on will look like without having to wait for a long rendering process. The other unique choice is the usage of Unity, a real-time game engine, to produce the film, and the biggest advantage there is that we get near-instant results. This is the biggest concept behind Sonder's unique look. Visually we want to steer away from that computer-generated feeling and try to mimic traditional 2D animation, but still using 3D geometry. Here we are entirely customizing the lighting, and the response of the different surfaces to the virtual lights in the scene is manually edited by the lighters. Usually when animated films have a stylistic tone to them, it is done through exaggerated shapes or colors, but the lighting calculations are based on photorealism (you might have heard of "physically-based shading," for example). I've been expanding it greatly with all the requests I've had from our creative people, and some of those changes actually made it back into the official product! J: Well as I explained, the team chose me for my work on Toony Colors Pro 2, which is the set of shaders that give this very stylistic, non-photorealistic look to the film. Tell us about some of the tools you used in working on the film. I also help in other areas whenever needed, such as managing our server or working on the pipeline itself. J: I have to make sure that the tools and shaders we use in Unity work as expected, and enable our lighters to meet the visual goals they have. What are some of your main responsibilities in that role? Q: You’re Sonder’s Shading and Lighting Tools Lead. I said yes, and a few weeks later I was officially part of the team! That was in April 2016. Andrea Goh contacted me with some support questions, and asked if I'd be interested to meet the director and producer (Neth and Sara) to know more about the film. J: The team bought one of the packages I sell on the Unity Asset Store, Toony Colors Pro 2, which is used to give that non-photorealistic look to the film. Now I know that I don't want to live in such a crowded area, so I'm back in the countryside in the west, in Bretagne (where they make very good crêpes and salted caramel!). ![]() Jean: I was born in the southwest of France, but lived most of my life in a suburb of Paris. Q: Thanks for chatting with us today, Jean! To start, can you tell us where you’re from originally, and where you live now? Jean chatted with us from his home in Bretagne, France about how he got involved with Sonder, the custom tools and techniques he used on the film, and how he helped give the film its distinctive look. Today we’re introducing Jean Moreno, the Shading and Lighting Tools Lead for Sonder.
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