Hanson builds upon his introduction in Volume 1 delving deeply into
advanced lighting and shading approaches in current VFX
work.

To read the review on Volume One of this set Click Here.

This volume builds upon volume one. Here Eric introduces us to several
techniques I've not used before and clarifies many issues that pros
should be thinking about when texturing and lighting a scene,
particularly where Global Illumination is best used. As an aside,
Gnomon also has a DVD volume by Eric's colleague Greg Downing entitled:
Spherical Panoramic Photography, which I feel ties
in very nicely with this one, providing technique for developing unique
Global Illumination assets. I'll review that one at a later time.

Eric gives much useful information on setting up both indoor and out
door realistic scene lighting, detailing what you need to be concerned
about and how to make sure it's all pretty believable. He carefully
explains how to achieve excellent results with resource economy in
mind. Along the way he shares some really cool digital sets that he's
designed, with neat atmospheric lighting effects, explaining why each
technique or effect was used.

Next, he discusses the creation of rich background shaders for creating
photorealistic surfaces. Here he goes into subjects such as weathering,
procedural vs. mapped textures, different projection techniques, and
the importance of different kinds of maps, particularly the specular
and bump maps. His hands-on step by step instructions on creating true
specular and bump maps in Photoshop, and then applying them to surfaces
in Maya is invaluable. I've read books on this subject and
experimented a great deal with creating my own maps, but Eric's clever
and simple techniques truly opened my eyes. He demonstrates in Maya
6.5, but I used similar approaches in 3ds Max with comparable results.

In the end Eric goes back to his opening scene in Volume One and gives
us hands on detailed instruction in how to set up render/composite
elements needed to properly integrate the 3D elements with the b.g.
plate.

Briefly, this volume is more fun than one, and Eric seems a bit more
alive here. He clues us in on a large number of small but important
techniques and processes that he's found make work more efficient and
the results more professional. I learned a lot. I still don °à˜t like the
PowerPoint slides, but he eventually gets to fun examples useful
lessons making it all worth while.

This is powerful stuff and I don't think you'll find much of this kind
of information any place else, except possibly in on the job training.
Eric gives you an inside look at the production world's view of
digital sets. Is it worth your time and money? Yes. Even if you're not
a total studio pro, this one is going to teach you a lot. It will be
less helpful if your platforms are not Photoshop and Maya, but all of
his principles transfer to similar applications, so long as you know
how to do what he suggests using your tool of choice. This again is an
advanced, pro level course, not designed for your average home render
jockey.