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GLBMaking It Cinematic: How to Achieve a Filmic Look in 3D
0Article by Yuri Ilyin
3D artists tend to pursue two different goals with their works: photorealism and cinematicity. The latter may be a derivative of the former, but generally they are not equal. Photorealistic renders strive to look as close to reality (captured through the camera lens) as possible, while the cinematic or filmic approach pertains much more to telling a story.
Upon their arrival, the games Bodycam and Unrecord made headlines with their ultra-realistic visuals. Some observers even claimed that Bodycam developers faked the gameplay by simply recording a video, but the latter quickly and craftily rebuked these allegations.
Giving 3D graphics filmic or cinematic properties, especially when it comes to real-time scenes, is one of the holy grails of the field. In this article, we will overview some of the most important components of the recipe.
Reference: Blade Runner 2049
Assets: Meat and Potatoes
The developers of Bodycam and Unrecord did not create anything extraordinary in terms of environments. They actually used pre-made 3D works - 3D-scanned objects, products of photogrammetry, and so on. Everything visible in these titles was literally imported into the game world, apparently sourced from 3D marketplaces like, for example, RenderHub.
In fact, there are now so many generic prefabs of any imaginable type, size, and form that it is fairly easy to populate almost any kind of scenery. Only elements truly unique to a specific project need to be made by hand..
Reference: Bodycam
No matter whether you are making a static scene or a dynamic one, the "potatoes" are as important as the "meat," and in fact reinforce the presumed realism or cinematicity of the primary object depicted. With a filmic scene, you may want to tell a story, and the choice of the "garnish" assets depends heavily on this.
Third-party content may require some tinkering and optimization, although many stock platforms already provide low-poly assets optimized for game engines. Still, you may want to alter their colors for consistency, add grungy details, or remove wear and scratches.
And that brings us to the next subject.
Materials
In most cases, stock assets come with pre-prepared materials, so only minor adjustments to color (hue and saturation in particular) may be necessary. For custom objects, however, good references - preferably photographs as detailed as possible - are almost essential. While 3D suites provide their own material-making tools, these often depend heavily on the renderer and are not always easily translated across formats.
Fortunately, physically based rendering (PBR) exists. In simplified terms, a PBR surface material is a set of raster images representing physical properties such as albedo, gloss, and reflectivity. Today, these maps are more commonly called Base Color, Roughness, Specularity, and Metallicity.
Except for the Base Color and Normal Map, these textures are black and white, with darker areas designating minimal values and brighter ones representing maximum values. For example, a black-and-white texture plugged into the Roughness slot will make darker areas more reflective and brighter areas less reflective.
The same principle applies to Metallicity: brighter areas show Fresnel reflections typical of metals, while darker ones behave more like dielectric surfaces.
Depending on the suite and renderer, PBR shaders may look slightly different, but they generally include slots for Base Color, Metallic, Roughness, Specular, Normal Maps, and Subsurface Scattering.
They often also have controls for the Alpha channel (surface transparency) and Transmission, used to simulate refraction, together with Index of Refraction (IOR) values. IOR is a well-defined physical property of all materials, with extensive tables available listing the values for nearly everything.
Some shaders also feature slots such as "Coat" and "Thin Film," adding extra control over the surface. Still, the essential maps remain Base Color, Metallic, Roughness, Normal Maps, and Alpha. The rest depend on the specific object.
How do you create maps that make the final render look realistic and cinematic? Beyond the built-in tools of a 3D suite, specialized software is designed specifically for high-quality materials. Adobe Substance 3D Painter and 3D-Coat provide a library of base materials, allowing artists to build detailed, physically accurate textures for export as standard graphic files.
Adobe Substance 3D Designer, while difficult to learn, is a powerful tool for constructing customizable materials. Its outputs can be bridged directly into Unreal Engine, Blender, and other software, generating the necessary textures inside them.
Materials are often the most challenging aspect of 3D art, requiring more attention and time than modeling. To achieve convincing photorealism, quick fixes are not enough. And if you are not familiar with UDIMs yet, it is high time to learn.
Lighting
Light is one of the primary channels for cinematicity. The setup of a scene's lighting affects storytelling more than anything else. If you want your render to resemble a still from a AAA movie, the proper lighting setup is paramount.
What is "proper," though? The answer: study the methods of directors of photography and key grips on actual film sets, and set up your lighting as they do.
That means quite a deal of learning: first, because there are a lot of 'if-thens', second, making an impression is the primary goal here, which may require giving up on some level of realism. Making a night scene, for example, will counter-intuitively require using 'harder' lights to pick up the primary objects (and, oftentime, their silhouettes) while leaving the surroundings closer to the camera in shadow while the background is drenched in hazy diffuse glow.
Reference: Blade Runner 2049
From the early days of cinema, at least in Hollywood, there has been a convention of using cooler gamma with strong emphasis on blue in nighttime scenes. This convention even predates color film: some theaters used colored filters on projectors during black-and-white screenings to match the time of day shown on screen.
However, this does not mean that is a stone-hard rule. The French surrealist masterpiece 'La Cit Des Enfants Perdus' (The City of Lost Children) is notable for its strong emphasis on greenish tints, not blue, when showing the night time.
Reference: The City of Lost Children
While studying the craft of key grips is invaluable for 3D lighting, there are shorter paths too. like Gleb Alexandrov's Cinematic Lighting in Blender, for example, offers both theory and practical application. Though aimed at Blender users, its principles translate well to any 3D suite or engine.
Postprocessing
Finally there is postprocessing, the final stage which is the ultimate venue to ensure cinematicity of your scene or animation.
Two primary operations define postprocessing: color correction and color grading. Correction ensures that colors are technically accurate and true to life, fixing white balance, exposure, and saturation where necessary.
Color grading, by contrast, is a creative process. It alters colors to evoke a particular mood or impression and accounts for much of the filmic look.
Check the (older) video below, which covers color grading for still photographs using Photoshop. At the time, the technique was novel for photographers, though not for filmmakers. As you can see, color grading can make a photo far more dramatic and expressive.
Finally, there is the Chromatic Aberrations effect that imitates slight (or not so slight) distortions of physical camera lenses. It may contribute to achieving realism, but it requires careful handling, as when overused it quickly starts to look lame.
As a conclusion, a few summarizing tips and tricks:
- Do some experimenting with photographs first to see what works for you and what doesn't..
- Start with achieving photorealism before turning to filmic looks. They are not equal, but the right path is to begin with photorealism, then move on to color grading and effects.
- Things depend heavily on the scene, but in general color grading involves shifting the darker parts of the image toward the cooler range of the spectrum (green-blue), while the brighter areas lean toward the warmer range (yellow-red). Midtones may remain more or less neutral, though again this depends on the scene.
- When setting up a virtual camera, it can be very useful to use presets that imitate physical models; Blender has such an option, and other suites likely do as well.
- Camera angles matter a lot.
- Adding black bars to imitate a wide cinematic frame works reliably. Do not forget to add some border blurring as well.
- Think of lighting in movie-set terms: natural lighting is not always your friend.
- Overcranked effects tend to ruin everything, so handle them with care.
In the end, cinematic 3D is like directing your own movie, where lights, assets, and a touch of post magic bring the scene to life. If you enjoyed this little premiere, subscribe to the RenderHub blog and keep the reels of inspiration rolling.
