About Me
My Lighting History:
I went to Photography school after high school, for a two-year Associates degree. That's where I started to learn about lighting. That was in 1978.
Before home computers even existed, I worked with photographers as an assistant, in the car studios of Detroit and later on location and in studios in Hollywood. I went on to do set design and construction, and continued with lighting throughout.
I got my first gaming job in 1992 at Westwood Studios, where I worked for 10 years. Over the years, I've worked at Insomniac Games, Psyonix, Crytek, 343 Industries/Microsoft, and am currently at Sony's Bend Studios.
You can see my current resume here.
I started out in the industry as a "generalist" although I mainly worked on cinematics.
It was while I was at Insomniac that I started lighting full time, and that's been my specialty since.
I've been lighting in one form or another for over 35 years, but I'm still learning all the time!
I have other websites for some of my different work:
Cybergooch This site, where I have my Fantasy and Science Fiction illustration.
Goochvision has more game-related art.
Archiluma has my architectural rendering.
Companies I've Worked At
You probably noticed there were a lot of times in this article where I said "It depends a lot on the company you're working for."
This will have a major impact on how things work, the company "culture," the tools you use, the type of lighting you'll be doing, and the other teams you'll be working worth.
Here's a breakdown of the different companies I've worked for, that shows just how different things can be from one company to the next. I don't think I'm breaking any NDA's by talking about overarching methods.
Westwood Studios:
When I started at Westwood in 1992, 3D wasn't a thing yet in games. I was initially a "pixel-pusher" working with Deluxe Paint and DP Anim to create the images and animations used in our games. Over the years, as the first 3D programs started being used, I started working on cinematics, doing 3D modeling, texture work, animation, lighting, and post. We had weekly art meetings where the artists would show their work, and leads would make any comments on tweaks required. Back then we would be given a script and some concept art, and we did everything else ourselves. Although most of my work was pre-rendered cinematics, I also did in-engine work, primarily modeling and animation.
Insomniac Games:
Art meetings weren't as formal at Insomniac, we would have them occasionally, but you were more likely to receive feedback based on either lead artists or supervisors sending comments about the latest additions to the game or having an art director come by your desk to discuss what you're working on. Maya was the main 3D tool, and the game engine was proprietary. At the time, we relied heavily on lightmapping. It was an interesting system where every object in the game had its own lightmap. We had about 4 Lighting Artists at the time, and would go back and forth between the Ratchet and Clank games and the Resistance: Fall of Man games, which was fun because the two were so visually different. They've built a new engine since those days, and I'm not sure if they're still lightmapping or not. Insomniac had the most epic fully-stocked kitchen I've seen, so you were in snack heaven.
Psyonix:
A smaller company based in San Diego, Psyonix is a great group of folks that work on PC and mobile games. They knocked one out of the park with Rocket League. Psyonix uses the Unreal Engine, and this was my first time working with it, so I had to get up to speed quickly. The main 3D program used there was 3DS Max, though I believe Maya was used for character animation. I did lighting and FX work while at Psyonix, and would have worked there longer, but an evil recruiter contacted me one day and told me he had jobs in Europe. I bit, and went to Germany for a year, at Crytek.
Crytek:
Why just visit Europe when you can live there for a year? While at Crytek (Frankfurt, Germany,) I worked on RYSE: Son of Rome. The CryEngine was my first experience with a deferred renderer where all lighting was done in real-time. No lightmapping! This workflow has both positives and negatives compared to lightmapping, as I mentioned in the article. At Crytek we had about 4 Lighting Artists working on Ryse. (There were other Lighting Artists working on Crysis 3 and other titles as well.) It was great working with a very international team with talented people from all over the world. And beer.
343 Industries:
343 is a Microsoft game studio. I worked on a 14 month contract on Halo 5, doing environment and cinematic lighting. I learned the importance of good producers while at 343. The producers I worked with there were a part of every meeting, and took notes that would then be distributed to the team. The great thing about good producers is that they find out what's slowing you down or preventing you from getting something done, and then *they* track down the problem and communicate with other departments to find out what needs to be done next, leaving you free to get more work done, and not trying to track people down and find out what the problem is yourself. In other words, good producers mean you can spend more time lighting, and less time chasing problems. On Halo 5 we had about 5 level Lighting Artists, 3 Cinematic Lighting Artists, and 3 Skybox Artists.
343 used Maya and proprietary tools for their engine. We had brief "stand-ups" every morning where everyone went around and described what we were working on, and if we were blocked by anything. Producers were even at these meetings and took notes. These only lasted about 10 minutes, yay!
Bend Studios/Sony:
I initially worked on a 14 month contract for Sony's Bend Studios for their title "Days Gone", and then accepted a full time position, and am working there now. Bend uses the Unreal engine, but have done a lot of proprietary modification to the lighting engine, and to a lot of other areas as well. You'll frequently find that studios that use "off the shelf" game engines actually do a lot of custom work to modify the systems to work the way they want them to. As such, we are doing no lightmapping for Days Gone, and rely on proprietary system for the lighting. I am working primarily on cinematics, but also do lighting for open world areas as well, primarily things like camps and interiors.
There are four of us on the lighting team, and we hold regular meetings on Tuesdays and Thursdays to review all of our work. Each takes a turn showing the cinematics we've recently completed, and the Lighting Supervisor gives us notes for any changes. Part of the reason we used a system like this ( a system more akin to the "dailies" system used by those that do lighting for film) is that a couple of the guys on the team had a film background, and were used to a more frequent review process. You'll probably be seeing more folks with a film background entering the game studios as the technology and realism in games continues to improve.
The studio is located in Beautiful Bend, Oregon, and I take a walk by a river every day. Seriously.
That's a Wrap
Okay, that's about all I can think of.
I've really enjoyed doing lighting over the years, and consider myself fortunate to have found my way into the gaming industry. If there are any other questions you have that weren't answered in this article, drop me a line, and I'll try to answer them.
I hope this article is of some use to those interested in Lighting!
-Eric Gooch
