Day to Night Conversion tips

[Victor Makali]

I am an aspiring visual effects artist and I am currently planning to work on a shot involving day to night conversion. I wanted to do this digitally in NukeX so I want to hear more about the process from more experienced vfx artist. What effects and processes really sell the effect and how would you go about shooting it. I am open for any tips! Thanks

[Anonymous]

Basics are the same as old style (David Lean/Lawrence of Arabia) film techniques:

Calibrate your white balance to yellow (will blue up the shot), desaturate a bit (rods vs cones in the eyes – low light is more rods which are b/w vs cones which are color), pop up certain highlights and reflections or glares/glints on things that would cause that in the camera lens, make sure the actors aren’t squinting like it’s really bright.

If you’re faking “moonlight” you’re going to make sure the shot has hard sun shadows. If you’re original footage is overcast, make sure there’s no moon in the sky, as you’ll be lacking hard shadows on the ground.

Everything is bluish white, and under exposed.

From a purely technical perspective, here’s rough numbers from an fx chain i have in magic bullet looks

Saturation: 55% with Tint R(0.3) G(0.6) B(0.08)
Warm/Cool: +0.792 (to the blue) Tint +0.295
Curves (S cruve): -0.8 shadows, +1.4 highlights
Drop the exposure 2.5 – 3 stops
repeat the saturation at the end

play with it 🙂 that’s the nature of this. It all depends on your footag.e

[Anonymous]

I’ve tried to apply to my footage. It works–~ but it highly depends on the quality you shoot. Thx!!

[Anonymous]

I would not suggest depend on a particular set of numbers cause we know every shot is different and has different color values.
What you basically wanna do is.

1) Turn down the Exposure
2) Increase Contrast a little
3) Tint the scene to Cyan/Blue

[Author]

Posts