This section mainly covers some of my thoughts on rendering and lighting.

Lighting

In the use of lighting, I mainly arranged it according to the narrative needs of different scenes. In Scene One’s corridor, I used cold-toned lighting, mainly blue light, making the space appear colder and more oppressive. At the same time, during the forward camera movement, it forms a clear rhythm of light and shadow, using lighting to enhance the sense of suspense, while the red light leaking from the elevator hints at the approaching danger.

In Scene 2, the meeting room is overall quite dark. I used strong top lighting to illuminate the edges of the conference table, still mainly blue light, while the central area where the protagonist stands is lit by a spotlight, further emphasizing through lighting the state of being surrounded and interrogated. At the same time, the projection light source of the super AI also required repeated brightness tests, so that it can show the cold, inorganic feeling without excessively interfering with the scene’s contrast.

In Scene 3, which is the memory segment, the lighting shifts to soft and warm tones, mainly using low-contrast lighting to highlight the change in the relationship between the characters. This makes the atmosphere different from the oppressive feeling of the main storyline and aligns more closely with the emotional changes of the librarian, allowing the emotions to be conveyed through the light and shadow.

Overall, the lighting is mainly centered on emotion, using variations in cold and warm tones, brightness and darkness, and contrast to serve the story itself, rather than presenting complex technical demonstrations.

Rendering Style

In the choice of rendering style, I initially wavered between realism and a more cartoon-like style. The advantage of a cartoon style is that production is relatively simple, and many details can be weakened through stylization. However, in actual testing, I found that a cartoon style cannot express the cold, oppressive, and inorganic atmosphere I want. The super AI’s appearance, the overlapping sense of metal and shadow in the meeting room, and the solemn feeling when the mecha launches missiles all require semi-realistic lighting to work.

On the other hand, overly realistic rendering would make the entire image too hard and too heavy, especially in the memory segment with the librarian and the old professor, where the warmth of contrast would be lost. Therefore, I eventually chose a style that leans toward realism but does not pursue excessive realistic detail. In other words, the overall lighting and material direction leans realistic, but without highly detailed textures or complex physical rendering, keeping the visuals unified while expressing the contrast between coldness and warmth.