midline

Midline

midline.work

I don’t want to go back

Foreword

I don’t want to go back to the “past” in a state of partial understanding. The only difference is that this “past” has now been amplified by AI.

Many years ago, when I first started learning 3D software to create product visuals, my behavior was very much like today’s AI: trying things in large quantities, piling up all kinds of ideas, and seeing which one happened to work. The results were usually fine.

As AI became increasingly powerful, I began to resist this way of relying on “chance.” A kind of rebellion made me want to go one step further. I did not want to finish a small image, be asked why, and only be able to answer, “it looks good.” And beyond that, there would be nothing...... Most judgments in the industry seem to have stopped at this point as well.

“Not premium enough.” “Make it brighter.” “It lacks texture.” These words happen every day. As a result, design becomes something that can be endlessly added to. Whoever has more authority gets to decide. An image is revised again and again until it becomes “busy” enough. As for the product itself, no one really cares.

I do not really expect a system to stand above all of this......

Today’s design tools are already very good, and the arrival of AI makes them even better. But when the number of choices becomes infinite, judgment disappears. Everyone can participate in judgment, yet there is no framework that allows judgment to be discussed and verified.

This is uncomfortable, and also a little boring. I need something that allows me to keep going when I am faced with “I don’t think it is premium enough.”

For me, the lighting system is the bridge between “I feel this way” and “why it is right.” It makes lighting no longer just a matter of feeling, but a judgment process that can be deduced, explained, and repeatedly verified.

After finishing an image, I can clearly explain: this light is here for a reason, and someone else can look at it and follow the logic through as well. In the end, it can pull these beautiful images out of the struggle over “whether they look good,” and bring them back to a more grounded place: when the product is seen, it is credible, and it has a basis.

What Is a Lighting System

A lighting system is meant to help me find the logic and reason for the existence of light in 3D rendering. It allows visual creation to move forward not only by feeling, but with a truly effective and trustworthy basis for judgment.

A lighting system is not a formula, nor is it a template that can be directly applied. What it wants to explore is a more fundamental question: when a product exists in three-dimensional space, how do we use light to let it “be seen,” and make that seeing grounded in something.

Without light, the product is not yet an object that can be viewed or judged. When we light it, we are not only trying to illuminate it, but to let it gradually grow out of the light. When placing a light, it should not only be there to solve whether a certain angle is bright enough. It will affect many parts of the product, and it will also form relationships with other lights. The brightness, shape, and transition of a certain position should not be determined by that light alone, but should emerge from a larger lighting relationship. What it wants to say is: how light is established around the product, how it passes across the surface, how it changes, and how it works together with light from other directions to form a self-consistent result. So that the light is not isolated. Its position, intensity, and shape can be derived from the overall relationship, and when viewed from different angles, it can still hold up.

Many judgments always end up stopping at “I feel.” I feel this part should be brighter. I feel that part is not good enough. I feel another light needs to be added. Feeling is, of course, useful. Many problems are first discovered through feeling. But feeling cannot stay there forever, can it?

But then again, it does not presume to replace feeling. Instead, it can give feeling a basis. In the end, the judgment may still be made through feeling. It may come from preserving something somewhere, from the moment of deciding firmly not to keep adjusting, or from the compromise after revising it many times. But that feeling is probably no longer the same as the initial “I think.”

A lighting system is not the answer. It is a method that allows the product to be established and examined in light. First let “right” stand, and then “beauty” may have the chance to slowly happen afterward.