9/16/24
Week 2: LookDev and Film Shoot
LookDev: Ship
For our establishing shot, and likely our most CG-intensive shot, we want to feature a shipwreck along the coastline with crashing waves. In search of shipwreck assets, I couldn't help but think, "I can model that". After finally finding a shipwreck I liked, I was immediately turned away by the price. Thus, I ventured to model this in Blender.
One of the main challenges I faced was how to approach the modeling efficiently and with minimal hassle. Here I have shown the evolution of the models, starting with a quick frame of the boat, slowly adding detail per iteration. In total I spent roughly 7 hours on the modeling and UV unwrapping, but in its current state, I can go back and add detail when and where needed. Houdini's FBX imports allow models to be updated very quickly, so I plan to use that functionality in the future.
LookDev: Coin
Aside from the main shipwreck asset, some of the other assets we plan on utilizing include gold coins, a treasure chest and scattered debris. This week, I spent a hefty amount of time dedicated to learning Karma and USD, a subject that has led me down endless rabbit holes and forums. However, I have begun progress on the coins, creating the normal map in Photoshop and using simple procedural MtlX nodes for all other aspects.
Notably, I found the SideFX course "A Beautiful Game" to be most helpful. The course walks through the LOPs based setup, how to create and assign materials, and the specific render settings that are most important in Karma. Although everyone seems to utilize USD in different ways, the general principals were helpful to stay coordinated with my team.
The coin mesh is a simple cylinder with a cloud noise deform in Blender, unwrapped and exported to Houdini for shading.
LookDev: Sprite Can
Another asset our team will definitely be using is, of course, a Sprite can. The shader for the can has not been completed, though this week I have begun planning out the base color. Because the updated 2024 can wrapping is not publicly available, I created a simplified version of the can in Photoshop that is mapped and correlated to a 3D sprite can's UVs. The can asset was sourced from CGTrader, and the logo/branding images that I compiled for the base color were from Walmart's Sprite product listing.
Film Shoot
This Friday, we conducted our first film shoot for our pirate themed story. Choosing the location of Tybee Island's beach offered many nerve-wracking challenges (Sand and expensive equipment do not go well together!), though our group stayed organized to gather the shots we needed. As my role of lighting and lookdev, one of my tasks was to make sure our actor was properly lit, maintaining compositions we planned on our storyboards, and taking multi-exposure photographs of the chrome ball for HDRI development. These are some of the behind-the-scene shots as well as some HDRI shots.
We plan to head back to the beach next weekend to reshoot some of our footage and shoot higher quality HDRs, though our current footage is a great baseline to start with. I will be posting some of that footage in the coming weeks!
