10/14/24
Week 6: Fixing Shaders and Shot Compositions
Addressing Feedback
This week, the mentors at the Mill had several pointers for how to improve our current shots, mainly dealing with our shaders and composition of shots. Current feedback that has been worked this week on includes:
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Adjusting IOR and specular of Sprite cans
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Adjusting warmness/coolness of lights and shadow
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Harsher shadows and product highlights
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Composition and proportions of cans
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Shipwreck shader & detail variation
The first goal of the week was to make the necessary changes of the shot where the viewer sees inside of the treasure chest. First, I began by separating the cans from the coins and chest, therefore allowing further control on the specific lighting of the cans. Taking reference from existing product photography, I wanted to mimic a similar harsh streak/highlight on the side of the can. Using 5 different sizes of quad lights in Houdini's Arnold, I created a kind of gradient to feather out the harsher highlight.
Here are some tests with varying light intensities and sizes:
Here are some other tests with varying IORs:
IOR = 1.1
IOR = 1.78
IOR = 1.3
IOR = 2.0
IOR = 1.5
IOR = 2.2
In addition to working on the lighting for the cans, the shot composition was an important note from the mentors. Here I am showing the progression of this shot, from pre-viz to now. Overall, I am happier with the lighting and overall look of the shot, and it has evolved quite a bit over these few weeks!
Shipwreck Updates
This week, the mentors also suggested we increase the amount of detail in the ship models, and in addition, creating a few more variations of wood to scatter in both the ship and debris. Taking inspiration from both fictional and real wooden ships, I wanted to make smaller details to bring the shot to life. This includes more sails and ropes, more variation of the sizes of the planks, etc. In the coming weeks, I will be working on animating the sway of the ropes and sails, but for now the comp is a single exr.
The models have been developed in Blender, exported to Maya to be rendered in Arnold.
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