Week 8: Polishing Lighting, Shaders, Adding Extra Render Layers
2/24/25 - 3/2/25
Mentor Feedback
This week, our group pushed to reach 85% completion, making great efforts to improve and polish from the previous version. With some new notes from the mentors, we are excited to continue to iterate this week! Here were my notes to address:
Hailey:
- Shot 4 may need to have an extra render layer for the foreground flower for more compositing control
​
Luke:
- Shot 5 pixelation in bottle may be fixed by s/t map? (solution may be to blur the HDRI)
​
Billy:
- Shot 5 needs more DoF (solution may be to separate layers of flowers)
Kyle:
- Shot 3 push the light so the label is closer to white
- Shot 5 needs more visual range of color (solution may be to separate layers of flowers)
- Slight change to alignment of bottle so end card lines up properly
- Sun behind the bottle in shot 5 reads as a bit cliche or unsophisticated
Shot 5 Adjustments: Render Layers, Composition & Lighting
Using the notes from the mentors, the main changes I needed to make in shot 5 were small composition fixes, adjusting the lighting for the new cap shader, then creating new render ROPs based on needs for compositing.
The first issue I approached was the composition. All that needed to be adjusted here was the placement of the bottle, making sure that it is completely centered in frame as to not distract from the logo / end card. Using one of the frames from the video's end card, I set the camera's background image to the frame to align the logo.
Old version, off-center
New version
Next, I adjusted the lighting and cap shader for shot 5. The main things to fix were the sunlight in the back reading as cliche or unsophisticated, as well as lowering the roughness in the cap, making light position changes where needed.
Previous Week
Iteration 3
Iteration 1
Iteration 2
Final Iteration
One of the notes I received a few weeks prior was on caustics, so this week I made sure to create a render layer to fake the caustics effect. For the most control for the compositor, I made sure to create multiple caustic layers to see which layers work best for the scene.
Similar to my approach for a project in VSFX-420, I utilized Arnold's documentation on faking caustics by using a shadowMatte material for the ground and a transmissive material for the object with an aiFacingRatio. In the ROP, the bottle is phantomed and all other objects are excluded.
No caustics (old environment)
Grade with caustic mask (old environment)
Lastly for shot 5, based on mentor feedback as well as guidance from the professors, it was decided the best approach to gaining better variation in the flowers would be to separate them in render layers. We first tried using masks to separate the flowers though this resulted in unclean edges. So, the render layers divide the scene into foreground, middle-ground and background.
Flowers FG
Bottle
Caustics Mask 1
Flowers MG
Water
Caustics Mask 2
Flowers BG
Reflection Mask
Caustics Mask 3
Slap Comp
Shot 4 Adjustments: Render Layers & Lighting
For shot 4 this week, there were not many adjustments to the shaders and lighting. Most of the efforts went to addressing less significant render artifacts, optimizing render time and creating new layers for our compositor. Last week everything in shot 4 was rendered in the same layer; this week, the objects have been split into the foreground flower, middle-ground bottle, then finally the background flowers. I also added an occlusion layer and a droplet mask layer incase they become necessary for compositing.
Flowers FG
Flowers BG
Droplet Occlusion
Droplet Mask
Bottle and Droplet
Slap Comp