9/30/24
Week 4: Shader Refining and Lighting
Hero Shot Assets
With power back and newly filmed plates to work with, I have been able to make some good progress with lookdev this week! At the beginning of the week, our team reviewed our footage and storyboard to chose our hero / subhero shots. The two shots we landed on were, of course, our most CG-heavy shots; the first being the revealing shot of the treasure chest, with a refreshing dry-ice type smoke seeping out, and our establishing shot of the shipwreck and coastline. In order to prioritize these shots, I have continued refining the assets and shaders, making subtle tweaks given the added context of our footage.
One of the main challenges I faced were the gold coins. Even down to the base color, there seemed to be a very fine line between cartoonish, toy-like gold coins and pale, uninteresting disks. After some time messing with sliders and settings, I landed on a pale gold, that given the correct lighting, can truly shine. Also, adding an area light inside of the lid of the chest not only helped to illuminate the coins, but to give an intriguing reflective glow around the can. The image above only shows a basic slap-comp of the chest rendered in Arnold, but gives our team a good idea for what the final shot may look like.
Refining Shipwreck Assets/Shaders
Taking a look at last week's ship, the asset is a very obvious CG ship. Not only are the shaders lacking in depth, but the model itself is full of unnatural angles. This week, I spent time going back and adding more layers of detail, paying closer attention to the areas with more noticeable CG-looking geometry. Instead of using a destructive workflow and remodeling all of the planks' edges and corners, I opted to take a more simple and time-efficient route.
In Blender, I began with a basic plank shape and a varying amount of icospheres with a few subdivisions. Using a displacement modifier, I then push/pull vertices of the sphere in the X direction, creating a jagged unclean edge. Last, I use a boolean to carve the spheres into the planks. Because the ship will not be super close on camera, I opted to keep the detail relatively simple.
For the material, I wanted to mimic the bleaching effect that the sun has on wood when left untreated. The edges begin to lose their color or stain, starting from the thinnest parts- which, here, would be the ends of the planks. Using a simple curvature mask, I can find the edges with harshest angles. With the mask, I can then increase the value of the texture in the desired area, resulting in a whitened or bleached look on the ends of the plank.
After creating a few variations and sizes, I then can begin "decorating" the previous ship. Using the original ship model as a base, I moved the planks to the right-angles and areas that needed more detail. Having the planks overtop of the original model not only saves time on my part, but adds another layer of depth.
