Week Eight
“Serpenti. A symbol of wisdom, power and rebirth, the snake appears again and again throughout Bulgari’s collections.” -Bvlgari
Mentor Critique:
Shot1: Gold is flat.
Shot 2: Try large area light to side of branch (split lighting). Particles feel flat. Diamonds flicker on the ring. Vary the matte painting color and decrease luminosity.
Shot3: Add contrast to the ring. Consider “negative fill.” Diamonds look gray (presumed to be comp).
The team received fantastic praise this week! Specifically, Kyle said we made a “huge leap.” Billy thought the Shot 1 “key to fill ratio [was] perfect.” That felt good.
Process:
The majority of my critique was spent on the lighting of Shot 3. I added contrast by decreasing the fill light, and adding a black “flag” off of screen left. I rotated the HDRI so minimize the dark reflection at the bottom of the ring. Also, the sunset image is off screen right, so that the fill light is not overexposed, and reflecting an environment inconsistent with the matte painting. Previously, the holes of the ring were too dark. I added more bounce light inside while being conscious of contrast.
A difficulty that I’ve had with Shot 3 lighting, is the model. The Serpenti reference has strong contours. Our model is very planar. Therefore, creating light wrap has been a challenge. I have multiple key lights with varying degrees of specularity in order to cheat this effect.
The matte painting was also updated so that there is increased depth of field in comp. Each dune is separated into a separate layer so that varying bokeh can be applied in comp. In this week’s deliverable, the matte painting is not color corrected to match Yilin’s particle effects. The luminosity of the sky is too dark as well. I will color correct to match the render so that Veronica has more wiggle room in comp.
Fig. 05: Shot 1 Dragon (Jade) from Week Seven.
Fig. 06: Shot 1 Jade Dragon (Current).
Fig. 07: Week Seven scale shader.
Fig. 08: Current scale shader.
Many look development roadblocks were solved this week. Both the particles and diamonds in Shot 2 had emission on them. This is why the particles looked flat, and the diamonds did not cooperate with the gold shader. A previous solution was to separate the diamonds and the gold ring into separate objects and light link them. Since this would hurt the FX team, we decided against it.
Later in the week, there was a lot of troubleshooting on the “popping” in the diamonds. This had not happened in previous weeks. Hours of troubleshooting uncovered that the cause was how the particles were cached.
Fig. 02: Previous Ring lighting (Left). Iteration Four (Right).
Fig. 03: Current Ring lighting (Left). Iteration Nine (Right).
Fig. 04: Shot3 Matte Paint slap-comp.
There were two renders of last week’s Jade dragon that the team wanted confirmation about. The mentors liked the key to fill ratio of the left image, and the specularity of the image on the right. The dragon’s jade shader received a large update this week.
Being told to “keep the settings” for the lighting was a fantastic compliment. I kept the key to fill ratio close to last week while adjusting for the shader’s increased subsurface scattering.
Mia also delivered an improved scale shader with increased subsurface scattering. The intensity of the key light linked to the Jade is too powerful for the minuscule scales. This final week, I will link a separate light with less intensity to the scales to fix this issue.
Fig. 09
Fig. 10
While Soi adjusted size variation of the gold particles, I adjusted the light. In previous weeks, it has appeared muddy due to the lack of specular reflection.
I started by reframing how I saw this effect. How does this surrealist effect emulate something I’ve seen in real life? I figure that the particles may behave like fog/mist, but with less transmission. It might look like a freeze-frame of a firehouse, with no refraction.
Fig. 11
When correcting the gamma for the 2.5D, I lost the magic that was in the gold shader. Improving past the caliber past last week will be a focus of mine. For the Shot1 2.5D projection, I repurposed more of the geometry with acceptable textures.