Current Version
Version 01
For this project we had four weeks to make something with in the specialisation we had chosen. I chose Look Development as I already had been chipping away at my own project for a couple of weeks before and had planned to continue it on anyway.
I was advised to give my scene more focus, something to base it on and so, naturally, my mind fell to 'The Lord of the Rings' films. Two scenes came to mind. One was when Saruman was talking about the Mines of Moria in his study and the other was when Gandalf was researching the Ring to determine whether or not the one Bilbo had was in fact the 'One Ring'.
Needless to say I chose the archives from Minas Tirith or in other words, Gandalf's scene.
I was advised to give my scene more focus, something to base it on and so, naturally, my mind fell to 'The Lord of the Rings' films. Two scenes came to mind. One was when Saruman was talking about the Mines of Moria in his study and the other was when Gandalf was researching the Ring to determine whether or not the one Bilbo had was in fact the 'One Ring'.
Needless to say I chose the archives from Minas Tirith or in other words, Gandalf's scene.
First thing I did was analyse the scene. I took note as to how the camera was moving as well, so that when I shot my footage it would be roughly the same. To make sure that the footage was working well and to see how the project could end up like I also made a proxy scene to (after taking the footage and tracking it) see how the camera worked in the scene so I could figure out exactly what I needed to do from that point on.
Modelling:
I used Maya for all of the models, the most interesting by far was making the scrolls. What I ended up doing for those was making a plane and then attaching a bend deformer to it. I then bent it as far as I needed to before pulling in the edges that were protruding through some of the faces. When I had the amount of curl that I wanted I deleted the deformer and extruded the faces out to give it a paper thin thickness. Another interesting object was the cloak. I ended up simulating this in Marvelous Designer, pulling it into the shape that I wanted and then bringing it into Maya. Mostly when it came to modelling I was trying to save as much time as possible so there was a lot of duplicating and making small changes before duplicating them all out further. This meant that my scene felt pretty cluttered but that there wasn't so much work on my end in was of modelling. |
Texturing:
For texturing I used a mixture of Photoshop and Substance Painter although I predominantly used Substance. I specifically wanted to expand my knowledge of Substance Painter knowing that we would be using it for the team production later on in 2017. Also because it's really a very good tool that I know will be helpful for other future projects as well. The book's page textures were ones that took me a while to figure out how to do, I considered getting images from the internet but my brain said no, so I didn't. Instead I ended up using a wood material in Substance painter and stretching it out to look like paper. Finishing off:
I decided to use Renderman as it has realistic results and it was fresh on my mind from earlier assessments. I had a lot of problems with the first set of renders that, looking back, probably could have been avoided. Below is the breakdown that I submitted for this project. |
Version 02
So I went back and fixed up a lot of the mistakes that I made the first time around. I had a long list and I didn't get all done and I had also gotten a lot of critique and pointers towards the end of completing it the first time that I simply didn't have enough time to do with in the time constraints of the assessment.
Fix 01: Lighting
The background was too dark and the whole image was too green. I deleted almost all of the lights and remade them from scratch to try and get a better look out of the scene. Adding a contrast between a warm and cosy, yellow/orange foreground and the cooler background. I also made the light sources more apparent, making the foreground lighting come from the candles more and the background lighting look natural enough to come from a window somewhere. Fix 02: Artifacting
On the chair and some of the books was a strange black stretched 'shadow'. I found that this came from the normal maps so I removed them for this next set of renders and had been continuously trying to find a solution to them. Recently a classmate was having the same issue with a set of textures on a Quarrel on Queen's Alley character and he came up with a solution that I'm eager to try in this scene (he documented his solution here). Fix 03: Candle Flames The flames were having a lot of problems before (you'll note that they weren't in the last full render) so I rendered the flame seperately and made cards for them making an animated texture for them. I made sure that they would be facing the camera properly by giving the planes an aim constraint. |
Fix 04: Paper
The paper was too thick so I went around and thinned it all out. Easy to do but rather tedious as I had to solo select all of them either individually or in a couple or trio in order to select all the right faces and fix them without having to rearrange them too much. Alas I still needed to rearrange them a little but it wasn't all that much in the end. Fix 05: Clutter Because of the new well lit background, a lot of the scene felt empty. I added in more clutter in the background which helped with this a lot. Mostly it was duplicating already made book piles and resizing them placing them in the back. I also added in another candle stick as well because the wall above the books still felt pretty empty. Fix 06: Other minor changes I made the glass less shiny and see through to make it feel older and I also smoothed the chair which I had forgotten to do in the original. It's likely that a future fix will be adding dust along with a few scratches to add to this effect as now the glass feels a little bit more aged but it could also be just slightly clouded glass. Finishing off:
Back to rendering for me. When I finished rendering out this scene I took it into after effects and simulated some dust particles to add to the dusty feeling the scene should rightfully have. |
The Archives v02 from Kathryn Hudson on Vimeo. |
Version 03
Going into my third round touching up this project I went through my list of things to do and double checked them all to make sure I hadn't missed anything out. Then it was onto working through them.
Fix 07: Loose Paper Texture
Starting off nice and easy, I fixed up the paper texture so that it looked a lot less like mortar and more like actual paper. To do this I went back into my Substance painter file, added in a fabric material (old vellum paper is woven together) and I thought it would help convey that old paper look along with making the colour vary in a more subtle way. Fix 08: Paper Pile Texture The paper pile on the left was blobby and looked "glued together". So I updated the texture almost completely. First thing I added was an Anisotropic noise to add in the height variation that would make it actually look more like paper sitting in a pile. Then I moved onto trying to make it look like it's the same paper as the rest of the paper in the scene in ways of colour. Fix 09: String On the potion bottle near the front the label had been held on by nothing, it was floating in mid air. Thankfully it's small enough that it went by relatively unnoticed by anybody other than me, but I made sure to go back and add one just in case someone with a keen eye came across it. Fix 09: Potion bottle texture I took the mesh into Substance Painter and textured it quickly making sure to have an opacity map. Then the trouble started trying to get it to work for Renderman. I tried using a layered surface material and although the glass's settings were the same on the original texture it was coming out with very strange light reflections. As by this time I was working on a bit of a strict deadline I opted to, instead of screwing around with it for hours, simply duplicate the mesh out and put the new textures with their opacity map directly on top of the nicer glass. Although it's not the most elegant solution, it was quick and it worked. |
Fix 10: Dust Particles
By far the hardest thing to do so far. I could find barely any nparticle tutorials for dust and I had all kinds of issues with the ones I had found. So I mostly improvised with it and it was starting to look good, I was happy with the simulation.
BUT, Renderman had to disagree. My sprites, although looking fine in the viewport were coming out as squares. I admit towards the background of the image it actually looked pretty good, but towards the front it was horrible. I tried using spheres instead and adding a displacement to make it more irregular as I saw suggested in a tutorial but no matter how far I pushed it it looked nothing like dust.
Alas none of this worked. If I ever get it to work then Fix 10 will be getting a part 2.
Fix 11: Volumetric Fog and Lights
While trying to figure out the dust I bumped into a couple of pictures that used volumetric fog with their dust and it looked really good, I even tried to make dust with it as well but that didn't work either. But I liked the fog, however that meant that I needed to adjust the lighting, over all it adds a lot more to the final image. Of course it means that my renders are going to take a lot longer but I'm willing to live with that.
Fix 12: The Chair
So I was having a lot of trouble with the UV's for a very long time, in Version 01 I had done a planar projection and slapped some textures on it which looked okay. But this time going back I decided to actually UV the chair. So I did that. It was a bit of a pain as unfolding and optimizing the UV's were making a complete mess out of them so in the end I did them by hand. Eventually I got it done and took it into Substance Painter to texture it anew. I also added a displacement map of the White Tree of Gondor as in the original reference you can just see that there's that pattern behind Gandalf. I always wanted to add the tree but hadn't had the chance until now.
Finishing up again I needed to make a print of this for my graduation showcase, so I went through that and photobashed on better flame along with fixed up other small issues using Photoshop. I made sure to make the colour at the front be a lot warmer and added light shafts with dust in them into the background. I also added in a better depth blur to it as well.
I had also tried to make a video version again as well but it was going to take too long to render out and I had a large amount of other work to do at the time.
By far the hardest thing to do so far. I could find barely any nparticle tutorials for dust and I had all kinds of issues with the ones I had found. So I mostly improvised with it and it was starting to look good, I was happy with the simulation.
BUT, Renderman had to disagree. My sprites, although looking fine in the viewport were coming out as squares. I admit towards the background of the image it actually looked pretty good, but towards the front it was horrible. I tried using spheres instead and adding a displacement to make it more irregular as I saw suggested in a tutorial but no matter how far I pushed it it looked nothing like dust.
Alas none of this worked. If I ever get it to work then Fix 10 will be getting a part 2.
Fix 11: Volumetric Fog and Lights
While trying to figure out the dust I bumped into a couple of pictures that used volumetric fog with their dust and it looked really good, I even tried to make dust with it as well but that didn't work either. But I liked the fog, however that meant that I needed to adjust the lighting, over all it adds a lot more to the final image. Of course it means that my renders are going to take a lot longer but I'm willing to live with that.
Fix 12: The Chair
So I was having a lot of trouble with the UV's for a very long time, in Version 01 I had done a planar projection and slapped some textures on it which looked okay. But this time going back I decided to actually UV the chair. So I did that. It was a bit of a pain as unfolding and optimizing the UV's were making a complete mess out of them so in the end I did them by hand. Eventually I got it done and took it into Substance Painter to texture it anew. I also added a displacement map of the White Tree of Gondor as in the original reference you can just see that there's that pattern behind Gandalf. I always wanted to add the tree but hadn't had the chance until now.
Finishing up again I needed to make a print of this for my graduation showcase, so I went through that and photobashed on better flame along with fixed up other small issues using Photoshop. I made sure to make the colour at the front be a lot warmer and added light shafts with dust in them into the background. I also added in a better depth blur to it as well.
I had also tried to make a video version again as well but it was going to take too long to render out and I had a large amount of other work to do at the time.
There's still a lot for me to do but hopefully one day I'll be happy enough with it that I'll call it done.