Shot 25 Final Lighting

For the final lighting, I actually decided to use a part of the light rig that Keith made and used for the other scenes. This is mainly because I wanted to keep continuity between the lighting in the various scenes. So I imported his light rig, deleted one of the directional lights, and added a new spot light to bring out the eel and child. I think it works well like this creating a dark mysterious look.

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Shot 25 Lighting Development

Here is my step by step show process for the lighting of scene 25. Keith asked me to light the scene so it could be rendered later during the day. Time was of the essence so it had to be done quite soon. Here I went with the idea of less is more, so I only create as many lights as were necessary, 2 directional lights for some simple lighting of the cave and 2 spot lights for the light coming down the tunnel which is whats illuminating the eel and child. I showed Keith my inital tests, and he said they were just too bright and after going through some other scenes and renders, I understood if had to be much darker and more atmospheric. I then deleted 1 of the directional lights and dropped the intensity down on the spot lights. I had shadows being cast from one of the spot lights, using ray traced shadows. I think the lighting is decent, and a lot of tweaking will be done in post so all that is needed is a good base which I think im close too having.

Shot 16_Eel glow spheres added

Some shots of the orbs being added to the mesh of the eel in Shot 16. I was asked to do this by Keith as he desperately needed to get onto lighting and rendering the scene. As mentioned before it was a case of importing the orbs into the scene, then manually placing them all and finally using the wrap deformer, making sure to select the orb first and then the mesh.

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Quick Render Test_Shot_25

This is just a quick and very rough render test to make sure everything in shot 25 was working after I had cleaned the scene, clearing a lot of junk out of the outliner and cleaning the hypershade out. As you can see the orbs work very well, giving a nice diffused glow and all the textures are working perfectly. The next stage for this scene is for it to be lit then rendered.

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Glowing spheres on Eel - Shot 25

Whilst cleaning up shot 25 to be used as a master scene, I linked all the textures for the eel and then noticed that the glowing orbs were not connected to the rig, nor were they even in the scene. I got quite concerned so they are a big part of how the viewer is going to identify the eel, and mentioned this to Andy. We then called Clym and asked if he had attached those orbs to the mesh, and he said he had not. It was then a case of how to rectify this, and he suggested using the wrap deformer, to attach the orbs to the main body, as they would then follow the mesh.

So what has to be done for all shots including the eel is to manually import the orbs, and then connect them to the existing mesh using the wrap deformer. It is an easy fix, however quite tedious, as I began with shot 25. I had to go in and manually move each orb to the mesh, then attach. Its going to be worth it in the end :)

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Eel Glow Intensity and Colour change animated test

Andy asked me if I could test out the eel's glowing orbs to make sure they could be controlled appropriately for the animation. I then quickly made this test in maya, testing the intensity as well as the colour change. (Andy wants the orbs to change colour as the eel changes moods). I simply said its a case of key framing the flow and diffuse colour attributes in the attribute editor, which is straightforward. I carried out this test, showed it to him and he was glad it all works fine.

Shot 25 Clean up and Master scene creation

I was given the assets for shot 25 Andy, who asked me if I could clear up the scene, clear the the outliner, and re link all of the textures so that it would be good to go for lighting/rendering. When organising the scene and trying to link textures, I noticed the hypershade was extremely cluttered with nodes that had been imported with the various models. This happens when everyone has various different scenes with animation/rigs and they all create individual textures but then forget to clear the scenes before exporting out. So this has resulted in a massive amount of unused and irrelevant nodes/shader networks. I solved this by deleting all unused nodes under the edit menu in the hypershade, as well as manually going in and selecting specific nodes. After I was done, only the relevant shaders remained, and I also suggested that perhaps the scene could now be rendered on the render farm.

I asked Keith to give it a shot, and he got back to me saying the test frames he sent to the farm came back fine and it worked well. It shows that having the right scene with only the necessary nodes is how to go about using the renderfarm. Anything excess or unused is going to cause the render to fail.

I also told Andy that this scene should perhaps become the master for the ice cave, seeing as it is already clean and ready to go. He agreed and Keith has now started using this as the base for his lighting.

Artefacts when rendering

After doing some test renders of the environment using my newly created lighting I started getting this problem of artefacting throughout the image. I could not figure out why, and I began testing out the render settings, shadow samples but that did not prove any success. I then inspected the outliner and it was extremely cluttered and I began noticing duplicates of objects and then went into the viewport, switched to wireframe mode and began moving pieces around. The conclusion...there were duplicates of everyting in the scene aside from the kid, this happened because I Ben forgot to delete the entire environment when giving me the animation. So when I brought the animated kid into the lit environment, all objects were there twice. So I then had to go in and delete all the irrelevant meshes.

Interior Lighting More development, step by step

Here are some more step by steps shots and the finalised lighting. I tried using final gather but as soon as its added, the render times increase so that was not an option. I went through many little tweaks to make sure the lighting was just right, with enough bounce and I also ended up creating a light for the water to get some of that blue creeping in through the windows. All in all I think its decent, I showed it to Andy and he was happy. I created a dimly lit setting whereby the light is designed to keep the eyes focused on the child in his chair.

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Interior Lighting

I was asked by Andy to light the interior of the submarine for shots 35/36/37/38. I tried to keep a moody setting, keeping it quite dimly lit. I ended up using 1 ambient, 1 point and 1 directional light however more tests are needed.

Kid_new_texture_test

Here are some work in progress shots of the kid's new texture. I have made the top in Photoshop, recreating the original pattern created by Andi. I then transformed the pattern into place to fit the UVs. There is a bit of stretching but not much can be done about that now, so I tried my best to get the pattern placed well. I think what I have so far is good as the seams look like actual seams in the clothing. Before going any further I showed this to Kofi and he was pleased with the look and told me to finish the rest, so I now need to do the trousers.

To do list - This week

Next few days -

Finish the beak texture for Unhatched.

Finalise the texture for the kid in Heroes 1.0

Attempt to light the exterior for shot 39.

Carry on with working on the showreel

Finish the E & E work before the group presentation on Friday 10th and the summative/ individual hand in.

Lighting scene 35/36/37/38 - Render Trouble

Today:

So I went into class and showed Andy what I had done so far for the lighting of shots 35/6/7/8. He liked it and asked me to continue tweaking them aiming for a more darker, and dimly lit scene. I did have trouble importing the animation Ben did, because he is using Maya 2011 and I was on 2010. For some reason 2010 would not allow me to import the animation straight in from 2011, so what to be done and my way of fixing this was to first open the 2011 scene in 2010 and then resave it. This would save as a 2010 file which could then be imported in my final scene. A simple enough fix but when one does not have time to spare, every minute is costly.

We also had trouble rendering today as the render farm was not working for us, meaning we have now started taking over machines in the prototyping lab as rendering locally is our only option. We have notified Alex, and he came in to help but not much was done really, so we just had to resort to rendering locally which of course is a major pain in the ass. There is a lot to be rendered and with no working render farm its going to be close.

Submarine Interior Lighting - Shots 35/36/38

Here is the start of my lighting for the interior of the submarine. The goal is to keep things quite dark and dim, trying not to over expose things. I have started by using a simple directional, and ambient light which is working well so far. I also have tested out final gather which is just not an option really because after testing it out, the render time increases dramatically. So thats out of the question, however I am starting to get some nice results without it, using just the lights and raytraced shadows. I will keep tweaking and show Andy what I got, some feedback would be good as I could then take that onboard and develop this further in the right direction.

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The Deep - Shot 39 - Refinement

After showing Andy the original pass of animation for this scene and mentioning I was having problems with the camera sway from side to side during the keyframes he said I should try using 'Camera and Aim' in maya as I can individually control the positioning and center of focus. I said sure, and was interested to see if it would make a difference in any way as I have not had much experience with the camera and aim. After testing it out, I was amazed to see the difference and superior control, it really helps and gives great control as both elements can be keyframed separately. I have found it so much more useful I think I will use just the cam and aim for any animated camera movement in the future.

I think the new camera movement has been animated better, and I tried to give enough time between zooming out of the sub and switching focus to the iceberg. The focus was the easing in and out, which I think I nailed.

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Polaroid Textures - Done

I was asked by Andy to create textures for the polaroids. He told me they had to be blurry and out of focus as at the end of the film he has a panic when looking through his photos and not finding any that are clear. I used the storyboard to guide me in setting up these shots because I tried to see where the camera would be facing and what kind of shots would be taken during the chase sequence. I made these in Photoshop, using a few blur filters and paint overs to get the desired out of focus look. I think they work well.

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The Deep_ Shot 39

Heres the animation of the camera I have done for shot 39. I am having some serious problems with the camera swaying inbetween keyframes and I was unable to find a solution. I tried controlling the swaying by adding more frames but that just made it worse, im gna ask Andy what he thinks would be best and see what he thinks of camera placement too. I followed the storyboards and tried to keep to it as best I could.

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Iceberg Displacement Test

So Carlos said he was having problems getting the displacement map for the iceberg working properly. I helped him set up the correct process in class, but the result was not what we wanted, as there were seams showing through and it did not look good. I said I would give it a try myself at home, as I thought there were a few things I could try. So I UV mapped the low res iceberg properly to ensure that it would not give any bad seams or cuts through the displacement. I then created the map using maya, using the transfer maps method.

I tried twice but each time the results were not good, I had to go back and check the search envelope to make sure it was not the reason for the displacement looking like it got cut off, the second time I made sure it was big enough but still it came out badly. I referred to my displacement map notes I had made whilst watching tutorials before, I set up the approximation for the mesh and then started tweaking the settings but alas...I could not get a better result. So it looks like the high res maybe the only option for the final shots...I will inform the group and see what Andy, the director says about this.

I personally feel annoyed as I have had lots of experience with displacement maps and it seems there are always issues. I tried the best method and settings but still not joy..Guess this is all part of the learning process.

Polaroids - The Deep

I was asked by Andy to create and texture the ploaroid photographs that the child rummages through in one of the later scenes in the film. I made a quick model with enough res incase they were to be rigged with deformers for some kind of bend, etc. I then uv mapped and texture them really quickly, all that is left to do is get the individual pictures mocked up and applied to the different snaps. I used Photoshop for the texture creation.

HyperShade

I was asked by my director on 'The Deep' if it was possible to create a shader network within Maya and then be able to export and import it into a completely different scene. I thought about this for a moment, then realised it should work, as the nodes will be saved and stored for the shader even though the scene will be completely blank. I carried out a quick test to ensure it would work, and encountered no problems. This is going to save the group a lot of time because it means one scene is created with the final shaders and settings in place, then they can simply be exported into the other shots and just require the textures to be relinked. Fast, efficient and easy.