When: Possible Meat Animation Tweak Tests (Feedback Appreciated)

Once I had a gap of free time, I decided I wanted to experiment with ways I could possibly enhance my meat entity based on feedback I received on my project. I'm unsure if I will or can implement these changes for New Designers as that depends on feedback to these tests as well as if I can get Conductor working...but even if they are possible tweaks for the future overall I wanted to do some experimenting.

I want to do a low quality test render of both the 'meat' shot as well as the 'rotting' shot just to be sure I'm not using up money unnecessarily. To create this animation I brought the height map into After Effects and created an Adjustment Layer with a 'Brightness/Contrast' effect applied. I then created a mask, changed some of the settings and animated it so it moved down the orb (#1). 

I felt #2 was too subtle but for #3 I created two animated layers so I could have more of a gradient. For #3 I also decided to tweak the coat and specularity settings so it appears more slimy like it does in the 'rotting' shot. Out of these three tests I like #3 the most.

#1

#1 Animated Height Map

#2

#3

Major Project: Possible Silk Texture Update

As I've been working on my Art Of, I felt less and less satisfied with how my silk entity turned out. I don't dislike it, but I feel it wasn't as shiny looking as I'd like it to be. Because of this, I decided to return to that scene and see what I could do to improve it. I like the changes I've made to it based on the still renders.

I'm currently rendering out the new scene so it's just a pass of the silk, which I should be able to composite on top the old version. I'm going to see if this works out okay or not, if not then I can re-render the whole thing. Again this isn't necessary, but if I can improve it I'd like to.

Major Project: Pufferfish Texture Adjustments & Animation Playblast

Today I also worked on my pufferfish entity. I was actually quite anxious to get to work on this, as I struggled with the texture maps in the past. I decided to go for a different approach for the bump/displacement on the model since my painted maps were not working as I wanted to, although my diffuse map worked fine. I also played around with some settings and managed to stop the spines from collapsing when I use a displacement map. I played around with a few found images and settled on a more amphibian/reptile-like look rather than wrinkles which is what I was originally going for.

Since my final set is a lot brighter than the old set, I couldn't re-use my old camera animation since it started off black and then lit up to reveal the pufferfish (I'm avoiding doing any dip-to-black transitions). I'm currently doing a render test since I also animated the skin on the pufferfish, but I wanted to share the playblast for now. Tomorrow I will also include some renders of the pufferfish within my final set, I just ran out of time today to allow a full render to finish.

Major Project: Scene Cleanup #5 - Background Passes

Since I began rendering some of my heavier scenes before I realized my textures worked better with auto-bump rather than normal maps, I wanted to see if there was a way that I could render out just the background rather than have to render out the whole scene again. After some research, I found that by enabling matte, setting the matte colour to black and the opacity do zero under  'Matte' tab on the aiStandardSurface shader (for the gem/needle texture)... I could essentially cut out just the background for re-rendering.

I can then bring the two renders into After Effects and place the new background on top of the original render, so the new background covers the old one. I did several tests on both the gem and needles using saved stills as well as a few 'Render Sequence' frames to ensure this worked properly. It seems to work as I was hoping it would, which is a relief since just the background doesn't take as long to render on its own. Having these passes is actually useful because now I can adjust the colour correction/brightness of the gem and room separately. This technique may also be helpful for future renders, such as skin since the room itself doesn't require subsurface scattering but the orb will.

Major Project: Opening/Closing Shot Update & Pufferfish Texture Export

I decided to return to my opening/closing shot today so I could tweak it. This shot is quite long and shows the majority of the room, so there are a lot of frames and no room to delete lights...so I want to get it prepped to render as soon as possible.

 I wanted the camera to focus on the bricks for longer before eventually revealing the entire room. I didn't want to rush this shot, which I was unintentionally doing when I initially set it up for my pre-vis as I was worried about my film's duration. I think it is important to have this shot be slow, to allow the audience to become established within the space. I feel that this shot is much improved, although I'll need to do some render tests since this is just a playblast I made in Mental Ray. I need to check to be sure the screen is mostly white (I can white it out more in AE if needed) in the beginning and be sure that the camera doesn't slip behind the back wall since sometimes the camera looks fine in the viewport but renders pure black (when the camera slips behind the geometry).

I also returned to my pufferfish texture. I didn't make many changes within Substance Painter, but I exported the maps into Photoshop for now because I want to see what I can do with it as it is. I think just adding some additional displacement/bump maps and playing with subsurface scattering will improve the appearance of this texture, but I have to test it out to be sure. 

Major Project: The Room - Brick Displacement Test

Since I've been using Arnold to test out different lighting and atmosphere effects for my Room, I decided to also experiment with animating the displacement map for the bricks. I wasn't sure how this would turn out, if it would look silly or not, but I actually like the result. I think the way that the displacement morphs and moves the walls and bricks could help create an unsettling feeling for some shots especially if combined with changes in lighting/flickering lights and distortions in the camera.

Major Project: Silk 001-014

After creating some height, normal, and specular maps I returned to my silk texture. I only really used the height and normal maps in the end, but I was glad I had the option to use the others anyway. I struggled initially to get my texture to look like silk rather than plastic or metal, but I think with the combination of Anisotropy and normal/bump maps I was able to at least get it closer to what I wanted.

Although I had a normal map made, I ended up experimenting more with Maya's 'cloth' 2D texture like I did in my previous experiment. I tried to keep it very subtle by having the bump depth very low and the repeat UV high so the fibres were very small and fine. I think this still needs work and I also think I'll try out some other height maps I made just to ensure this texture is working alright overall.

Original Images

Major Project: Meat Rotting Animation Test

For this test I wanted to try transitioning my meat texture from the red version ('healthy') to the brown version (rotten/diseased). I created a Tiff sequence for the subsurface color channel using After Effects so the red and brown maps would blend into each other. I animated the specular and coat roughness channels to make the brown version look more slimy as well as the coat colour so it would turn more greenish as the meat decayed. I animated the subsurface scale as well, but seeing the results I know I need to be more careful with the timing when animating this channel or else it may look a little odd.

Major Project: Meat 001-010

In addition to working on some sugar textures, I began working on meat textures. I found some interesting photos online (of rotting wood or mold I think) and I edited it in Photoshop to make it red and look more like meat. I created two red versions, one for the SubSurface Color and the other for the Radius. I also created a brown version because I wanted to try out a few 'diseased' looking textures since the line of the poem is 'When I see meat I see disease'. I though it would be interesting to see the meat go from a more 'healthy' red colour (although still intended to be gross looking) to an unhealthy brown, sickly colour.

I really enjoyed these tests, I did find that having the height and iterations low for the subdivision worked better for this texture. I found that the brown version needed a higher scale value for me to be happy with it... I'm interested to see how these would look morphing into each other.

Major Project: Sugar 001-008

I spent some time looking over what lines of my poem I have been creating materials/objects for and which ones I have not spent time on yet. I realised that the last stanza of my poem (When I think of hope...) hasn't really been touched yet. I decided to try creating sugar/a sugar cube. I initially began working on spheres like normal, but I found it difficult to determine if I was having success or if it just looked like snow. For the first 3 tests I swapped between spheres and cubes (although I forgot to save the square version of Sugar 003).

I did some research on how to make a sparkle effect to my material, and found a few pages about adding aiFlakes under Coat > Normal. The settings in Maya were different than what I saw in the articles online, but I just played with it anyway. I like how it came out so far, I think adding a bit of subsurface scatter with a beige/cream coloured radius really enhanced the texture (which is probably why 008 is my favourite).

To be sure this material is working alright I may try a turnaround style animation to see how the sparkling sugar crystals look. I could also try making it more like brown sugar so it doesn't resemble snow too much. In my own time I've also been experimenting with the Shrinkwrap deformer so this texture may be a good one to use when experimenting morphing shapes using Shrinkwrap.