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: Silk Influence Map

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: Initial Silk/Fabric Tests

I began working with some shaders and textures to try and create a silk texture for the line 'When I think of hope I feel silk'. I remembered a link to a velvet shader on Heightened3D.com so I decided to have a quick look on there for any relevant shaders since there are no fabric or silk presents in Arnold. Since the majority of the presets are either metal or plastic, I wanted to see how other people created fabric in Arnold... but the majority of the tutorials I found were for Cinema 4D and not Maya. I ended up working with this shader initially, but I wasn't that happy with the results as I felt it looked more like velvet than silk. I also experimented with adding a very subtle bump map using the Cloth shader to give it some sort of texture to the surface.

Next, I used the Brushed Metal preset and adjusted some of the settings...turning Metalness off and Specular on. I worked mostly with the roughness, anisotropy, and rotation channels under Specular. I'm not sure which results I prefer more, but I don't feel like either of them achieve what I want just yet. I definitel need to create a bump/normal map so I can achieve the appearance of long silk fibers.

To create the fabric in this test (which is only temporary since I want to create some folded fabric height/normal maps to put on a sphere) I created a sphere and made set it to be a passive collider and turned up the stickiness so the polygon plane (which I turned into cloth using the nCloth silk preset) wouldn't slip off. I also am not going to label these tests just yet since the initial shader I downloaded and tried uses several ramps and mixing nodes and because I want to create other height/normal maps as well.

Major Project: The Room - Light Flicker Test

The other day I set up a light flicker animation test to see how adjusting the exposure and colour of the lights would look. In this test I have the light go from a more blue/white colour when it is on normally, to a dim greenish colour as it flickers. It's a simple test but I like how it looks and I think it could enhance some shots depending on what I want to achieve.

Major Project: Sugar & Meat Influence Maps

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.