Major Project: Bone/Vertebrae Animation Test

I decided to return to some of my bone textures so I could play with camera movement, lighting, and different effects in After Effects. I also needed something better for my pre-vis than just a still image, so I thought this texture would be a useful one. It was difficult to set this scene up, since it was hard to estimate if the camera was too close or too far from the orb in the viewport. Sometimes it would look like the camera was inside my molecule, but in the render it isn't due to the displacement. I found using the Debug Shading > Basic and the IPR helped when figuring out my camera movement in relation to the object.

For this test, I wanted the camera really close to the object. This is because this object is a more abstract representation of vertebrae - while it may not obviously be bone, it relates to how my spine and ribs would protrude and get bruised when I was very ill, when I was sick I wanted to see bones even though it was painful. Due to this, I wanted this texture to take up the majority of the screen and appear jagged, rigid and uninviting. I do think I need to add some more detail to this texture such as some scratches and other slight weathering so it looks less CGI.

Raw vs VFX

VFX vs Raw

I do, however, like how the DOF makes this animation look. I experimented with having the blur focal distance change near the end of the animation. It starts off that the furthest objects are the most blurred, but at the end, the objects closest to the camera are blurred. I also had one of the lights flicker slightly to show that this particular line in the poem signifies illness and distorted thinking/instability. I also added the normal vignette and film grain effects as well as motion blur and color correction to brighten up the scene.