Major Project: Soap Bubble Tests #1 - nParticles, VFX & DOF

Over the last few days I began experimenting with soap bubbles for the line When I think of hope I smell soap. There are several interpretations I can go with for this line, since when I responded in this way I was thinking of soap as cleansing and purifying as well as a simple, serene memory/moment. I value cleanliness (in a pleasant, gentle way) but soap and soap bubbles also remind me of my family in Vermont. I used to watch my dog chase soap bubbles around outside and one shop in Vermont had a bubble machine which would make the surrounding area smell like soap. I felt that this lighter representation of soap would suit the emotion I wanted to get across rather than an orb with a waxy soap texture. 

So far I only worked with the 'bubble' preset on the aiStandardSurface shader, so I'll probably go back and see how else I can change and manipulate it. Like the other lines of my poem for 'hope' (sugar and eventually silk) I wanted to make this one to break this from the pattern of a single orb-like molecule established earlier on in the poem. In this case, I wanted to create a bunch of bubbles rather than just one. To do this, I used nParticles and created an instance so I could attach my reference bubble to it. I then then edited some settings on the instance so the scale of the bubbles were random. 

After I managed to get the particles to behave the way I wanted to (for the most part) I decided to render them out and try to create a z-depth AOV again. This time I had more success, although after rendering it out I realised that I should have created a separate pass for the bubbles. For my previous z-depth attempt, I think I may have gone wrong with the project settings in After Effects. This time in the Project Settings under 'Color Settings' I made sure the depth was set to 32 bit, working space was set to sRGB, and 'Linearize Working Space' was turned on.

Since the bubbles and back wall are in the same beauty pass, the depth of field allows the wall behind the bubbles to be clear as well (which shouldn't happen). For now I have left it, but I will return to it later and separate the bubbles from the wall so I can see how everything works more accurately.

Raw

Some VFX (Lumetri Color, Vignette, Film Grain)

More VFX (Lumetri Color, Vignette, Film Grain, Camera Blur/DOF,  Motion Blur)

For now, I exported out the raw render without any VFX, a version with some altered colours, a vignette effect, and some film grain, then a final version where I played around with motion blur and the lens blur effect (using my z-depth pass). For the final version I played even more with the colours, hoping it'd look more saturated and comfortable/friendly. I kept the depth of field really blurred in this case... partially due to the bubbles and wall being in the same image, but also because I feel that this makes the space less uncomfortable since the focus is on the colours and movement of the bubbles rather than the distorted brick wall.

I quite enjoyed playing with this, but I do want to create a version with more bubbles as well as separating them from the backdrop so I can control the lens blur effect correctly...I imagine it'd look much better if the brick wall didn't sharpen along with the bubbles.