Student Work: Week 1-3, "Night Scene"

Modelled by Christophe Desse and Matthew Thain.

Week 2, May 10-14, 2010: 
This week I have created a soft light box beside the truck so that colour and specular highlight will be visible in the night scene. It works like a real life reflector or white card to bounce light onto an object. I have also shifted the composition because earlier the face on the billboard was awkwardly cropped off. The neon lights require more focus here. I have been playing with placing lights and the colour fog of neon. (Top image only)

Week 3, May 15-19: 
This week I have spent a lot of time tweaking lights and deleting unnecessary lights. I have found more reference images on-line to see the way that colour falls off of neon lights. I am trying to match my florescent lighting on the view of florescent lights seen above the Lake theatre in this first photo.

Render layers have also been planned. A proper Beauty Pass is almost complete. At this point I can see how much further I need to go to use render layers properly. Ideally, I should be able to assemble the different aspects of my image, and use effects in After Effects to amp up or turn down the intensity of each layer. I am learning this more intimately now that I am working with a still image that does not have animation. Render time is faster. The final image at the bottom is a test Beauty Pass. 

Student Work: Week 10-18, "Neon and Chrome"

Modelled by Christophe Desse and Matthew Thain.
March 21, 2010: 
I have added florescent lights to the exterior of the garage. See the upper recesses of the garage. There needs to be lighting in there for this scene to be lit realistically. Over all, the lighting looks too even in quality and the colour temperature of sun light versus the florescent lights does not make sense. Florescent lights should not be as bright as the sun, or orange in colour, matching the sunset tone on the facade of the building. I am hoping to correct this in After Effects, as there are three types of lights in my scene, and I can use blending modes to adjust light intensity.

Lighting is broken down into three parts, first there is the key light. This is the sun. Then there is interior lights in the garage, which are both fill and bounce. Mostly these are fill lights and they radiate from the florescent tubes and the ceiling lights in the far back of the garage. Then there are the florescent lights seen at the end of the animation, in the upper levels of the parking garage. These lights are bounce lights, and they are aimed upwards to create a tunnel effect. Now there is an illusion of depth.


April 7, 2010: 
Here is a more realistic looking revision of the windshield ramp, in comparison to the yellow windshield from previous weeks. I have been working on a rust detail, see the second shot. There is a hint of orange on the top of the bumper. I hope to control this effect later, and tone it down to a more natural red-brown colour using a render layer. Also, this shot is from my key light render layer, and I am planning on amping up this contrast of light and dark in my final rendering.

April 8th to April 12, 2010: 
There are three types of lights in my scene, and I can use blend modes to adjust the intensity of these three different parts of the scene. There is the key light, the sun (Third image from the bottom). Then there is interior lighting in the garage, which is characterized by both fill and bounce; mostly fill, radiated from the florescent tubes and the ceiling lights. (Here is the second shot from the bottom). Then there are the florescent lights seen at the end of the animation, in the upper levels of the garage. (See the last image.) Theses are bounce lights, aimed upwards to create a tunnel effect, a sense of depth. I have been trying to finesse the interior lights, to create a hazy cast of light.

April 20, 2010:
(The fifth and sixth images show the reflection and neon lights passes respectively). Most of this time I have spent setting up and testing out render layers in After Effects. I have had to make adjustment layers to fix textures and lighting after my preliminary test renders. I tried re-rendering the scene with the truck removed from it, so that the diffuse layers of my three lighting effects would render faster separately. This was not such a successful undertaking. I found that there are now blotchy dark shadows, which are now noticeable. These have resulted from low final gather settings. So I retested the scene and m now rendering once again.

Student Work, Week 4-9, "Neon and Chrome"

Modelled by Christophe Desse and Matthew Thain.

February 27, 2010: 
I have refined the time of day, it is bright with daylight. I want to showcase the red metal surface of the billboard, which draws out the Frankenstein and Mummy images. This change to the billboard material is also present in the third shot. I am also experimenting with a glass shader that I created in the Hypershader, using a sampler utility node and a ramp shader. My goal is to construct a grimy glass texture, implying that this old movie house has been around a while. There is a story developing surrounding the setting of this scene.

March 7, 2010: 
Here I am refining the grungemaps,in the interior of the garage, which will be seen in the animatic later. The pavement texture has been revised, as well as the bump quality of all of the shaders in the scene have been adjusted. I played more with the glass windshield, to add more reflectivity, and am trying out a dirt texture on the billboard. Mostly I am concerned with the truck's surface, which is damaged looking. It needs a mesh smooth, I think.


Mid-March, 2010:
This week, I have blocked in the animated path of the truck, and worked on the camera path. The interior is much more lit up now, due to the area lights setup above the florescent tubes. The far wall is not hidden in full shadows, and the windshield, car paint, and chrome surfaces of the truck are highlighted. I am adjusting the placement of the pavement in the UV Texture Editor. You can see a stain in front of the truck now. (Final two images.)

Late March, 2010: 
I've also added a new texture to the sewer manhole, as the camera path establishes a close-up now. Nearing the end of this project, I have changed the size of the viewport and need to fill in these outer area textures, along with doing a final pass on the Grungemaps, Specularity of Metals, and Shine of glass objects.

Texture Photos

I try to carry my camera with me in case anything interesting stands out. I used this headlight photo as a texture in the "Neon and Chrome" scene. Some of the other shots I intend to use later in the "Carnival" scene.