Rendering and Compositing Look Development

Artistry, Technical and Research

Semester 02 Week 04 – 05 (2018/02/19 – 2018/03/04)

Artistry

These are some renders and composites from the start of semester 2 to get an idea for what the characters might look like in scene 03 – the road to Reymond. It still needs a lot of work. Reymond wasn’t casting enough light on his surroundings with the emmisive set -up so I’ve tried making him a mesh light in the images below and added a glow to his emmisive pass in Nuke.  This causes bad light bleed around his mouth. I’ll try light linking for his cast light.

 

 

Research and Technical

Andrew found this cel shader script for Arnold 5 which works much better than relying on hard directional lights! It’s free for download here:

https://encci20.blogspot.co.uk/2017/11/cell-shader-tool.html

The light and shadow color are controlled by a ramp. Kerry and I are setting up the cel shader in each individual asset file. A little extra work is therefore needed to reconnect every referenced asset in the layout files to the same ramp so that light and shadow HSV can be changed from one control point. This shading network also doesn’t seem to have an imput for height maps unless we reroute to an aiStandardSurface.

Cell Shader Tool – Arnold 5 – Maya from Steffano Richi:

Artistry

These are some of the updated assets that I worked on with the cel shader. We’re trying to keep our asset textures broad, abstract and brushy so that they read like a painting from afar, especially when combined with the cel shader which simplifies the shading. I’ve also made a warm and cold version of the tree textures to help with our scene palettes.

 

 

Without cel shader.

With cel shader.

Warm textures and light.

Cold textures and light.

Simplified broad textures

This is our progress so far with rendering and compositing our characters in an environment. This is in layout 02 which Kerry was working on. The cel shader doesn’t work with the default AOVs from Nuke so this is only composited with the zdepth pass. It needs more work. Mike has also pointed out that we need to stage the characters with the lighting more.  This seems tricky with our current light-set up and workflow so it needs more research and experimenting.

 

 

Raw render.

Composite with zdepth in Nuke.

The sky needs masked and the contrast needs tweaked.

I’ve started texturing the inside of the house while Kerry is working on the house exterior this week too. I was worried that the cel shader only seemed to work with directional lights but I’ve found that it works with the aiAreaLight also. Light will be coming from the doorway and boarded windows at the front and from a caved-in roof at the back.

 

 

Wall texture progress in Substance Painter with damp, mossy stone. Made with layers of default materials, the brick stencil and painted broken edges to make it more imperfect.

Lighting without cell shading.

Lighting with cel shading. wall texture

Lighting without cel shading.

Lighting with cel shading.

Alec and the others have suggested using geometry with alpha gradients for light beams. I’ll also be developing the red strangling version of the house interior light/textures.

Guillermo del Toro: Monster Design

Research

These are a few videos and articles with advice from del Toro on designing monstrous creatures. These have been sitting in my blog drafts for a few months now so it’s worth looking back on how we’ve applied these thoughts. Looking at the creatures that we’ve developed over the past few months, I think that a lot of the advice below came quite naturally to us out of the necessity of creation. With Púca, the strangeling (both skull and house form) and Tato, we seem to be getting good feedback in that people don’t instantly compare them to other monsters. With regards to the environment supporting the monster, we’ve planned in the color script for different atmospheres so hopefully we can pull it off! Maybe the one thing that we haven’t looked at more is the metaphorical meaning of our strangelings and their ability to possess objects with faces. I feel like this could come with developing the series more and making more episode ideas for our series bible.

 Guillermo del Toro How To… Create a Movie Monster

• Silhouette
• Don’t make your creature perpetually angry. Imagine them in a relaxed pose. Don’t pile on the kitchen sink of horns and teeth. Imagine the lion in repose, majestic.
• The color should say more about your character.
• How does it move?
• Never reference another movie monster when designing a movie monster.

The ghosts of “Crimson Peak”. How were they created?

“Socially, biologically and mythologically explained. Monsters were created in myths used as a way of explaining the world around us.”

Guillermo del Toro: “Monsters Are Living, Breathing Metaphors”

Guillermo del Toro’s sketchbooks – Commentary – The New Yorker

Guillermo del Toro’s 4 Steps to Creating Memorable Movie Monsters

http://nofilmschool.com/2017/04/guillermo-del-toro-creatures-monsters

1. Draw on a multitude of sources.
2. Tone and environment are as important as creature design.
3. Think about all the angles.
4. Convey the emotions driving the thoughts and therefore the character.

Asset List and Layouts

Semester 02 Weeks 01 – 02 (2018/01/29 – 2018/02/11)

Artistry and Planning

Kerry and I have been working on asset proxies, layouts and camera setups while Matthew and Sorcha have been working on animation/characters and Andrew has been working on the character rigs.

 

Kerry and I made a list of all the flora and other elements that will go into making our forest backgrounds interesting as well as the props for the interior of the house and other environment features unique to certain scenes such as step ruins. We are working with the aim to get the layouts blocked out with very basic proxy models so that blocked animation can begin as soon as possible. Sorcha and I planned out a maya project folder system where props, characters and layouts are within the assets folder. Props are referenced into the layout files. The layouts and characters are then referenced into the scene files within the scene folder. This way animation can be happening in the scene files and props can be worked on in their individual files while layouts are being developed or vice-versa.

For layouts, Kerry is responsible for layouts 02, 04/07 (before and after explosion) and 06 and I’m responsible for 01, 03, and 05.

Once the cameras are more in place from the animatic then we’ll be able to do another pass on the layouts so that the compositions are better. I’ve made a start on setting up the camera sequencer for the layouts I’m on but some moving cameras are better left to whoever is animating.

Layout 01

Layout 01

Layout 03

Layout 03 using MASH

 

MASH Research

Week 18 (2018/01/22)

Technical and Research

These are some of the videos which I found useful when researching how to use MASH for set dressing.

MASH – Placer Node

This video shows how to scatter geometry using the brush-like placer node. I found that MASH only works in cm. There is an option to set “strict no collisions” but I found that my geometry was still colliding no matter how I played around with the settings. It therefore took a lot more care in placing geometry than what is shown in the video.

 

Set dressing using MASH Placer Node & Arnold Procedural /Standins

This video introduces the workflow of scattering low-poly geometry with the mash placer node which are then swapped out at render time with the detailed versions. The arnold help page on An Introduction to Stand-ins shows how to export geometry as stand-ins and be re-created as bounding boxes in the viewport. So far we haven’t had the need to use this method.

 

Maya 2017 – Intro to Mash

This video introduces how animation from an origin mesh can then be duplicated and controlled with a time node. This node is only available with non-instanced MASH and therefore requires a low to high number of meshes workflow.

MASH – World Node Clusters

I looked into this as an alternative to using the placer node. An option in the World Node allows you to generate clusters of geometry around the first geometry ID in your network.

Color and Light Summary

Research and Artistry

These are some of my summarised notes from the Schoolism course on Designing with Color and Light by Nathan Fowkes. We should try and keep these in mind when planning our color script. These were wrote with 2D concepts in mind but applies to 3D also.

• Use Photoshop layers/groups for editing depth from foreground to background – 3 to 8 layers (from my own experience of working in Photoshop)
• Consider atmospheric depth – values.
• Consider atmospheric depth – color temperature.
• Use depth of field blur
• Use repeating shapes in z-space to create depth.
• Consider the light source, where it hits local color, and where it is blocked.
• Consider shadow color. Is it affected by bounced light from sky, or bounced light from light source?
• Vary each of hue, value and saturation. Consider the key of the light (the levels distribution). Consider variety across the color script sequences and how they lead into each other. 
• Does the light and color design (hsv) reflect the mood of the story?
• Use variety in color temperature harmonies to create visual interest.
• Use local colors for visual interest.
• Use optical mixing to create greys (etc.) that are more alive e.g. dots of grey-yellow beside dots of grey-magenta.
• Contrast should be reserved for the focal point. Draw the eye with sharp edges, contrast in value and light and contrast in hue temperature.
• Group your values for readability. Adjust photo textures to the same value groupings.
• Use weather to build atmosphere and mood.
• Check perspective for every part of the painting – sky, ground, characters, textures, effects etc.

I went into more detail on the course in earlier blog posts:

Schoolism Color and Light with Nathan Fowkes Week 5

Schoolism Classmate Feedback Week 05

Schoolism Week 06 Light and Atmosphere

Schoolism Week 06 Feedback: Atmosphere and Light

Schoolism Week 07 Designing with Light

Reymond Textures, Leaves and Trees

Week 17 -18 (2018/01/15 – 2018/01/26)

Technical and Artistry

I tried to match Reymonds textures in Substance Painter to my previous concept art of him. We’re trying to keep with Reymond’s scene being a mix of warm oranges from Reymond and cold blue moonlight.

 

Reymond’s textures made in Substance Painter, in Maya

Reymond’s topology

These textures might need more work if they make the facial expressions too flat. Alec suggested using an ambient occulsion pass to help define features.

For Reymond’s leaves I modelled one branch of tertiary/smaller branches and leaves and then distributed this using the MASH placer node. MASH is somewhat fidgety in that it doesn’t always distribute geometry near the cursor or if I create a selection set of geometry it sometimes only distributes across the first few members of the set. I’ve also had trouble with getting the MASH network branches to move with Reymond’s geometry. There might be a setting to fix this in Maya 2018 but for now we’re doing all of our setups in 2017.

 

Branch modeled for MASH distribution

I tried adding a small amount of animation to the MASH repromesh by animating each of the original leaves. Animations can be easily looped, offset or scaled by using a MASH time node. This node can only be used on MASH copies (repro) rather than instanced meshes though. My result is a little too subtle but it’s something I’ll come back to if we have time to add environmental animations.

 

In semester two, week one I mostly concentrated on trees before Kerry and I started a full asset list for proxy models and set layout. I finished off the tree models that I had started before Christmas, UV unwrapped them and then textured them in Substance Painter.

 

 

I tried a different approach to leaves with groups of leaves on an image plane instead of every leaf being on one plane.

 

 

I tried using a blue texture plugged into emission to control the shadow color.

 

Image plane of leaves for MASH distribution across spheres set on tree branches

Portfolio: Major Project Mid-Module

My contributions to our project from August 2017 to January 2018, not including scripts:

I created the backgrounds in our first animatic:

Development Sketches:

 

I contributed these storyboards for our next animatic:

 

 

I contributed these boards for the next updated animatic:

 

 

Concept art and layout development that I’ve contributed:

 

Concept after feedback

 

I contributed to scene blocking, tree modeling, lighting, rendering, compositing and look development in 3D:

House and bridge models by Kerry. Scene still in progress.

 

Developing our strangeling creature (possessed statue/skull) design:

 

Developing and modeling Reymond from Andrew’s 2D design:

 

Sketchbook ideas for Reymond

 

Reymond Progress

06/Jan/2018 – 15/Jan/2018 – Technical and Artistry

I’ve been tasked with modeling Reymond. Below are the references that I was working from, from Andrew’s drawings and some of my own sketches from before Christmas. I had painted Reymond as a towering tree but Mike pointed out that Reymond’s framing would be completely changed with this, changing the comedic audience eye level in the animatic. I’ve therefore resized Reymond’s model to be more at an eye level with Nami and Púca.

 

Andrew’s drawings of Reymond from the animatic.

 

Sketchbook ideas for Reymond

Concept after feedback

Topology

I haven’t modeled any facial topology since first year so I started by looking back on my research from back then.

My previous research on head modeling: link

The topology reference from hippydrome came in the most useful:

http://hippydrome.com/

I choose to start with topology in Maya instead of organic sculpting. I drew out where I thought the edge-flow would be based on the reference from hippydrome. I tried duplicating this by moving edgeloops on a box at first but then I just found it easier to trace my drawing with the quad draw tool. This made a flat plane of facial topology which I then pushed, pulled and pinched with the Maya sculpting tools until it looked like my drawing. I tried to make him chiseled like in the sketch by pinching the topology closer together in places but I hope this doesn’t cause any problems with the facial blend shapes and rig.

 

Reference sketches

Topology sketch

Flat plane made with quad draw tool

Work in progress of Maya sculpting:

Reymond progress turnaround closeup:

Reymond closeup with mesh:

Reymond progress turnaround:

With mesh:

I still need to add more hanging moss on Reymond’s branches and I’m going to experiment between Substance Painter or sculpted displacement maps to create his clumped moss.

Reymond renders:

 

I tried to create Reymond’s UVs in as automated a way as possible, as in my previous blog post rendering a tree. The unfold and layout tools have been working a lot better in Maya 2017 than they have before. I wonder if this is because I spent time using the mesh cleanup tool?

 

Trunks and branches UVs

Thong UVs

Moss UVs

Mouth UVs (model from Sorcha)

Look Development

Week 15 – Friday 2018/Jan/05 – Artistry and Technical

We’re trying to figure out how our cartoon world will be textured, shaded and composited. I tried making some simple textures in Substance Painter and brought them into Maya with the aim of combining them with a cartoony shading and lighting method.

 

Tree modeled and UV unwrapped by me.

Brushy textures from Substance Painter, rendered in Maya.

 

I tried applying toon shading with the facing ratio shader to my tree model (Arnold tutorial) but did not like the result as it doesn’t pay attention to my light setup.

 

Arnold facing ratio shader.

 

I’ve been trying to figure out how to render lights separately in Arnold for a long time and it turns out that it’s extremely simple. I found instructions for using AOV light groups on the bottom of this page:

https://support.solidangle.com/display/A5AFMUG/AOVs

By rendering lights separately we could maybe play with the contrast in post for getting the look that we want? Somewhere between cel shaded and having soft glows in places. This is what I’ve got from Nuke so far by rendering direct and indirect AOVs for three lights: dome, key directional and rim:

 

 

This tutorial was useful for UV unwrapping the tree. It makes the process as automated as possible, using planar mapping, auto-seams, unfold and layout functions.

 

Andrew has shared this rendering tutorial with us which will hopefully help our look development.

https://gumroad.com/l/CCGCb

Week 10 Maya Lighting, Arnold AOVs and Nuke Compositing

For week 10, the team divided into two segments. Matthew, Sorcha and Andrew focused on the animatic while Kerry and I focused on trying to recreate the house scene exterior. I blocked out the scene trying to match the scale and perspective/focal length and composition of the concept and then shared the project with Kerry. Kerry focused on modeling the house and bridge while I focused on modeling the trees and testing the lighting, rendering and compositing.

Scene block-out with trees

 

I was having trouble getting the Z depth pass from Arnold to work in Nuke so this first render test was created by rendering the geometry in separate render layers in depth and then manually adding the atmospheric depth on each layer in After Effects. This resulted in a lot of control over the layers but created more work in setting up different render layers. I think that ideally we’d want a lot of control but not as many separate layers.

 

z depth pass from the maya renderview by decreasing the exposure

 

AOVs and Nuke

I was loosing hope in using the Z depth pass. I had got it working before by grading the Z pass in Nuke so that it was visible in the viewport but hadn’t tried it in a long time so was missing a step. Alec as usual was lots of help!:) He went through an Arnold to Nuke workflow with Kerry and I and showed that the Z pass could be read by a zDefocus node in Nuke for simulating depth of field. Alec also showed us the benefit of having separate AOVs that could be edited in Nuke.

Andrew shared this video from Arvid Schneider’s YouTube that goes through the same process of rendering multiple Arnold AOVs into one merged EXR file and then extracting and recombining these in Nuke with shuffle nodes. This video also shows how to use the Z pass to create atmospheric perspective (finally!). The Z pass needs to first be extracted from the merged EXR and then the depth channel 0 to 1 space needs to be normalised by grading the white and black points with values from the clipping plane (if I understand that?). Schneider also shows a useful way of creating a custom AOV for material IDs using the aiWriteColor utility.

Arvid Schneider MtoA 120 | AOVs for Comp | using Arnold with Maya 2017

 

 

It took me a while to understand the different steps in this workflow. This page has useful information on the different sets of passes/AOVs that can be used to compose the beauty pass.

https://support.solidangle.com/display/A5AFMUG/AOVs

Nuke swapping channels

http://help.thefoundry.co.uk/nuke/11.0/Default.html#comp_environment/channels/swapping_channels.html

I got the composite working for a simple scene with spheres. Alec showed us a possible method of creating light bloom by rendering a rim light in Maya with the indirect light turned off and then blurring this in Nuke to get a soft light halo effect. I added a separate render layer for the rim light’s direct light as I can’t yet figure out how to render different lights into their own AOVs with attribute overrides. Creating light bloom needs to be further looked into. Alec had advised to work towards making rendering and compositing templates that could be used as a base across scenes.

House and bridge models by Kerry. Scene still in progress.

 

Alec suggested pushing the atmospheric fog and cinematic composition even more, as in the last image. I also made the mistake of making the depth of field too strong so that it looked like miniature photography. Sorcha pointed out that dof should be used for objects close to the camera. I had a feeling that this was the case but I haven’t experimented much before with where the blurring starts and stops with objects of different scales.

We haven’t started experimenting with any textures or shading yet. The light in the window is just a temporary Photoshop layer. Alec suggested creating light scattering with either environment fog or faked god rays wrapped around geometry with an alpha channel. The grass at the moment is also just simple Maya Paint Effects so this might change with the texturing process. The rain and fog are Photoshop overlays so will have to be looked into further also.