Project #1 Compositing with Light and Shadow

Week 3-1 1/23/2024

Based on feed back from the previous class, I plugged in the normal map into my texture, giving the ball a subtle leather texture. I also decreased the roughness so you get more of the specular highlights on the ball now. Below are my textures as well as references for my material. The only thing I think I would change is the red saturation so it would be brighter.

Below are my textures that I used:

Here is my final render in motion! I did have some frames that just would not render for me so I hope to fix that in the future.

 

Week 2-2 1/20/2024

I was feeling confident in the progress I’ve made with my project so I went ahead and added a potential object into the scene and rendered it out. I went with the cricket ball for now and due to their small size, I added 5 into my scene. I’m not too happy with the animation because I think the rolling is weird right now, almost like some of them are sliding. I pulled the model off of Quixel and I’ll put the link below.

Link: https://quixel.com/megascans/home?search=balls&type=3D%20asset&assetId=udqlcjbva

Rendering this out helped me figure out problems that I was missing in the original grey ball renders. The contact shadow on the balls right now makes it look like the balls are almost floating, or maybe they actually aren’t all the way down on the ground, I’ll have to go back and check that too. Also when the balls approach their end position, the shadow projection is getting cut off so I’ll have to go and extend that as well, but I am happy with how the shadows interact for the rest of the projection!

Below is my nuke script:

Project 1: Compositing with Light and Shadow nuke script

I’m also still liking the coconut idea. If I can figure out how to get it to roll believably with a slight wobble, I might end up using that as my final object. I think I’d use two of those since they are significantly larger than the cricket balls. I also think it would be way more interesting than a rolling ball! The link to the models I’d use is below.

Link: https://quixel.com/megascans/home?search=coconut&type=3D%20asset&assetId=udrlcdmqx

Link: https://quixel.com/megascans/home?search=coconut&type=3D%20asset&assetId=tg3mfgrpa

 

Week 2-1 1/18/2024

So the next step in this process was to get the ground shadow cast by the fence on to the ball. I made a few different shadow mattes to try and do this; one by tracing the shadows in photoshop so I’d get clean lines and the other by using the select color range tool. I then projected the cleaned up version on to my grey ball using a maya surface shader. Below is my video test and the shadow mattes I used.

As you’ll see in the video, I was able to fix the super dark shadow on the ball. I’m pretty sure I rendered the beauty layer without the HDR geodome on so there was no fill light. However, my fence shadows are not lining up with where they are in the scene, and it gets cut off while the ball is rolling. So this makes me think that the light is possible in the wrong spot or pointed at a wrong angle so the projection is wrong. I’m also having an issue with double shadows as the projection wraps around the back of the ball, so I may need to render out a separate shadow matte to on the ball itself, so I can use that as a mask on the fence shadows.

I’ve also noticed in the video now that some of the rocks on the ground have moved from the clean plate to the shadow plate, so I’m going to need to go into them and possible just remove those rocks from the photos so they aren’t jumping as the shadow of the ball moves across the plane.

 

Week 1 - 3 1/16/2024

Update on animation and light interaction with just a grey ball. There’s a dark shadow on the ball that I’m not sure where that’s coming from but I will work on that this coming week!

 

Week 1 - 2 1/14/2024

Over the weekend I focused on creating my render layers and getting them to render correctly. I was having an issue where to naming convention on the layers weren’t saving correctly, so the renders kept writing over themselves. However, that might have just been a my computer issue because closing the file and reopening it seemed to fix that. My render time at 1920x1080 resolution is listed under each image.

I composited the images together using the all shadow image from the photoset. I do need to soften the shadow and increase the occlusion, so I will do that for my next render. This was just a quick and dirty thing I threw together quickly to experiment on how to do this. I’m going to try and get the ball animated rolling across the plane before class on Wednesday, so I’ll update the blog if I get that going soon!

 

Week 1 - 1 1/9/2024

To start, I think I am going to use this photo set taken by Katie Veneman. I like the shadow shapes as well as the neutral grey color of the ground. It feels like it could lend itself really well to the grimy and dark aesthetic I prefer.

I started to try and match the camera and lighting set up. I was doing it on the assumption that the wooden block was a 2 inch cube but looking at the grey card photo, I’m more inclined to believe the cube was actually 6 inches, so I changed the scale and will keep this in mind when picking my object.

My match isn’t perfect yet but I’m happy with where it is right now.

As far as what object I want to do, I was thinking of something rusted or older. I was able to pull some models off of Quixel Megascans that I had some intrest in using and I’ve pictured them below. I’m fond of the tire idea but I think even with my larger scale with the 6 inch cube, the tire would still be too big and you wouldn’t be able to see much of the shadows. Other than that, I like the cricket ball or the coconut!

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Project #2: Reflection, Refraction and Tracking