Semester Reflection
This semester I learned many new concepts. I learned how to use Mudbox more effectively to sculpt my custom textures maps. I also refined how fluid dynamics look for different types of bodies of water. I learned how to create rain particles and different types of fields. Now that the semester is over, I’m going to spend time going over more tutorials learning how to use particles to create all sorts of VFX.
Mountain Castle Finished
After many hours of hard work, here is my final render of the castle:
Rendering
Rendering, rendering, and more rendering. This week was just focused on rendering. Each image takes approximately 8 minutes. The ambient occlusion takes 30 minutes to render. I’m rendering in 1280×1024 HD. I spent many late hours in the lab creating render farms by spreading out the computing power across over 16 computers. I now only have a few more images to go before it’s fully finished. So far its looking really nice.
VFX Rain & Compositing
VFX Rain This week I worked with Maya’s particle emissions. I watched and read many tutorials to get the rain to look as realistic as possible. I learned how to use fields, such as gravity, turbulence, vortex, to manipulate how the particles react with the objects in the scene.
Mountain Castle – Almost Final Render
This week has been just a bunch of final touches to the scene. There are still a few things that need to be cleaned up but this is my first final render. What I did for the scene this week was setup the camera path guide for my animated render. I also created and organized the render layers so I can easily composite my scene. I color corrected the fog and fixed other small tweaks.
Mountain Castle – Final Tweaks 2
This week I tweaked the lighting even more and added some shadows to the lights. I also fixed miscellaneous small things to improve the scene.
Mountain Castle – Final Tweaks
I retextured the castle and finished all the small objects in the scene including the bridge and door frame. I also did many experiments to see how I’m going to composite this with the many different layers. Once the clouds move at the right speed and the fog looks just right, I’ll start rendering a trailer with composed music to fit the mood of the scene.
Mountain Castle – Lighting
I worked hard on the lighting in the scene. I created an ocean and some fog in by the coast. I created animated clouds and a sky box for the camera. I still have alot of small things that need to be added for realism and should be completed in another week.