Your Journey Starts Here...
My Look Development Plan—Still-Life Scene
Description of Task:
To design, plan and implement a look for a three-dimensional (3D) still-life scene, by arranging 3D elements such as assets, camera set up, lighting and shading within a scene. This process will result in the creation of a showcase video and a series of individual images rendered in 3D.
A Colour Script for my Scenes:
What is a Colour Script?:
A Colour Script is a quick, working document that establishes which colour combinations relate to specific emotional touch-points of a story or in this case, a still life image.
Colour sheets are typically found in animation or game development to further evoke the emotions in a scene or event. Making an event more dramatic, sad or brighter.
Above is a colour sheet that was taken from another student's research blog back in 2015.
This student, in their work, describes and associates meaning to the colours they have chosen for their game project. Stating that the scene and environment would change around the character to enhance the character's emotion that evolves with the story as players progress.
Since my task is not to create a game or animation, I simply have to decide on one group of colours to describe a single emotion in my work. Using lights and filters in my 3D studio to create these effects.
LEFT: A Basket of Flowers by Jan Brueghel the Younger RIGHT: Still Life with a Skull and a Writing Quill by Pieter Claesz
probably 1620s | Flemish 1628 | Dutch
A Lighting plan for scene:
Mood Board for Materials / Textures / Shaders
I would like to explore with realistic models and to create a photo realistic lighting scene but this task is about LOOK and LIGHTING, meaning that the style of the subject can be developed to how I so wish.
Below are images that I collected that show what a 'modern' food still life is. Laid out in a traditional photography setting, placed together to portray or symbolise a particular meaning.
Images below are what I have taken myself.
I'll be exploring how light reflects and reacts to different surfaces of food items such as shiny bread, moist fruits, crispy chicken, bright drinks in clear plastic cups with paper straws. etc
Creating my own LOOK:
To create a unique look for this task, I chose to go with a neon aesthetic lighting. Doing so would create an interesting piece to render with the many different surfaces of foods and drinks.
Weeks 1, 2 & 3
A proctical trial of how lighting can effect different surfaces and materials.
Creating the bun for my scene involved a fair amount of trial and error, as well as multiple videos and tutorials of creating food textures through substance.
I would want my items to sit on top of a cloth background. I think to have something like cloth within a still life image brings a flow to the piece. Below is some test scenery which has cloth, one being the solid background and the other being more of a place for subjects to sit.
Progess is happening. Creating the main items for the scene
Above, I have jumped in progress due to feed back I was given. I have changed my items to create a theme or posibly a story, doing so may aid in my task of creating an intreging 'look' for my scene.
to create a themed look, I have added items that would posibly be set in a seen of a dining table, posibly an abandon farm house.
I still am tweeking with my lighting.
More texturing and some re-positioning of my items later. I have this as a result. I am quite happy with how the food is turning out. I have to make the bun match the rest of the items.
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Materials are the biggest effort of trial and error...
Some render trials with filters, lighting and atmosphere fog for this scene.
Once I chose the scene that I best prefered, It was off to photo shop to combind the different render layers.
Fortunatly enough, I was happy with about 90% of the effect that maya gave me, so it was nothing more than miner editing with colours and saturation.
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My Final Submittion:
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A new journey for Lighting Interior Environments
The task this round is to design, plan and implement a look for an interior visualisation scene. This look development task includes planning, design, camera set up, lighting and shading of all the elements within the scene.
Mood Board
I wanted to have a modern kitchen that was lived in. Vases, cups, bottles etc.
I liked the different materials in these images. The marbles island with wood accents, I thought taht these would be interesting materials and textures to expore in an interior setting.
First go at blocking out the shape of the scene as well as adding the ''stand in's'' to get the scale and size sorted out from the begining.
Adding some of the bigger features of a kitchen.
Creating atmosphere and lights in some places to start getting the reflections
The render above was a test of time and final 'posible' outcome.
I added an atmosphere, more lighting and gave different surfaces their assumed material to see how the lighting in my scene would work out.
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Another day, another render. Recently I have been placing textures to my scene and I also redesigned my layout, making it more interesting to the eye.
Here is a top view of the new layout. By changing the camera angle, I can get a better view of the different elements in my scene.
I also created another window and corridor in the background to give the illusion of a bigger place than this scene makes out to be.
Above is a short render I did, testing out the colours in my scene. I also tested some lights to put within the chandelier.
I was happy with how this was coming along. I preferred the layout change for it allowed more light, space and interest to come into the scene.
I was happy with how this was coming along. I preferred the layout change for it allowed more light, space and interest to come into the scene.
Next thing todo was to fill out the space in my scene.
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Before showing the final render, I want to state that this render took my computer. 2 hours and 40 minutes.
Is there anything I would change or add to my interior scene if I had better managed my time? Firstly, I would love to have more items around the kitchen, plates, bowels, bottles etc. Just more things to give my scene less of a stock image vibe.
Secondly, if given an extra 3 hours. I would re-render just to fix up the issue with the furniture. They were meant to be yellow, bringing a spot of colour but they accidentally turned out into a shiny, plastic black.
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Final Task: A Filmic Sequence
What is my task:
I must develop a cinematic look through the development of techniques I have acquired throughout the term, I'll be needing to showcase a visual style with a narrative.
MOOD BOARD: For a fantasy approach
My first creative ideas sprouted from the Alice in Wonderland movie, by Disney in 1951. I wanted the world to feel large, fantastical and full.
I liked where this was going but throughout my process, I discovered that I was going in between the lines of fiction and realism. I had to choose a side and stick with it.
MOOD BOARD: With a more, realistic tone of development
I was discussing with my lecturer the possibility of developing a scene much like these references above. I could play around with the fauna and the fog to create my original feeling of a large and full world.
The Evolution of my lighting.
I would always toss back and forth between possible lighting options for my render.
I would always toss back and forth between possible lighting options for my render.
Did I want to go with a misty day, with rays of light shining through the canopy of the leave above. Or did I want to go for a late-night scene, with eerie fogs surrounding?
Admittedly, I did not own the recommended applications to professionally composite my work. However, I have learned how to separate the layers of my scene to possibly edit them for future works.
By separating different aspects of my scene, an example being the fog and atmosphere of my world. I can then individually manipulate all three render layers to precisely have the final result, looking and feeling how I originally intended.
The process of switching between programs to incrementally change the value of an element within my scene proved to be quite challenging.
To not yet, fully understand what each setting would do to the final result is what I struggled with. I guess knowledge like that comes with practice.
Final Result:
