Krill Character Development
Early stage Look Development
One of my first roles on Happy Feet Two was working as a Visual Development artist situated with the RnD team. I was a sort of go between Art Department and RnD, researching new technics in Houdini and shader look development in Mental Ray.
As the project was at its early stages we didn't have any Houdini 3Delight Renderman shaders so I did a lot of Mental Ray lighting and shading research to see what we could aim for and how reflection and refraction could work for us knowning eventually it would be done in renderman.
Krill side render in Maya Mental Ray. Using MIA Material X shader. This render gave us a great insight into how we could achieve the Krills subsurface internal structure.
Krill character development render in Maya, Mental Ray.
Krill character development render in Maya, Mental Ray.
Part of the challenge was trying to match the photo of a real krill. I broke down a lot of the surface structure of a real krill and tried to replicate it in CG. We could see how adding bump and displacement to the surface broke up the refracted surface making it more believable.
A breakdown of the Mental Ray Shader and how I used maps to get the look.
I also did visual development on what the world of the Krill would look like 'Krill-Spective'. The idea was that from their point of view snowflakes would be like buildings and baby penguins would be as giants. Also pushed to get some sundogs in the film but sadly it didn't make it.
Some of my early research was also seeing the potential of Houdini's ability to create microsopic worlds and gathering visual references.
Over a number of years the Krill was worked and re-worked by a number of very talented artists. Above the final Krill as seen in the film. I also did many surfacing versions of the iceberg prop.
Early surfacing versions of the iceberg in which the Krill hold on to. Sculpted displacement in ZBrush surfaced in Houdini, rendered in 3delight.
