Eggs Benedict
Eggs Benedict
Eggs Benedict
Eggs Benedict
Eggs Benedict
Eggs Benedict
Ole is a short file that that I worked on as a lighting artist and motion capture technician. Unfortunately the production slowed down and was eventually cut short do to COVID and the difficultly of working remotely without the systems in place. I am disappointed that we were not able to see the project through to the end but grateful for the hard work everyone put in despite the challenges.
Sea Magnolia
Starting this project I began by modeling my object. I modeled the shell with the soft deformer. For the center anemone, I created a straight tentacle then copied them around to where I wanted them and used a lattice deformer to give them a more organic look. I planed to use the lattice again to animate them and make them appear to be underwater.
SHADERS
Lighting
Composite 1
First composite image of all the models, shaders, and lighting together. Shaders need a lot of work and the UVs still need to be laid out for some of the procedural textures to come through in the correct way. Also, the subsurface seems to have broken on the anemone and the inner shell. The creature still does not feel as if it is underwater.
UV's
First UV layout, still not happy with this result. There is still stretching in the middle of the shells and a lot of negative space in the grid.
Composite 2
The image is starting to feel under water. I added a sphere with a surface shader and a procedural texture to add a fill light. I also took the specular highlights off the shaders as I was informed by my professor that there were no specular highlights underwater. I also darkened the sand so the caustic was more visible and changed the composition by adding more rocks to the scene to help the image feel less flat.
I Added fog to the scene with light fog today as well as several shader adjustments. I changed the rock texture to look mossy to more closely match the reference images.
Today I changed the lighting in the scene. I added a gobo effect on the light to create a caustic effect on the ground and god-rays in the water. I also added animations to the tentacles of the anemone using a lattice deformer and animated the shells. I also added a displacement map to the sand.
Shaders
Procedural Textures
Rework
I was unhappy with several aspects of this project so I decided to revisit it and clean it up to be a piece on my reel. I fully redid the composition and atmosphere to make the project feel more like an underwater photograph. I also redid the animations of the shells and anemone because I felt like they were too uniform and that was very distracting. I put the most work into reworking the shaders. I was very unhappy with the shader for the anemone and decided to take a whole new approach. I was able to achieve a much closer look at what I wanted by driving the subsurface and subsurface radius off of the facing ratio of the model. I added a slight emission to the material based on the height of the model which added the saturation that was taken away by the amount of subsurface needed. I also touched up the model so the shell appears to be more integrated into the plant and got rid of the interpenetration of the shells when animated.