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Live Integration

Shader composite
final.jpeg

For this project, I had to recreate the shader attributes of moonstone and place it on a model to be integrated into a photograph as seen in the first picture. The challenge of this shader was the chromatic shift that occurred when light passed through the stone. As light passed through the stone it shifted from white to a shade of yellow dependent on the intensity of the light passing through the rock.

Objects
shader.jpeg

To recreate this in the shader I tried several things, I attempted to recreate the effect with the facing value of the object and the surface luminance as well as a combination of the two. However, none of these gave me the effect I wanted out of the shader. For the final shader, I was able to recreate most of the attributes of the rock using Arnold's transmission attributes.

Caustics
caustics.jpeg

Another important aspect of the image is the caustic effect on the ground. Light coming through the stone created pools of yellow/orange light on the ground. To get this effect I had to render the ground plane with the caustic effect on it and also a plane with just some of the bounce light from the object. Then in nuke, I subtracted the indirect diffuse AOVs to get the caustic effect I wanted on the ground.

Shadow Mattes
shadows.jpeg

The shadows were also a challenge for this piece. There were two main light sources, the lamp and the window. These lights sources were on opposite sides of my object causing the majority of the shadows to be lightened out of the picture. To get this effect I had to use the shadow passes to edit the shadows out of places they would not be due to the other light in the scene.

Nuke Network
P2NukeTreeFinal.png
Rework

I revisited this project recently to address some of the issues that were brought up the most when I received feedback on the project. In the original image, I had the Dragon on the right overhanging the ledge it to cast shadows on the molding. However I was told this was visually confusing as it appeared that I just had a bad Ambient Occlusion pass and it just looked like the dragon was not fully sitting on the window sill. I also darkened the AO and fixed the problem with reflections going outside of the window onto the frame and the difference in depth of the shadow on the frame and the reflections in the window.

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