Big Top Plastic Shaders

For look development on The Big Top I have been working on shader tests for plastic materials, in both Renderman and Arnold, these first 3 are rendered with Arnold.




We are taking reference from Evil Corp who make great plastic style CG models that look very realistic. The key things I picked up on was the subsurface scattering, and the amount of specular on the skin, so before we get some models and textures I am experimenting with these properties on this model.

I played with getting the scattering correct, which you can see working on the ear. I then played with varying amounts of specular and reflection. I don't think any of them are quite right yet, it will be easier to play with shaders once we have some textures painted.

 I do like Arnolds ability to add lights for specific attributes, for example subsurface scattering, although its not physically plausible sometimes you want that control to push an effect in specific areas, although this could probably be achieved in comp it would be most reliable to achieve in render.

 I did another test with Renderman, at the moment working in 2016 waiting for the 2017 release of non-commercial Renderman 21, which we are hoping to be out and within 2 weeks.

The lighting setup for both engines was different but I tried to experiment with shaders in the was. If we know we will be able to go ahead with Renderman we will move look development to it, but for the moment we are exploring Arnold, which is still a great renderer.

Popular posts from this blog

Particle Fluids

Image
I tried to follow this tutorial  to create a CG Tornado. I'm still trying to replicate the effect in the video but outside of the tutorial I had a play with the Expression editor and things I had seen in the video to create this: Its very rough around the edges. I wont carry on anymore with this scene file, I'll go back and watch the Tutorial over and over until I can get a good grasp of it. Doing this has given me another idea for possibly a more simple smoke effect that doesn't use particles
Read more

Game Of Life Render

Image
Having completed my game of life script I wanted to get a nice render of it, which I've finally gotten around too. I wanted to make a grid of marbles, each different colours, however having around 2000 in total in the scene that was not gonna happen by assigning them manually. After a lot of trial and error I found a way to get what I wanted. First I created a procedural texture of squares, each different colours from the 6 base colours I chose. I then positioned this under the spheres. I gave every sphere a completely see through glass material, and disabled primary viability of the plane. This meant the refracted colour of the plane could be seen in the marbles but not the marbles themselves. I think this worked pretty well, definitely more efficient than  assigning  all the objects a material.
Read more

"Tails" in Obstacle Course

Image
This is an update on the Bouncing Ball animation. I animated him jumping up a spiral staircase and over 2 gaps, finally getting squished. I tried to focus lots on the movement on the tail and giving the end of the tail delay so it swished behind the ball quite nicely. I spent a lot of time in the Dope sheet moving frames around to tweak the animation. I still don't think its showing enough personality, the ball is just bouncing through the scene, I would like to make him more of a quirky character who shows some emotion.
Read more