Visual Effects
Fall Week 5
Fall Week 4
I continued to explore the lighting in the concept scene. Using the same exterior lighting setup as the last post. I have changed the color of the scene and taken inspiration from the lighting in Nosferatu. In the carriage scene I like how they light the focus of the scene and leave a lot of the background as silhouettes. I think applying this to our project would be very beneficial to us because it will cut down on render times and load.
In this rendition I wanted to really push the god rays. The way to do this is unreal engine is to put an object in front of the key light and turn up the exponential height fog. I also made the scene more green because it brightens the scene up and I think is a better color than a deep blue. I have also added cards with a mask of an image of fog. I think this works well to break up the scene and set a better focal point. I am not set on the camera angle but that is due to change since the scene will change and the camera will be following our actress.
The critiques I have are the camera angle is not the best I think putting it at eye level of a normal person will net better results. I also think along with moving the camera the angle of the light could be changed to reflect the moon more accurately. I also do not like the harsh shadow coming from the main tree.
Along with that I have noticed strange shadows coming from the rock geometry I have not found a fix but these shadows do not react to changing the light.
Fall Week 3
During Week 3 I gathered more reference for lighting, instead of looking at Pinterest for just images I was looking into films with huge snow or desert scenes. Mainly looking at how they were lighting those environments. The two films I looked into further was The Thing and The Revenant, both of these films use horror elements with monsters and use lighting and the camera work creatively to convey that. In The Thing you cannot see past their camp, the only lights are coming from the buildings or lights and it adds to the feeling of the unknown. In slight contrast The Revenant is a lot brighter and the audience can see much more of the forest but the camera work with the narrow angles is how they got their horror elements.
This scene utilizes a basic set up with a directional light, a spot light, a sky atmosphere, skylight, volumetric cloud, and exponential height fog. Critiques I have are that the blue one is too dark, I am loosing lots of detail and it is too dark of a blue. It looks as though it is underwater. The lighter colored scene is also too dark it does not look like it is lit up by the moon but instead like its a street lamp.
Fall Week 2
During week two I continued testing the snow in unreal engine 5. What I was mainly looking for was how detailed I could get the snow to be and how heavy the simulation will be when I use geometry instead of particles.
I found that the simulation is light and I don't need that many particles to get the simulation to work. Adding materials and transparency does make the sim heavier but not by a huge margin.
To wrap up the week the simulation is getting better and looking like a good option. The next big test will be putting it into the actual scene we will be using and how it will effect that render time.
Fairies Project Blog
Fall Week 1
I am trying to decide if we are trying to do our snow effect in unreal engine 5 or in Houdini. I am testing unreal 5 first and this is a very early test of what snow could look like.
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Next I am going to see if I can change the sprites of the snow to get better detail and see how taxing that will be on the system.