Murk

In the last email from Dave, he suggested adding some kind of murkiness to the water. Joey was able to find a quick and effective method by using a volume cloud and applying displacement to that cloud and having that underneath the surface of the water to get the effect of mud or or some kind of algae growing inside of this bath. I think this helps the water a lot and it brings it to another level of interest to this asset, especially since this is taking up almost the whole frame for a good portion of our camera move. 

The water is at a good place and this is really close, if not definite, to what we will use in our scene.

Gone Gobo

We took out the reflection of the gobos from the surface of the water, so now it is only reflection the sky above us. There are points in the camera move where is looks flat, and that is being caused by us looking directly down onto the water preventing us from seeing any displacement we applied to the surface. As the camera moves it becomes much more apparent and doesn't look quite so odd. There is also a reflection of the top of a tree that is in our HDR and it is catching nicely in the reflection, breaking up the solid blue reflection of the sky. This tree reflection also moves around the bath as the camera moves through the scene, which also helps give it a little more interest.

One problem that we came across when taking out the gobos in the reflection is that is we turn of "visible in glossy" for the gobos, it effects the entire scene, not just the water. It made all the shaders in the scene seem extremely shiny, and this was not good. So we decided to render the water separately from the entire scene, and Joey was able to comp it together in Nuke to make it work. This was a little bit of a speed bump and resulting in us having to render twice the amount of frames, but we will make it work.

After emailing Dave and Megan about this update, Dave said this is working much better than before. He also said that since the gobos are gone the water appears a lot clearer than before, so he suggested adding some kind of murkiness or something similar to growing algae to help break it up and sell the fact that this is stagnant water that has been sitting for a while.

New Water

I implemented the comments about the water shader from our last session. I lowered the brightness of the reflection of the gobos above us to make it less distracting and confusing. I also backed off the refraction roughness to make it not quite so blurry at the bottom of the pool. Last time, the bottom seemed more out of focus rather than just deeper underwater, so I adjusted accordingly. 

Their feedback on this pass at the water was we should take out the reflection of the gobos all together. It is just getting too distracting, even with the lowered brightness, and in reality there wouldn't be that many branches directly above the middle of this space anyway. We should just let the sky above be reflecting into the water.

Water

After the feedback form Dave and Megan about the water, I decided to take a stab at the water shader since Joey was working on it last week but he seemed to be doing a lot all at the same time, so I offered to try the water. I took out the subsurface scattering and added roughness to the refraction to get the effect of the water blurring the bottom of the bath as the water got deeper. I also adjusted the color a bit because it seemed to blue and too clean for standing water in this type of setting. 

The comments that were given after this adjustment were that this method is working a lot better than before. The reflections of the branches in the gobos above the water are really bright and are quite distracting, so I should try lowering the brightness in the specular. 

Updated Steps

After the comments I received from Dave and Megan last week, I revisited my steps by changing their shape and also added a texture. For the shape of the steps, I kept the edges and corners sharp (they were too rounded before) and attempted more realistic irregularities in the faces (last week they seemed too lumpy and rounded). I also changed the shapes of the individual blocks, making them more varied in size and shape rather than being too uniform. I tried adding more rough edges and chipped sides, but I don't think it is coming across well enough and should be pushed further. 

As for the texture, I used an image of dark sandstone which is the kind of stone used to construct Angkor Wat that we are taking reference and inspiration from. I want the stone to feel similar to what is used to for the lotus bath and the roofs of the covered walkway, but not too close that they blend in. 

Some of the comments from Dave and Megan are that the stone could be more severely chipped and roughed up and that what I have now is not prominent enough. In regards to the stone texture, Megan commented that there needed to be more variance in color on a larger scale. Looking at the reference photos, not all the stones are exactly the same color, so I should add some light and dark spots.

Light Rig Tests - Something is Wrong

Our first attempt at making a vdev light rig test did not turn out the way it should have. In dealing with the color management of our renders, our first thought was to keep everything in raw to have a linear workflow. We imported the HDR as raw, set the color management settings in the preferences to apply output transform to renderer, and set the viewport settings to raw. But after taking all these precautions, it still didn't look right to me, the whites are too blown out, the blacks are too dark, and the black plastic sphere is not showing any reflections. We tried everything we could think of but I still wasn't convinces that this is the way it should look.

So after some help from the class and some feedback from Dave, we found out that the viewport needs to stay in sRGB gamma, not raw, so see the correct results. So now we are on the right track to making a proper vdev light rig.

04/14/17 - DWA Session

Updates: We implemented the mandala concept into the design and layout of our scene. Each component of our space is alternating shapes of circles and squares. We chose a lotus shaped ritual bathing pool to be at the center. The symbol of the lotus is also used in the design of the four arched entrances into this space, and will continue to be used throughout the architecture as we move further with development. Beyond this immediate space is another perimeter of covered walkways, keeping with the radiating pattern of the mandala. A few banyan trees will also be implemented, with their roots wrapping around our architecture, with a few reaching towards the center lotus pool.

Feedback: The space is really interesting. Our current camera move stays within the space, but Dave thinks we should show off the space that we designed. Our initial camera move begins with looking straight down at the lotus pool while rotating, emphasizing the symmetry. Dave suggested continuing with that motion all the way up, until you can see entire space. Or slowly moving to one side as you move in height to end up with a 3/4 view of the space (like the picture above). 

As for the camera move we currently have, the transitions need to be smoother. It feels as if it is 3 separate moves. It is a really long shot travelling a long distance, it can be done but needs to be finessed more. 

The Mandala Concept

Thankfully I am taking an architectural history class right now and we are learning all about ancient civilizations, more specifically ancient Buddhist and Hindu cities. Something that is found in almost all the architecture of these cities is the use of the mandala concept. They layout their temples and cities in the design of this mandala, essentially consisting of alternating levels of circles and squares. The squares usually represent gates or passageways to the next level, with these four entrances oriented to the four cardinal points. 

So when we were thinking of how to design our new space for our project, I thought why don't we use this same mandala concept. We are already taking inspiration from cities that use it, finding more reference will be great since it is used so often, it offers a higher significance to the whole space, and its also results in an aesthetically pleasing design.

We also decided to change the well at the center of our space to a lotus-shaped ritual bathing pool. Lotuses are also very common symbols in these ancient cultures. Also ritual bathing pools are much more significant than a well in these cities, so it will be more fitting to have this at the center. 

Back to the Drawing Board

After our session with DWA on April 3rd, we needed to go back to the drawing board to redesign our scene. We knew we wanted the foreground to be our focus, and we first thought of having a well at the center of our scene. So we reconfigured our whole setup and had a new layout for our environment, but it still didn't feel right. We needed something more interesting or important than just a well in the middle. So we asked ourselves the question of why aren't these people here anymore. We felt we needed to show that something happened here and this civilization could no longer live here. 

So what we came up with was an earthquake. There was be a large crack in the ground, essentially split the space in two. The shifted ground would go through the well, having half of it fall into the crack. We thought this could give us a way to move the camera to reveal the space better and have a little bit of a "wow" moment with the crack.

But after getting several people's opinions on the earthquake, we decided to abandon it because in reality, if there was that big of an earthquake, then the whole space would probably be totally collapsed and there would be almost nothing recognizable left. 

We came to the realization that we needed to completely redesign our space from scratch. We have to design like we were the architects and it has to be built for a purpose. We can't just try to make things fit together that don't really belong. So we need to go back to the drawing board, again.

04/03/17 - Pitch Modifications

Updates: We got rid of the archaeological site, just focused on the ruins themselves. Decided to make a well the focal point of our scene. We want to show that there is more to the city that we aren't seeing, so we put a large important building in the background (the Observatory). Still would like mountain range in the far background and local fog settling in around the scene to keep that mysterious feel. We also introduced come banyan trees that have long roots that wrap around whatever is near it. We thought the tree could help push the point of this city being really old - having a full grown tree growing on something it shouldn't be.

Feedback: The foreground and background are contradicting each other on which is the focus. We want the foreground to be the focus but the background in our concept art is pulling focus from foreground. So we should just pick which one we would like to emphasize and run with it. It doesn't really matter which one we go with, but just pick one and stick with it.  

03/31/17 - First Pitch to DWA

Synopsis and Concept: Two archaeologists are setting up camp early morning outside of ancient ruin city in the South American mountains. One of them leaves to get more supplies and when they return, they see things knocked over and the camp looks as if some kind of altercation has happened. The other archaeologist is gone, but there is a trail of drag marks leading away from the camp and towards the city, as if he was attacked and forcibly dragged away.

The mood is mysterious, using early morning light and atmosphere/fog throughout the scene. There is a contrast of modern day equipment from the archaeologists and the ancient city in ruins.   

Feedback: Get rid of archaeological site, just focus on the ruins. The setting of the ruins is interesting enough to tell a story, don't need to add an event to it. The mysterious mood to good, stick with that. The story of an ancient civilization is mysterious already; what happened to these people, why don't they live here anymore, etc... Let the environment say everything for us.