Unit 72 was the final part of the project which involved the lighting and render of the scenes we had created in unit 71&73. For the majority of this unit we were tasked with creating test renders of our scene prior to starting the final renders. As we were going to be using Maya for the final renders, I conducted all my tests in Maya so that I would not need to export from 3ds Max to Maya.
I started off by doing some tests with Mayas “physical sun & sky” tool. This tool allowed me to create a basic daytime render without much tweaking. The positives of this tool were that it is really intuitive to use and created almost perfect daytime lighting. Although this tool is really effective at creating a daytime atmosphere, for my trailer I needed to make it night time. Even though I felt that the results from the tests using physical sun and sky were good, I didn’t want to change my entire idea to fit around the physical sun and sky tool. While this tool will prove to be very useful for some of my peers who are aiming to create daytime renders, I personally will not be using this method. Instead I started testing using the lights in Maya to re-create a dark night time atmosphere.
Before I started working on the lights I researched into the making of fog in Maya. After finding a tutorial from YouTube , I found out it was quite straight forward to create and tweak fog in Maya. The implantation of fog into my scene will hopefully help create atmosphere throughout the trailer. In hindsight, while testing the fog, I should've tried different colour effects on the fog to see the outcomes. I feel that I could've been a lot more thorough when testing the fog, as there are most likely areas where I could improve upon.
An effect that I thought of testing but never tried practically was smoke effects. I planned to test this effect as I thought it may add to my trailer. As I when creating my animatic I looked for places where I could add in a smoke effect. I didn't find any suitable scenes and I felt that smoke may detract from the feeling of preservation, something the brief's scenario outlined. I thought that the smoke may lure the audience into thinking the mech may have been the arsonist, hence destroying any sense of preservation from the mech in the scene.
A problem I ran into during render was the lack of shadows in my scenes. Originally I didn't actually notice the flaw until a lecturer pointed it out to me, at which point I was stumped at how I didn't realise myself. At this point I began tweaking settings on my lights to ensure they were generating shadows across my environment but to no avail. After some research, I consulted my peers who actually had the same problem as I did and solved it. After taking his advice on correcting a slider named "ambient colour", shadows finally showed up across my scene. I feel that this error was really me not paying full attention to the small details in the scene and only focusing on the bigger picture. I realised that after a certain point I need to slow down and look into the smaller details of the scene to ensure my work is up to industry standard.
Overall for lighting and rendering, I feel that for my trailer the lighting and effects worked out fairly well. It helped create that dark moonlit feeling I tried to aim for. Although I do feel in hindsight that adding extra effects may help build a stronger sense of atmosphere such as small things from nature i.e fireflies. By adding some natural elements to the scene I feel that this could help further bring the scene to life.
I started off by doing some tests with Mayas “physical sun & sky” tool. This tool allowed me to create a basic daytime render without much tweaking. The positives of this tool were that it is really intuitive to use and created almost perfect daytime lighting. Although this tool is really effective at creating a daytime atmosphere, for my trailer I needed to make it night time. Even though I felt that the results from the tests using physical sun and sky were good, I didn’t want to change my entire idea to fit around the physical sun and sky tool. While this tool will prove to be very useful for some of my peers who are aiming to create daytime renders, I personally will not be using this method. Instead I started testing using the lights in Maya to re-create a dark night time atmosphere.
Before I started working on the lights I researched into the making of fog in Maya. After finding a tutorial from YouTube , I found out it was quite straight forward to create and tweak fog in Maya. The implantation of fog into my scene will hopefully help create atmosphere throughout the trailer. In hindsight, while testing the fog, I should've tried different colour effects on the fog to see the outcomes. I feel that I could've been a lot more thorough when testing the fog, as there are most likely areas where I could improve upon.
An effect that I thought of testing but never tried practically was smoke effects. I planned to test this effect as I thought it may add to my trailer. As I when creating my animatic I looked for places where I could add in a smoke effect. I didn't find any suitable scenes and I felt that smoke may detract from the feeling of preservation, something the brief's scenario outlined. I thought that the smoke may lure the audience into thinking the mech may have been the arsonist, hence destroying any sense of preservation from the mech in the scene.
A problem I ran into during render was the lack of shadows in my scenes. Originally I didn't actually notice the flaw until a lecturer pointed it out to me, at which point I was stumped at how I didn't realise myself. At this point I began tweaking settings on my lights to ensure they were generating shadows across my environment but to no avail. After some research, I consulted my peers who actually had the same problem as I did and solved it. After taking his advice on correcting a slider named "ambient colour", shadows finally showed up across my scene. I feel that this error was really me not paying full attention to the small details in the scene and only focusing on the bigger picture. I realised that after a certain point I need to slow down and look into the smaller details of the scene to ensure my work is up to industry standard.
Overall for lighting and rendering, I feel that for my trailer the lighting and effects worked out fairly well. It helped create that dark moonlit feeling I tried to aim for. Although I do feel in hindsight that adding extra effects may help build a stronger sense of atmosphere such as small things from nature i.e fireflies. By adding some natural elements to the scene I feel that this could help further bring the scene to life.