Effects
Testing & Documentation
When considering the effects that are being utilized in this project aside from the abundance of modeling, there are a few main additional elements that are prominent aspects of the piece: animation, lighting, camera settings, and volumetric atmosphere. I decided to use my testing as way to make sure I understood the work flows for each of these effects individually and would be able to achieve the desired look for each shot that involves them.
Animation
The concept of my project very heavily relies on the animation of my "main character"- the gold ball that navigates the antique shop. I decided to animate the shot in which the ball rolls across a row of books before moving on to the next shot.
I originally tested my animation through simple key frames, but I have since been able to learn the work flow for rigid body dynamics. I created a active rigid body for the ball and passive rigid bodies for the books. I then applied gravity and adjusted the magnitude to control the speed of the fall.
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I was able to convert the simulation to key frames once I was at a place I was happy with in order to delete the rigid bodies and lighten the load of the simulation.
Volumetric Atmosphere
Original Light:
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With PxrVolume:
I wanted to make sure that I created the environment that I was imagining for this antique shop, which involves the main light source being the morning sun outside the window. I wanted the warm source of light to be beaming into the window, which I was not achieving with just placing lights throughout my scene, as there was no volumetric fog or light dispersed in the "air."
To improve this, I was able to test and later apply the PxrVolume aspect of renderman.
I initially used this small room and window as a test, and was able to experiement with different parameters to achieve the look I wanted.
Neon Lights
We find that the motivating force for everything that occurs in this piece is to turn on the "Open" sign in the window of the antique shop. Because of this importance, I decided to test my effects of the lights and the flickering that will occur when it is first turned on by the ball. To create this I downloaded a font that worked as a neon sign, created a curve from the 3D text, and extruded a NURBS circle along the curves. I then converted the extruded surface to polygons and turned them into mesh lights. I also inserted a cube, toggled the visibility, and created an atmosphere "PxrVolume" in order to create the glow that is emitted from the light. After finding the color and intensity that I wanted, I keyed the intensity at various points to create the flickering-on appearance.
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After rendering, I found that the final result alters the color a bit from the render preview, so I plan on experimenting with the sign placed in my scene to see how the surrounding environment affects the color.
Camera Settings
No DOF:
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With DOF:
One thing that I have specifically had planned from the start of preproduction with my storyboards was that I wanted to include evident depth of field across most shots of this piece. I thought that this would allow the viewer to get a better understanding of scale, as well as focus the attention onto what is was I wanted the viewer to see.
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I was able to play with the multiple parameters in the camera settings of my shots, such as F-Stop, focus distance, and focus range. This varies per shot and will need to be played with more for shots with an animated camera and ball, but this served as a good way to get used to the parameters.