Studio 1 | Elyse Dior

LINES AND SPACE

WINTER 2022

CONCEPT

As an FX artist, FX has always reminded me of outer space. They both are a combination of math and visual beauty. This project is a reflection of this concept.

SCHEDULE

WEEK 1

-planning/research

WEEK 2

-space/part2 mechanics and cameras

WEEK 3

-space/part2 mechanics and cameras

WEEK 4

-lines/part 1mechanics and cameras

-rendering part 2

WEEK 5

-lines/part 1 mechanics and cameras

-rendering part 2

WEEK 6

-part 1 look dev

-rendering part 2

WEEK 7

-part 1 rendering

WEEK 8

--editing and compositing

WEEK 9

-finalize

WEEK 10

-finalize

PART 1

A mathematical and interpretational representation of space using line. This part will have a more illustrated look.

PART 2

A movement through space. Where the camera explores a photorealistic nebula.

PART 3

The two parts will mix by traveling through a wormhole. The nebula will take on a more illustrated look when the line will look more photo real.

PART 1 LOOK DEVELOPEMENT

PART 2 LOOK DEVELOPEMENT

BLOG

WEEK 1

This week I created a rough animatic for the piece to flesh out the timing and finalized the concept, plan, and schedule. I also researched creating large volumes and started on the mechanics of both parts.

WEEK 2

This week I worked on creating one of the nebula volumes for part 2. I used a fluid simulation to get the hero volume and used vdbs and volumes with noise to get the bottom volume.

I am going to add density to bottom volume and get rid of the the area light in the center. If I have time I would like to create a second one instead of rendering this one at two different angles.

CLASS 5 UPDATE

WEEK 3

Started on Lines and the look dev process. I worked on the wormhole which could be finished if I wanted but I feel that it is currently good but not great. I would like to add more to make it great and increase that wow factor. I have enough done to have a rough draft if I were to render everything. I feel like I am in a good place and very ahead. Now that I have a rough I can spend the next 7 weeks (the majority of the time) refining and making my vision for this project really come to life. I also found a new source of inspiration for my cloud volumes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAOzrChqmd0

WEEK 4

This week I got a lot closer to finalizing the look development for shots 1 and 2. I also got the mechanics working for shot 7 and did a test render of the toon shader on a cloud volume for shot 8.

MIDTERM UPDATE/WEEK 5

WEEK 6

This week I reworked shot 6. I didn't feel as if the wireframe and colors were working with my composition. I hope to get me resolution into the volumes for the final and to do a bit of compositing.

WEEK 7

This week I worked on shot 4. I've been enjoying experimenting with how far I can push the look devolvement of something that is fairly simple mechanically. As well as how many different ways I can render the same thing so that it looks completely different across many different shots.

CLASS 15 UPDATE/ WEEK 8

WEEK 9

Next week is the final week of this project and it will have to be turned in. This week I worked finishing shot 5 and 7. I decided to redo the 2d cloud for shot 7 because it was looking too much like a fluid sim. I'm deciding to keep the popping a result of time. Before next week I would like to reorder my sequence a little bit and try to get higher quality renders out of my cloud volumes.

CONCLUSION

I am really happy with what I was able to accomplish within a 10 week period. Of course there are things that could be improved upon and I am sure that great improvements could be made with a proper compositor.

These last few weeks I learned different methods of creating large cloud volumes using little or no simulation. The plus side to this workflow was that it saved a lot of time. The downside was that it was harder to get a good resolution out of my volume and I was missing some of the fun things that come with a pyro simulation like shredding, viscosity, ect. I was a bit limited to what I could create using noise. I would like to try creating a space scene using a pyro simulation and rendering in Redshift instead of Mantra. Overall this was the most difficult part of the project for me.

It was fun being able to create a more abstract art piece instead of the end goal being something more practical and based on realism. Since the project was abstract there was no one right answer and everything could look like whatever I wanted it to. On the other hand, since there was no one right answer, sometimes the answer was not always clear and I had to use a bit of imagination and rely on more of my fundamentals of design.