So I've finally reached a stopping point on the tea time scene, and I'm getting it ready to enter my demo reel. Because I don't have the ability to render a sequence on my single machine, I used Maya particles to create some ambient dust particles floating in the air.
This project was my first real attempt at rendering any type of food, and I'm happy with the way that the strawberry, jam, and bread shaders turned out. I also enjoyed delving into the porcelain material and matching it to my reference. In Nuke, I used some slight color correction to bring the image into a brighter, sunnier palate, and some depth of field to really make the composition dynamic. I have really developed an understanding of these materials, and I look forward to using this knowledge on future projects. So I took a little break from the Tea Time scene, and dusted off Houdini to make a brass shader for a friend. I got this result in about an afternoon. The bump mapping could use a little work, but I'm pretty happy with the specular layering. Houdini's built-in layers in the reflection component saves the time of creating a blend material.
Another update on the tea time scene. I did decide to ditch the notebook, and I think I've added all the elements I want to feature in this piece, I just need to figure out the best way to arrange them.
My shaders are also near completion. At this point, I feel that the tea and the plate still need some work, but I am pretty satisfied with everything else in the scene. I am really happy with the jam on the toast. This was achieved simply by using a flattened cube on the toast, with an opacity map painted in Mari (featured below). I used a bercon noise for displacement, and a light pink refraction color for the shading. The specular model is similar to that of water. I am looking forward to finishing this soon and moving on to my next project. I've created a couple of new elements for the tea time scene, a handkerchief and a notebook.
I created the handkerchief using nCloth in Maya, and an opacity map in the shader to create the trim around the edges. I don't think I will be keeping the notebook, as it doesn't fit groove with the other objects in the scene. I may bring it back in on another project. So I've been inspired as of late to really push myself and create some new, better work for my demo reel. I'm planning for this project to be a still life of a tea party, based on these reference images. My key elements of focus for this project will be a tight composition and photorealistic shading. Here is my first crack at the teacup shader. It consists of a V-Ray Blend Material to separate the gold from the porcelain areas, using a simple map I created in Mari. For the porcelain, I focused on subtle surface details, which I brought through using the reflection and bump channels. I used the composite texture inside 3DS Max to layer images of scratches and bumps with high frequency Bercon noise textures, as pictured below. The teapot was created using the same basic material as the cup, but altered to work with the new flower pattern. Maps were again painted in Mari to separate the gold pieces with a Blend Material.
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I'll try to keep this updated with bits and pieces of what I'm working on! Archives
May 2015
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