Progress Report Week 14

This week was a change of pace for me as a modeler. The layout team is hard at work and we have a flat shot that is not working in 3D quite the same way as we planned for with our animatic. What we want to achieve is getting two side doors in to the camera frame without have a super bunch of ceiling and floor space. It was easy to rotate the walls out to be more visible to the camera, but it ended up becoming very much like a panorama, where the environment had a lot going on horizontally but not vertically. I tried forcing the modeling and did get it to work for the camera, but it would affect animation, texturing, and lighting so much that we decided to not pursue it further. Our solution will be using sound and lighting cues so that the audience understands where the characters are coming from off screen. 

This week I also helped with visual development of our chess world. We worked as a team and what we were taking a lot of inspiration from was the color keys made last quarter. What I was testing out mostly was the way that we would light scenes in this render style. As of right now, I don't think this render style is capable of rendering atmosphere or fog. Although we can render that out separately and composite it in in post, I am worried that making rays of light will be more challenging to overlay and match up. Although it is possible, I wanted to explore a solution that would make the job easier. This rendering style we are refining is super cool because the ray of light is actually geometry with emission and a ramp to make it less solid. It still needs a lot of refinement because right now the ray of light is a lot harsher and solid than we would want for the film, but with tweaks and refinement we know it can be done with this method.