This is a project that I did for my photorealistic rendering class and it will be expanded into my thesis. This scene I want to convey a shift in mood by going from high key to low key lighting in the same shot. At first I want the scene to pan across the surface of the swamp looking down on lily pads. Then I want the camera to turn up towards the horizon to see a mini sub crashed in the swamp. I hope top make the submarine feel cold, akward, and out of place. This breakdown will desciribe the first part of the project, the lily pads.

REFERENCE The first step is to find reference. My inspiration comes from the swamps I grew up around when I was very young. I went out to various marshes and swamps and took picture for reference.

I went out to go photograph a few lily pads for texture reference. I was unfortunately raining that day so I had to actually take one back to the studio so I could take close up picture and scan. I never realized how easily lily pads died when removed from the water. In the short 15 minute drive the lily pad already started to wither. Quickly I put it into water in atempts to save it. Eventually I had to take it out and start scanning.

After experiencing some atmoshpere of the swamp I thought some previsualization for the project was in order. I included it on the left

Lighting I did a lot of lighting early on in the scene. I mostly lit while looking at the sub, since this will eventually be the most important part of the scene. I wanted the shadow to reach arcoss the sub a little bit and possibly have crepuscular light rays shining down.

 

TEXTURING

Texturing was a huge part of the project. After scanning and photos I made color, bump, specular, reflecton, and translucenc layers.

Color and Bump

Reflection and Specular

Transparency and Translucency

BASIC SET I replaced the old set with my brand new lily pads which were remodeled. I even added drops of water using squashed nurbs spheres There are two layers for the water. There is an upper transparent reflective layer and a bit down is a solid non- flective layer. An image was added to a sphere for reflections ontop of the water as well.

	Details Okay a little details are added. Making water flow onto the lily pads and adding the stems to the leaves. I added a few more lily pads for sake of the composition. I also added leaves over lapping and sticking up for added depth
	Murk Pass For the Murkiness of the water I wanted to create a layer that would determine how far under the water it was... Also as the object were farther from the camera they would be more blurry because it would have to go through more water before hitting the viewers eye. A Z depth pass would work just fine for this.

However I need to separate what was above and below the water. For this I used a surface shader with a ramp projection. This way I was able to seperate what was above and below the water. Then I could take the inside of the water and the Z depth in an Alpha. I also used this for color correction.

The Z depth was used for its original purpose but also as a way to give the lilies a little bit of light bloom.

 

 

 

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