VFX 420 Rock

Day 1:

I spent day one of my process I spent time getting accustomed to using subsurface scattering and transmission. Prior to this point, it had never occurred to me to turn off the base of the shader. Here I wanted to prioritize getting a better understanding of Maya shaders before I begin trying to tackle a realistic rock shader.

At this point in the day, I began experimenting with mixing Glass and Subsurface using a Fresnel texture. This capture was a rough mockup of what it would look like to mix the two shaders. This was super fun to explore and really expanded my concept of what could be done in Nuke in terms of texture work.

Day 2:

On my second day of working with this project, I used most of my time exploring camera tracking. I had camera tracked a number of times before this however I have never had as many complications as this round. I tracked the footage upwards of ten separate times and was still experiencing sliding. I took this opportunity to reach out to friends who worked more consistently with compositing. I learned that the 3D card in Nuke needs to not only match the ground plane that is tracked I also has to sit physically on top of the points in both Maya and Nuke for it to no longer slide.

This was game changing for me, and I was able to line up the footage with the CG a lot more effectively. I additionally attempted camera tracking with more specific parameters and more accurate camera elements.

Day 3:

Once I had my camera properly tracked, I was able to bring my tracked footage into Maya. Here, I played with the lighting of the bunny. To start the lighting process, I started out first with a standard cube. From here, I worked to match the cast shadow with the captured plate. Once this was done accurately, I added in the bunny and played with its placement to see what angles worked best with the lighting on my plate. At this point I called it a day as I wanted to focus on texture work after we had covered inclusions and caustics in class.

Day 4:

This day was a big day for me in terms of creating my rock shaders. I spent a lot of time playing with texture, transmission, color, and subsurface. Understanding what role each element played with the other was fun to explore. I started my base rock material with a basic purple marble in place of the transmission. From here, my top priority was capturing the effect of the cracking and layering within the rock. I started by layering transparent cubes to create variation in the color. I played with the transmission of each cube, creating ramps to play with how the thickness and color add additional change. Once I understood what worked and what didn't, I played with the shape and angle of each inclusion to get a more accurate look to that of my reference.