Week 8 – Improving Maya Scene

This week, I faced some challenges when adding extra models that were not originally planned, but I managed to find suitable positions for them eventually. During a discussion with Dom about the Steampunk project, he highlighted that the two layers of light reflecting off the water were quite complex. To reduce the rendering time, he suggested using a transparent object instead of glass. However, the glass texture created by Jesse has unique decay elements that enhance the scene, especially when viewing the spaceship outside the window. At present, I have decided to keep the glass texture and only modify it if it significantly impacts the rendering time. Another option could be to place the swimming pool on a separate layer. However, when I tried setting up Render Layers, it did not significantly improve the rendering time. Therefore, to make the project easier for compositing, I will render everything in one layer. Later, I might separate it into different scenes instead of having all the master layers in one Maya Project.

We have decided to increase the size of the hologram area and raise it, with the possibility of adding a slight up-and-down motion. The current blue glow from the hologram is too strong and takes away from the overall scene. To fix this, I may adjust the lighting throughout the room. I could also add ventilation points on the walls to provide additional light sources. Additionally, the bounce light and gold hue may take some time to be visible after passing through the hologram, but I can adjust this by animating the Mesh Light to lower the exposure after walking through the asset.

I also made adjustments to ensure that the scene was not over-lit, separating the lighting and reviewing walkthrough scene every 10 frames. To improve render time, I began merging AOVs and caching simulations before rendering.

Another point of concern was that the walls appeared too clean, lacking texture or small bump maps, which I will add next week. I tested the final sketch layout with updated shaders to determine how they interact with the lighting. However, there are some issues with flickering AOVs that need to be addressed. Additionally, I plan to denoise the scene using the Denoise imager/plug-in.

Lighting session (Maya&Houdini) 

Maya:

1. How is the light going to bounce around the room?
2. Strong lights (in-studio) should be made out of mesh lights (rectangular mesh).
3. 3-point lighting: one strong light, one soft from the side and one medium from above.
4. I can make cameras for each light so we can see/control them in viewpoint all at the same time. 
5. DIRECTION, KEY, RIM, BOUNCE LIGHT.
6. To check the strength of the light, change its colour.
7. Natural lights always have a slight yellow tint to them.
8. Use spheres as lighting references (shine/chrome and matte/ai standard surface one).
9. To have dramatic lighting, don’t overlight the scene (low lights help with shadows, storytelling, etc).- I should lower exposure on the bounce lights in my scene and keep the three key mesh lights.
10. Start with a black scene, and find the main light.
11. Before placing assets, add two spheres, set up the lighting and test it on the spheres. I can copy and paste the spheres into the points of interest (inside the scene). 

Houdini:

1. Export Maya files as alembic to Houdini (light, objects, cameras).
2. Bring textures from other sources as EXRs to Houdini.
3. Houdini is a lot faster than Maya in everything.

Matte Painting Lecture

Digital matte painting divides into two groups:

1. Green screen recording with the layered background (from photos/pictures).
2. Layered background (various sources) composit together.

In both options you have to be good with Photoshop, as well as pay attention to the lack of parallax. To break apart in depth the image, create layers in Photoshop, and keep the file simple – without groups and too many layers (no adjustment layers). Bake adjustment layer and camera raw onto the layers). Nuke can read PSD files (click on Breakout Layers to see all the separate layers and add premult after shuffle nodes) but they can’t be too complicated. Use Defocus, LightWrap and EdgeBlur nodes after Shuffle/Premult.

Linking cameras (IMPORTANT: Helps to avoid parallax):

1. Extract the camera out of the foreground (f.ex.green screen recording).
2. Track the scene, roto out any key elements and extract the camera from the scene.
3. Build cards out of layers.
4. Include focal length in the projection of the camera (Matte Painting section).

Additional information: Lens-in-focal (card) – vert aperture (camera), Lens-in-harpeture (card) – horiz aperture minus vert aperture (camera). In cards move “Z” to create depth and match the original plate.