SCAD X HARBOR PICTURES
Week 4:
As we approach the start of week 5, I am happy to day that me and my team have been super busy at work on our project trying to catch up from the snowstorm that really put a damper on our progress. We received a lot of feedback from the mentors about our project from Tuesday and have been hard at work. The first thing that contributed to all of us was the decision to go fully CG for our project. The mentors mentioned how awkward the first two shots were with how big it was composition wise. They suggested cropping them in to have more focus on the actual process of the watch making and not the person making it. They also mentioned that the shot with the man placing the gears seemed out of place and didn’t really add much to the story except slow it down. So as a group we decided to axe the man in the scene and rid the comp since, as the mentors also mentioned, object tracking would be more work than it was worth. We still have 6 shots, but here is an updated continuity quilt with some stills of our current renders.
From last week, we got a lot of pointers and advice about our shaders for our watch. My turntable was very overexposed and bright in the hot spots, which made it hard to tell what exactly was the problem. Furthermore, Billy (https://www.linkedin.com/in/dongyoonjang/) pointed out that my macbeth chart wasn’t working properly which makes it hard to tell what the actual problem is with the lighting or shaders. This was super helpful and helped me develop a better turntable for our watch. He also gave some good advice on where to find reference for furthering our metals. On top of what Billy said, Vi (https://www.linkedin.com/in/vi-nguyen-85713833/) gave a good idea in adding a third color/metal to our watch since the blue and platinum was too basic and didn’t add much depth. From this, I have been developing a gold/brushed gold shader that we plan on using for our gears, similar to the way the reference has it. After I furthered the shaders and rendered a new turntable, I added some animation to our gears using expressions in Maya. I then exported them as an FBX, separate to the shaders, so that it was easy to adjust in Houdini. Here is that animation as well as the gear reference
For my turntable, Professor Gaynor gave the thought that it was likely the high levels we have in our HDR. So she assisted me in redoing our HDR in Photoshop, this time using 32bits and the raw photos from the set, which allowed for this HDR to be made and used properly.
And here is the newly made turntable and adjusted HDR/lighting/shaders.
After I got the shaders looking decent, we wanted to do a test render/preliminary lighting for our shots. Since I am the 3D guy for our group. I spent my entire weekend, adjusting lighting and some initial shaders. I feel I got the best results on the water shots and final shot as I haven’t had the time to add texture to our environment or do much work on the pots/tongs as they aren’t the product of our project. But over the time I spent this weekend, I got some basic lights set up as well as our cameras that we plan on locking. For the renders I haven’t had much time to work on, I did little lighting and focus on the background. I also wasn’t able to render Shot01, my teammate Bomin Kim handled that one for this week, but here are shots 2-3. Ones I wish to keep developing as these are pretty rough at the moment.
Though I didn’t spend much time on those shots, I did get shots 4-6 looks somewhat decent. One thing I know off the bat from these renders is that the FX need more development and the water shader is one that will take a minute to get looking right. I like these shots as I think our watch shaders are getting very close to where we will have them for the remainder of our project. Here are shots 4-6.
There is still MUCH work to be done overall, but as for how far we are, I feel we are making great progress and strides, and I am excited to hear more from the mentors and develop our project further.
Week 3:
Over the past week my team and I have been busy at work getting progress on our shots and have made quite a bit of progress. A lot of what the mentors, from Harbor Pictures, said about our project had to do with our shot composition and framing. They mentioned they liked our color and mood board we landed on, with more blue and dark tone with bright highlights. Here is the mood board we shared with them.
Vi, a lead compositor at Harbor (https://www.linkedin.com/in/vi-nguyen-85713833/), had a few things, specifically about our last shot and how we plan on framing it. We initially planned on our actor placing a CG glass case on our watch stand and doing a CG combination with the Live Action plate. However after filming, we figured getting the proper information into Maya/Houdini for proper reflections and mesh sizing would be more work than it was worth. She also mentioned how the transition we initially had for our product wasn’t smooth and not very clear. Here is the updated last shot previs showing our final product placement and size. I really like the motion and think when we get lighting, hints of lasers and smoke, then it will look amazing!
Kyle, creative director at Harbor (https://www.linkedin.com/in/kylecody/), mainly talked about our actor placement and consistent composition. One thing he mentioned that we are definitely applying is not showing our actor. We want to obviously show that a human with hands is working on our product, but not creating a relationship or life into the character. More of focusing on the art and not the artist. Here is a representation of our updated composition and shot layout for our RoughCut.
Billy Jang, also a creative director at Harbor (https://www.linkedin.com/in/dongyoonjang/), had a few ideas and references for us to use for our shaders and textures for our watch. He emphasized the idea that many watch companies have specific designs and intricate details to separate each watch from one another. We applied some of the ideas he had on changing our design of our shaders making our watch have some more depth instead of being basic. Here is the most recent turntable as well as some stills I have done for our watch design. There is also a turntable for the current concrete texture which is going on our cup for pouring.
The mentors had a lot of good things to say and plenty of good improvements and work for us to get to. They are very good at articulating what they expect or want to see more of, which is always nice when working on a project like ours.
Other than what the mentors had to say and making those changes, there was a lot of work to be done for continuing our project. As far as look dev and lighting goes, beyond what we did with Billy’s advice, I worked a lot on refining the shaders, finding more and more references for what we want. I also got to work on the procedural animation for our final shot, as the gears will be turning as the camera zooms out, and found that the model we are currently using is not only difficult to work with, but not very detailed. With the help of my teammate Mojie Tang, we found a new model that has much more detail and better topology that we plan on using. That is the same model shown in the turntable above as well as below.
Beyond just the shaders and model, I have matched a CG RenderCam to our live action plates, shots 1-3. I did this using a cube to find the perspective as well as camera data that we gathered from our shoot on the GS stage. I sent these cameras to my teammates Bomin Kim and Yiqi Zheng, so they can match their shots with the live action plates. Here is one of the shot (shot 02) that shows not only the framing, but the perspective camera. Also attached in a quick slap comp that my team members, Sydney and Yiqi, did with it in Houdini.
There wasn’t much time to get work done this week, as the snow storm really hindered my ability to work, but we have made a lot of progress in a short amount of time for this week!
Week 2:
This week started with us pitching tot he mentors our plan of attack for our project. All in all, they seemed to like our idea of making it a mysterious/puzzling vibe for out scene. Their main concern seemed to be on the color and how we will use it in our video to enhance our scene. This was the vibe that Kyle sent us, using this color for the overall tone of our images. This is the mood board if you will of our current project.
The second thing they mentioned was getting a better vibe for our last shot of the beauty reveal in the vault. They felt that the lasers and secrecy of the shot made it make the watch “unattainable” which isn’t what we are going for. I think that is a perfect way to describe it in total. So we have decided for our group we will make the shot a push in of the watch, with a subtle hint of lasers/some sort of protection guarding this valuable item. We also want to make sure that the watch case that it is in is fancy to compliment the design/aesthetic we are trying to achieve. Here’s a collage of reference for what that shot might feel like.
We also talked through our opening FX shots and wanted to shift from the primitive way of melting our platinum/metallic objects and wanted to achieve a more sophisticated way of melting them. We landed on these references and think this is how we will proceed with the shots, abandoning yellow, hot versions we had prior.
After we got all of this settled we can now start our Look Dev Rig and Lighting our metallic properties. This is the current Work In Progress for the Lighting Reference. I am creating a quilt of Shaders, using simplistic shaders, and a more neutral lighting HDR.
Towards the end of week 2, me and the rest of my team had some new ideas for attacking our shot composition based on the mentors feedback. We took our refined ideas back to our Storyboard artist, Kailey Gorsuch (https://www.kaileygorsuch.com), who gave us this new storyboard which we then used for shooting.
On the saturday of week 2, me and the rest of team Conos had our first shoot set and ready to go. We had a stand-in actor, Tyler Gula (https://www.instagram.com/tylergulaa/), be our actor/hand model for our project. He really helped bring our character to life using his skills as a performing arts major. We shot on the GS stage as well as the dark room next to it. Since our project has quite a bit of background replacement/set extensions as well as close up hand shots, we didn’t need a specific set nor all shots on the GS stage. Here are a few pictures from the set as well as stills from current shots. Our opening shot of showing the fire is to be determined if it were to get approved by the mentors for our story.
As well as shooting our first plates, I spent the weekend refining our textures for our project. Here is a gallery of all the textures we plan on using. Including Platinum, Brushed Steel, and Blue-Plated Steel for our watch, as well as Marble, Concrete, Iron, Glass, Water, and Bubbles. We plan on using Maya with Arnold and Houdini with Karma for our rendering, so I did two passes of the textures in both Maya and Houdini. The lighting is simple as we shot in a studio, so a simple neutral HDR is beneficial for showing our textures in the right light.
Maya - Rendered in Arnold
Houdini - Rendered in Karma
As well as making the textures, I also rendered a turntable of our watch with the Platinum, Brushed Steel, and Blue-Plated Steel applied for a first pass look. Here is that Turntable
For the big three, Platinum, Brushed Steel, and Blue-Plated Steel, we really wanted to nail them, so we used a ton of reference for making our textures.
While I was working on the textures this weekend, my team was busy at work gathering more references and working on previs for the FX shots we plan on doing. Mojie Tang rendered a first pass of the bubble FX he is working on for one shot, Yiqi Zheng showed some previs of the molten metal shot, working on the viscosity of the sim. Bomin Kim is working on both the opening fire shot, should it get approved, as well as the laser previs for our final shot.
Week 1:
For the 2025 Winter Quarter at SCAD. The Animation/VFX Department is colaborating with Harbor Pictures. I had the great opportunity to join a team of my fellow students and embark on a journey of creative growth.
For this project, I was designated as the 3D/2D lead. I was joined by 3 FX artists, Bomin Kim, Mojie Tang, and Yiqi Zheng. We also were joined by Sydney Relkin, who was our designated compositor.
This first week, we met our groups and jumped into our project ideation. We were given the prompt of some sort of LUXE Item. We brainstormed between Designer Brands, Bags/Purses, and Jewelry. We ended up landing on Jewelry, with a heavy interest in luxury watches.
We started our ideation project through zoom calls and a shared document. The vibe we wanted to go for was Squid Game, mysterious, robbery, etc. The logline we came up with was as follows:
Created from primitive materials to the esteemed staple seen today, this watch is kept hidden for only the finest
We initially had the idea of doing a full scene with a story arc attached. Robber breaking into a high class jewelry manufacturer, turning off/dodging lasers to reach the LUXE watch encased in a secure glass case. However, we pivoted our idea to a combination, of the high class LUXE vault with an assortment of CG advertisement shots. This was the Storyboard we cam up with more or less for what we are picturing. I drew the initial ideas, but Kailey Gorsuch (https://www.kaileygorsuch.com) did the actual drawings.
These storyboards helped us level out our design and overall tone we wanted to establish. From this we created this Mood Board as well as Technical Plan. We know we will need Houdini for this project, but a combination of Maya lighting and Nuke relighting was something we wanted to explore.
For this project we have gathered a plethora of reference that we plan on using. The amount of research and development we did will really help us in the long run for this project. Here’s a collage of some of our best we have gathered for an idea of where we are taking this project.
Overall I am really excited for this project and can’t wait to get started :)