HOWEVER, that time is over! Since I have some time over the summer for things like this I figure I might as well post some works in progress...
I managed to finish my projects in time for University, but I've been going over some of them over the last few days to try and spice them up a bit.
In particular, I've been concentrating on snazzying up my 3D character assignment for potential use on my showreel. It's been a great exercise in lighting, so I'll share some examples with you...
This was my original handin, and as you can probably see, it's a bit on the bland side of things. The lighting on the whole is too dark (and it doesn't help that blogspot makes it tonnes darker), yet at the time this was what I settled for since we were being marked solely on character animation. The environment is empty, with the original idea being that it would be a toolbox filled with hammers and nails and all kinds of stuff to make it feel atmospheric. Again, this got shoved aside due to time resctrictions. Even the character animation is, at times, pretty shoddy, even though it gets the message across.
So I've been trying to make it feel like it is in a dark place, yet still be able to register what's going on. Inn this particular post I will be concentrating mainly on the lighting, since it has been fascinating me as of late. I've been using this as a chance to explore final gather and ambient occlusion a bit more, and compositing them afterward. Now, I've kind of unconsciously been avoiding compositing over the years, porbably because I like everything to look just right when I hit the render button and leave it at that. Or maybe it's all those extra images that need to get rendered out... But I've been testing in Photoshop and here's the difference
This is the render as it is normally. I'd be quite pleased with this as a final render, but there's the sense that the character just isn't sitting right into the environment it's in.
This is the occlusion pass on its own, and I've made sure to tune it down for the actual character so that it stands out.
With the occlusion pass layered on top, you can see that it adds darkened areas to the points where objects meet, meaning that the character really looks like he's sitting in that corner now, and it also brings a nice strong shadow where the spanner is.I also decreased the saturation so that the colours are a tad less vibrant. Another reason why compositing, alas, will always be an efficient way of making alterations...
In the next image, too, I've tried to make the character into a silhouette to make him stand out against the background, which is far more effective than in the original.
That's it for now, I'll make sure to post more images when I have them, and share a few pointers on the way...
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