Reworking the environment

   With a few hours to go before the deadline there was a little discussion on the development of at least some kind of animation. This was set back however with a disagreement over the scene that had been produced. The discussion was resolved with a look into adding to an earlier environemnt model

  With two and a half hours before the deadline, creating new textures was a tall order. Instead focus was made on adding the constructed assets into the version 2 environment.

  When complete two render sets were made: The first set above are ambient occlusion passes while the set below are the objects with a default shader but illuminated with an ambient light.

 There was some discussion on how upward travel was being conveyed. In the scene presented in preview render passes with this matter was resolved with a dead end. Exploration was made using geography to imply the only way is up in an alternative direction to the use of a dead-end style barrier of rock to imply the fish could not go further.

Ravine: Environment Modelling and Mapping

   I looked into tightening up the model of the ravine. Some final tweaks merely to make things a little easier come the later stages. This included adding more crags (it was suggested that given the harshness of rock and the concept art we might be able to use an unsmoothed model), UV maps and some modification of the seabed.

  The ravine floor could be kept smoothed. The material could have been sand that was blown over the ledges by the ocean current and settled on the floor, depositing itself unevenly down below. This could also act as  rooting material for some of the plants, as sand is easier to push roots into than rock.

   The lattice deformer tool was used to give the ravine floor a rise on the ends, while an accompanying lattice deformer near the surface was used to give the sense that the split was more extreme in terms of elevation nearer the centre. This will also allow the connecting part of the floor to better sync with any ground plane extension we use

 Some of the geometry along the ledges was removed as it was giving some slightly odd shapes in the shader engine that did not feel natural. While also tweaking some of the vertex positions to smooth transitions between faces.

  Finally some workable UV maps were created. Because of the sheer scale of the model the UV maps had ot be cut up not just to fit them on the UV square but also to ease the rendering times as it will allow us to use smaller texture maps.

  Perhaps an alternative when it comes to rendering is to create two models. The seabed will be out of focus or distant so we may be able to get away with a small-ish texture map. But the ravine walls there could be two maps - high-resolution and low-resolution, each on their own separate model that we key to alternate depending on the camera distance. But this might involve more maps and more cutting up.

Ravine bed

 

left-hand wall

right-hand wall

Ledt-hand ravine floor

right-hand ravine floor

Narrative - Render and Lighting Testing 2

 Previous Lit Scene

 Changed the Spot Lights to a Lighter Blue

Added Volume Lights to Plant Life to Simulate a Glow

 

 

After adding a little more detail to the lighting testing I had worked with previously, I asked Simon what other techniques I could use to create a deep sea fell to our scene. He said it would mostly come from our work with light in the scene. He did also suggest some subtle particle effects in Aftereffects to move past the camera view. I feel that the bottom render image in this post is quite close to the basic lighting setup of our scene.

Narrative - Render and Lighting Testing



I have been trying to get a rough mockup of our ravine scene to appear underwater. So far I have tested different lighting techniques, including colour and fog effects. I intend to look into rendering techniques that could help me next as lighting certainly helps but will definitely not be enough on its own. The bottom image is what I have achieved using various lights.

 

Apologies as the images are quite dark as our scene is deep underwater, so a lot of the stronger lights will likely come from the plant life.

 

Basic Lighting setup.

Working with light fog. 

Final result with lighting.



Environment concept

Environment concept for the final shot where we see the ravine from the top and the vast deep blue open space, contrasting with the claustrophobic ravine.

Environment concept

After discussing things with our group I did an environment concept using the corals from the production art to help visualuse things better.

Small Sketches/Concept work

Below are some more sketches to start to think about our environment and how the fish will change over the course of the animation.

 

 Sketch of the 'underwater ravine' environment.

Sketches of the fish getting covered in its environment.

Experimenting With Colour and Saturation.

The new story framework features two fish; one living near the surface of the ocean and one living within a ravine in the ocean depths. The two of them are driven towards the "centre", the ocean floor. We considered the idea that both the bottom of the ravine and the waters that meet the surface are both "unknown" zones areas, they represent somewhere mysterious, possibly scary while the ocean floor is the point of knowing; it is familiar and inviting. 

One idea we had considered for style is that the deeper you go, the less saturated the world becomes. The depths of the ravine would be black and white while near the surface would be very bright colours. I made some very quick tests below for this to test how colour could be used within the project.

    Picture one uses a basic saturation gradient, with the point of knowing being the midpoint where everything is naturally toned. Nothing glaring but nothing too dull.

    Picture two uses a modified gradient. Here there is a banding of the saturation levels going on, with the mouth of the ravine being the threshold between colour and monotone. While the difference between the open ocean and seafloor saturation levels is also a little more tightened.

    Picture three uses the same banding as picture two, but there is also a brightness filter that sharpens the colour intensity of the ravine and the ocean surface with a more muted brightness around the seabed. The idea being that the brightness adds a certain "unreality" to the area they are in. The fish that live in these areas are also more familiar with their environments, so brightness could also suggest familiarity. The ravine may be dark, pitch-black even, but to the fish that lives down there it is familiar. To the fish there's nothing uncomfortable with simply being there and the environment could reflect that.

Narrative project revises environment concept

Since the story evolved so did the environment for the project. Here is a quick concept art:

Narrative project environment concept

Just trying to visualise the space underwater, main idea was to implement patterns without being too obvious. Let me know what you think