FINAL PROJECT

Lotus leaf overhaul

I wasn't pleased with the look of the lotus leaves, so they have new geometry and new shading. The new versions look much more full and painterly, and I'm very please with how they look in the layout.


This is how they looked before,













and after.
















And in the current layout:

New layout

Took a step backwards to the layout stage.  I wasn't pleased with the minimal amount of parallax I was getting from the previous camera motion.  After all, the point of this project is to reveal depth through movement and parallax, so I scrapped that camera completely and reanimated.

In this test you'll see I've turned on the depth of field, which is working very nicely.

Not totally happy with the lotus leaves at the moment.  Too many harsh lines and noise in the textures.

Depth of field and Zdepth

Finally managed to get a Zdepth pass working with a script from this wonderful person who wrote a .mel script specifically for use with Maya and Renderman.  The script preserves the displacement (wow, so rare) but unfortunately not the alpha.  With some tweaking I managed to get a working zDepth map that has both, so now I can control the brightness values of my images.

Chinese paintings typically show background elements blurrier and more washed out.  With my Zdepth map I can manage the washed out effect, and by adding depth of field to my camera, I can acheive blur.

Zdepth pass with DOF

Color pass with DOF and Zdepth mask

 

Cam test for Cherry blossoms

First full render of the two blossom bunches.  I will need to change the camera so it lingers longer on the subjects while they are in frame.  I also want to get more parallax in the movement so I'll need to rotate the camera around the subjects more dramatically.

Cherry blossom population

First set of branches is done being flowered.

Camera Test 03

Here is the full camera motion.
Now I can really work on scene population.