Friday 21 September 2012

Render Testing

With less than two weeks until I pitch my grad film, I've taken some time to work on a small render test which demonstrates the render style I'm aiming for. I'm gunning for something a little bit different from the typical "3D" style - I want to create a 3D film that simulates the flat cel-shaded look of 2D animation. So many beautiful films have achieved this, and I can't resist having a stab at it myself. 2D has wonderful appeal and allows for stylisation, whilst 3D maintains solid form and structure and permits the use of technical enhancements that 2D can't take full advantage of. Combining the two provides the advantages of both and offers solutions to their disadvantages. So, after lots of rigorous tutorial-watching and hours spent playing with settings and waiting for renders, here's what I've achieved so far. (wingless, for now :))



I rendered this in two passes - one of the Surface Shader, one of the shadows - and composited them in Photoshop. It's far from a final result, but I've learnt a lot from doing it. Hopefully, with a little more learning and experimenting, I can get something I'm really happy with. :D

Finally, here's the character sheets I did before modelling!





10 comments:

  1. This is a very impressive little griffin! A little too good for pre-pitch work maybe. Now just make sure you have a nice font for your Powerpoint.

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  2. God dang, Kat! Looking awesome!

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  3. Awesome work Kat! I'm gonna have to sneak into pitch week!

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  4. Kat this looks fantastic! Best of luck with the pitch. Ill be rooting for ya :D

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  5. Thanks all! Toby I'm using Comic Sans, want it to be funky y'know.

    James totally sneak in! Would be cool to see you there. S'gonna be some good ones this year. :3

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  6. I like this little guy/ griffette.

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  7. Really awesome technique... any recommendations as far as tutorials, I would love to know!! Awesome work here.

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  8. Hey thanks so much Mary! Most of the tutorials I was watching were on Digital Tutors. I'm new to rendering so started with Intro to Rendering and Intro to Lighting, then watched a couple on mentalRay in Maya. From there I kinda pieced it all together and figured out how to get the style I wanted through trial and error. Hope that helps a bit. :)

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