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Week 5 / We Need More Plants!

  • hankim28
  • Feb 3
  • 3 min read

Updated: Feb 11

Organized by newest to oldest

Team Members:

Hannah Kim - FX

Yiyi Long - FX

Deja Smith - Compositing

Emma Wei - LookDev & Texturing

Fanchen Xing - Lighting

Week 6 To-Do:

  • Creating 'Vine' procedural textures

  • Grass curvature and realistic collisions

  • Correct timing and positioning based on previous feedback

  • Refine, refine, and refine new Shot04

2/8:

Based on our team's collaborative decision, we have removed Shot05 to prioritize our schedule. From this, we also decided to adjust to full CG- so Shot04 has seen some dramatic changes. We want the plants to reveal the headset in Shot04 to intertwine the product and the environment.

REFERENCES:

The theme of our commercial is "Avatar". Futuristic plants, odd textures, and dynamic movement is key. Here are some of the references I took from the game 'Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora'. The fantastical look and glow of these plants are something my team wants to incorporate.


VINES:

  • Glowing center / gradient color base / subtle displacements

FERNS:

  • Realistic leaf diffuse / glowing edges with natural patterns / contrasting colors

FLOWERS:

  • Glowing veins / realistic petal diffuse / subtle emission masks


ETC INSPIRATION (Flower Garden):

  • Colorful flowers / glowing veins & petals / realistic yet fantasy textures / glow contrasts plant color base / smooth motion

Here is our most updated render for this week's presentation.

2/6:

Our team worked hard this week to secure a proper previz to share for our weekend critique. We had a lot of setbacks last weekend as our academic buildings were closed, so seeing our progression since is really uplifting. The team really inspires me with the shear amount of effort and beauty they bring to the project. I'm excited to keep pushing forward!

Today I made more plants to overgrow the scene. I want each shot to look like as if a forest is taking over the environment!


Completed:

  • Increased the 'Ivy' population & wind simulation

  • Improved the density of the 'grass' & set up basic object collisions

  • Solidified a strong silhouette for the 'WallVine' & its' movement

I also locked down on optimizing all of my USDs so they're easy to hand off to my team. It was suggested to separate larger files out based on the shot, so I made sure to organize accordingly.


I'm super happy with how far these have come, optimization wise. They're easy to import and don't freeze when scrubbing frames. I was worried about render times with the amount of growth sims coming from our FX team, but the more we've progressed over the weeks the more confident I feel with each render day (Saturday).

2/5:

It was decided today that I would be creating procedural shaders for all of the 'vines'. This decision was made to convenience our pipeline. The UVs on all of the 'vines' are very rough and because they're constantly changing they need something simple to attach too.


The displacement and roughness of these references are what I plan to incorporate into the 'vines' texture. The realism is great, but we need more futuristic textures to achieve our "Avatar" theme.

(Referencing jungle vine textures)

2/3:

Our group has a lot to accomplish this week in order to improve on our previous previz. Our video lacked a lot of core aspects and needed major adjustments going forward. We worked a lot together this week, and solidified our communication.


What was accomplished:

  • 'WallIvy' basic setup for Shot03

  • Grass spacing and changing different heights

  • Organizing better UV layouts and grouping for improved hand-offs


(Shot03 is considered our 'Hero' shot with our 'Sub-Hero' being Shot01. I'm really prioritizing the completion of these shots, so they're going to show up the most in my progression-videos.)

All of the 'vines' in Shot03 are leading the viewer and camera towards the next shot. I wanted to emphasize that importance by including sharper guidelines. The 'LargeVine' guides the viewer while the 'WallVines' add more focal interest.


'LargeVine' was gifted today with new branch variations! New branches climb up the chair to the right and are more 'choatic' looking then the previous 'smoother' versions.


My team wanted more grass, so I delivered a heaping 1 GB more for our project! I will be focusing more on the grass as the days progress, but for now this is the updated density we're looking to achieve.


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