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Week 6 / Revisions & Texture

  • hankim28
  • Feb 11
  • 3 min read

Updated: Feb 17

Organized by newest to oldest

Team Members:

Hannah Kim - FX

Yiyi Long - FX

Deja Smith - Compositing

Emma Wei - LookDev & Texturing

Fanchen Xing - Lighting

Week 7 To-Do:

  • Fix grouping exports for Fern USD

  • Grass textures and layout

  • Fix Vine textures and model (noticeable artifacts)

Mentor Feedback for Week 6:

  • Revised Shot04 & Shot02 'Vines' are too linear

    • Offset growth timing

  • Shot04

    • No 'Vine' receding, lean into growth

    • Display the product on a metaphorical pedestal

    • More dynamic camera movement

    • "Less is more"

  • Shot02 'Ferns' should unfold before the 'Vines'

  • Increased grass density & variation

2/16

This weekend was spent rendering- and rerendering. The group wasn’t satisfied with our first pass renders on Saturday, so we spent Sunday and today improving our deliverables. Huge shoutout to our compositor Deja for working on this week’s tight deadline:

2/14

Today is group render day! The group spent the day setting up a new 'set project' folder so we can upload future improvements quickly. This delayed our actual rendering a lot, but it will make future Team Tempest happy.


As we started rendering I ran into USD issues that I'm still working out. All of my primitive groups were disappearing when importing my USD back into the scene.

(Obj level USD export / Stage level USD import)


I've tried including subset groups and they do bring the group naming back before exporting, but they still don't register as primitives. This is making it difficult to assign materials to the ferns. I plan to resolve this this week.

(Obj level USD export 'Import Data' setings)
(Obj level USD export 'Import Data' setings)

2/13

The geometry on the Ivy were becoming a problem. The geometry was duplicating inside itself, giving us a 'flickering' look to the leaf. I think this an issue from the 'Simple Tree Tools'. I collaborated with my Lookdev teammate Emma to come up with a better solution:

  • Larger surface: allows Texturing to use opacity maps to create the shape

  • Flatten UV

  • Lessened geometry count

(New IvyLeaf UV vs Old IvyLeaf UV)

Our group changed the thickness of both tables today. I adjusted the positions of the Ivy and Vines in new USDs to accommodate the updates.

2/12

Shot04

  • Suggested a more 'dynamic' camera movement

  • Continuation of growth from Shot03 / Remove the receding vines from the headset

  • "Less is more!"











Shot03's vines will continue to grow into Shot04 as the camera rotates. The rest of the flora will remain the same. I increased the density of the grass, created more height variations, and made them thicker geometry. I'd like to collaborate with my FX teammate to setup a cluster of flowers in the background as well!


Shot02

  • Bottom of table is shown too much

  • Dynamic camera movements

  • Ferns should unfurl first, then vines

  • Offset timing of the vine growth











I rearranged the order of the ferns and vines, so the ferns take up more time in Shot02. The vines are re-positioned to the left for the sake of composition. I added an extra beat to the end of the growth as the transition felt too short in between Shot02 & 03 with this new timing.

Optimization:

Unsure why, but the ferns are the largest FX in the scene! I'm only showing what I need in each shot because of their scale, so I've been trying to remove branches, simplify geometry, and prioritize easier exporting solutions.

(Shot02 Framing / Shot02 Real Layout / Shot02 Ferns Procedural Layout)

2/11

Today I focused on creating/assembling the vine textures for my FX. Although I'm not on the LookDev team, it was the most convenient solution for my group as the vine UVs are disgusting!


The animated geometry of all of the vines have caused us major UVing conflicts. UVunwrapping or new layouts don't do anything valuable enough to progress forward. Stacking the individual branches helps slightly, but they still jump around when scrubbing through frames.



There's always a solution to everything, and I think if we had the time to figure these UVs out it'd work! However, our group is on a tight schedule and we decided to transition into triplanar projection and simple, tile-able maps.


Results:

(Vine Texture without Environment Materials or Lighting)

I'm using Gemini's Nano Banana to help me set up my base color and emission maps. Using a pre-made material from PolyHaven (https://polyhaven.com/a/japanese_hackberry_bark), I generated several versions of the base color. I then would ask to include just the emission shapes so I can go into Photoshop and adjust them for our emission map.


Here are some of the prompt examples (Gemini surprisingly nailed it with my broad descriptions):


These are the final base color and emission maps the vines will be using! I made sure to get the approval of my LookDev team before I tossed it into our master files.

(Base Color & Emission Maps)


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