Week Six
- Feb 11
- 6 min read
Updated: Feb 19
Blog posts arranged newest to oldest.
To-do:
Refine flower vellum simulation
Refine flower and stamen simulations
Get the stamen to stop jittering and have no overlap - possibly reworking stamen
Work with Noelle on an animated "wetness" map for the petals
Refine shot 3 camera and ring animation
Refine frost simulation and frost drops
Mentor Feedback:
Color palette is not working, what changed this week? Perhaps the yellow background
Lighting on shot 1, maybe doesn’t need to be so frontally lit
Linger too long at the end of shot 1, shot too long
Shot 3 feels like its catapulted, make the fx more gentle
The way the ring drops in the water needs to be more graceful
Everything is feeling too monochromatic in shot 2, maybe more vignette, maybe more light rays
Good job adding motion graphics
Lighting on shot 3 lighting is too bright
lower feels very stiff, need extra sim, needs to be more graceful - Layer sims on flower, all of the flower move
Do we still need the camera turning in shot 3? Maybe cut some time at the beginning of shot 3
The straight lines in shot 3 are not impactful
Shot 4 felt more graceful before
Match cut location is good, but bc the color palette is so different it doesn't feel like its linking
Submitted video:
2/15/26
After creating the color palette earlier this week, and helping as a bit of a "color consult" for the group this week, this is the before and after of the shot quilts from last week to this week:
We also had an update from our motion media designer this week. After the groups gave her direction, she came up with two different options for the text on the screen of the shots:
Personally, I like the text a lot better than the numbers and the group also agrees. We will be moving forward with this design from here on out.
2/14/26
One of the things I wanted to add this week in order to further layer up my simulations was the drops of frost that would fall off of the flower as the ring hits. To do this, I used a very simple grain simulation and applied it to the outer petal group of the flower.
I then continued to develop the frost and added the edge and base frost simulations to the leaves of the flower. This way the entire shot feels more together and not like two separate pieces.
I also went ahead and re-simulated the stamen to match the new motion of the ring and position of the petals. In doing so, I am now starting to think about changing the way these stamen look and their role in the flower. I believe the ring animation has been so hard because the ring would realistically get stuck in stamen like this, but that does not fit the graceful vibe of the shot.
I started looking at the other stamen types found in peonies. References from Pinterest.com:
I plan to take this approach for the stamen next week when working on these simulations.
As I rendered today, I noticed how much progress has been made with this shot this week. Here is the week five versus week six shot 3:
2/13/26
The group enjoyed the brief animation I worked on yesterday, so today, I took the time to smooth it out a bit. I also changed the camera a bit to completely match the camera rotation from the shot before. To do this, I copied over the camera from shot 1 and continued the rotation at the same pace.
I continued to work on the flower shape today, pushing the noise of of the petals both before and after the simulation. I also made the petals much thinner as requested from lookdev.
I then moved on today to updating and applying the base frost simulations that I worked on last week. I am including variation in the timing of the melt based on groups of petals. From last week, I also added variation in the noise of the frost and in the points that cause the frost to melt.
I also went ahead and updated the edge frost. I made the branches of the frost much smaller this week and gave them more points to start from for a denser look. Like the base frost, the edge frost melts based on groups of petals for variation.
2/12/26
I talked the animation over with my group today and we decided that the ring needed to flow more gently out of the flower, following more of what the mentor's said. This is the new iteration of the animation that I will be asking for group feedback on before smoothing further.
I then started working on refining the animation of the stem and the leaves of the flower to add movement to them. I attempted to do this through simulating the leaves, but upon putting the model I found online into a vellum simulation, the geometry completely blew out. This may be an issue on my part I will be looking into further, but for this week, I went with animating the leaves.
To achieve these animations, I keyframes multiple bend nodes on the stem and on the leaves. The flower head is attached to the stem through a copy to points so any movement that occurs to the stem will happen to the flower. Here is the un-simulated flower with the new animated leaves and stem movement.
2/11/26
Last week, Max, one of my fellow FX Artists, took the time to help me with the ring animation. After receiving mentor feedback, I took Max's animation and my old animation from two weeks ago and combined them to achieve this new animation.
After speaking to our lookdev artist, she was concerned about the number of petals in the flower and wanted more to work with for lighting the flower. I took some time to add more petals and play around with the shape of the flower. Here is the before:
Here is the after:
Lastly, in passing over files today, I also troubleshooted a USD for some time. My frost USDs from last week were taking close to an hour to complete while the cache files were taking two minutes. With the help of my team, I figured out that the problem is that when geometry is packed, USDs have to unpack the geometry every single frame. Therefore, the solution to this problem was unpacking my geometry in my copy to points and poly reducing the geometry so it was no as heavy without the pack nodes. This then caused my USD to only take one minute!
2/10/26
Today the team met with the mentors over zoom and received feedback. Here are what the mentors had to say:
Kyle
Color palette is not working, what changed this week? Perhaps the yellow background?
Lighting on shot 1, maybe doesn’t need to be so frontally lit
Linger too long at the end of shot 1
Fix color space on shot 3
Shot 3 feels like its catapulted, make the fx more gentle
The way the ring drops in the water needs to be more graceful
Everything is feeling too monochromatic in shot 2, maybe more vignette, maybe more light rays
Shot 4 looked better previously in terms of color
I don't like yellow background
Good job adding motion graphics
Beck
Shot 1 is too longer
Lighting on shot 3 lighting is too bright
Flower feels very stiff, need extra sim, needs to be more graceful
Layer sims on flower, all of the flower moves
Right now they feel like cardboard
Hailey
Do we still need the camera turning in shot 3? Maybe cut some time at the beginning of shot 3
Kyle
I like the turn in shot 3
The straight lines in shot 3 are not impactful
Hailey
Shot 4 felt more graceful before
Yellow is not working
What color works with the blues?
Beck
Match cut location is good, but bc the color palette is so different it doesnt feel like its linking
My personal priorities for the week:
Add the combines frost to the flower to hand off the shot for lookdev
Adjust ring animation, pivoting back to the look from the week prior
Layer up simulations for the flower
giving more life to the flower
simulating the leaves
simulating frost fall when the ring hits
After critique, the group's main priority was discussing out color palette and taking a step back as a group as we all were experiencing shot blindness. Since I had a vision for the project and the group agreed I had an eye for this, I created out new color palette for the project that we will ensure to stick to from here on out.
My intention with each color choice was to connect the colors from shot to shot. For instance, the teal in the flower shot leans towards a greenish teal but then transitions into the water shot that has a more bluish teal.
I also made general mood boards for each individual shot. All images are from Pinterest.com.
