Week Four

Daily logs arranged newest to oldest.

10/6/2024

Today I continued some brief work on the shaders and rendered out some turntables to be used in our presentation.

We also have an updated comped sequence:

In addition, my group ran into a pipeline issue when transferring shader files however and need to resolve the issue this week. When I pass my shaders over to Min, the objects swim through the textures and displacement. This issue is not happening on my file, as seen in the turntable above.

We tried placing a rest node before the Null node to fix the issue but it did not work. I am having trouble interpreting Min's file to get to the bottom of the situation as I am not used to the set up of an FX file. Hopefully the issue can be resolved quickly.

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10/5/2024

Today, I worked a lot on the lighting for the fridge hero shot. As the mentors suggested, I am working on having a more theatrical lighting set up rather than a practical one for the freezer. I started looking for references online for more dramatic food lighting.

I found this great resource as a guide for lighting food: https://gvmled.com/5-lighting-tips-for-food-photography/

I also found some photo references to go off of for this lightings

So far, I have been playing around with a couple different ways to do the lighting in the freezer. I am struggling with all the transparent and reflective materials in this scene. The FX team is going to be adding frost to the inside of this freezer so that it does not look so empty but for now, I am working with a rather bland shot.

I played around a bit with adding lights to make the jar look as if it were glowing as seen below. I don't think this is what I want to go with as it is very cartoonish but I like getting an idea of how dramatic I want to be with this lighting.

I've settled on this for now and am waiting for more feedback before I continue. I added a bit of color to my key light and fill light. I've also created a backlight that only affects the pint and lid model. I like the silhouette that the backlight is creating but I think it could be better to make it seem more 3D. I am also playing with the material of the freezer as its tone has a big impact on the overall scene. When the material is pure white, the whole scene looks very overexposed so I've toned down the color to be a lighter gray.

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10/4/2024

I worked on the shaders for a long time today. My biggest issue was with the cookie shader. As previously stated, I wanted to rework it to include chocolate chips that could be randomized. After playing with layering the Maxon noises for hours, I've decided to put that to the side for now and come back to it later if I have time. My issue was with the fact that I lacked complete control of how the Maxon noises appeared on the cookie. I would always have one or two chocolate chips that looked completely wrong.

After deciding against doing the chocolate chips for now, I moved on to focusing on the bump map of the cookie. I really wanted to focus on the cracks in the cookie and the displacement since those two attributes can still be used to create variation in the cookies.

Here is where I am currently at with the cookies. I am not pleased with them and want to keep working but this was after hours of tweaking and getting no where. I am going to ask my group members to help out to see if they could come up with a better displacement map.

I also worked on the chocolate shader. I leaned more into the dark chocolate color, as advised. I also adjusted the roughness a bit to give it that chocolate truffle look, rather than a liquid truffle look.

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10/3/2024

Based on feedback, we have decided on a new shot sequence. Shot 4 will be completely cut now so no pan to the fridge. Now, the ingredients will fly away from the actress's head, then she will get up with them. Afterwards, the ingredients will fly into the fridge as she opens it in Shot 6. The fridge hero shot will be cut into the middle of Shot 6. The rest of the shots follow in the same order.

Today, I got some important professor feedback on the shaders I have been working on.

• Chocolate: alter the color to be either dark chocolate or milk chocolate. Right now it is some where in between and not translating well.

• Plastic: needs to be completely clear, decrease roughness

• Cookie: for the cookie, we played around with subsurface in order to get a more organic look. We also played around with upping the specular but changing the specular color to be a brown.

Furthermore, the cookie shader is going to be reworked in order to create variation in the cookies that swirl around the character's head. I am going to use a squashed cylinder and create a bump map from that. I am then going to add chocolate chips. Once one full cookie is working, I am going to create variation in the chocolate chips in order to create more interesting and realistic cookies.

In addition, we've officially decided to alter the logo in the ad in order for our project to be eligible for certain contests and things. I designed a new logo in photoshop that will be in the CG pint texture and will be comped on top of the live action shots.

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10/1/2024

Today we had a brief Q & A section with the mentors and received feedback based on what the groups could put together after the hurricane. Here is a list of some of the mentor feedback that the group will be addressing this week:

• Emily mentioned changing the CG lighting in the fridge shot to be less practical and more theatrical. It will be more dramatic rather than stagnant.

• Fix the perspective of the CG background in the first few shots.

• Play around with starting the fridge shot as a cyc blank background and coming into focus of the fridge.

• Need clarity on the laptop screen.

• Pay attention to finding the right in and out points of the shots to make the sequence flow better.

• A thought for the sequencing: cut the fridge pan shot, have her get up with the ingredients, then open the fridge, the ingredients fly in, then the hero shot.

• The hero shot could be longer and end with a still of the final product.