Week Three
- gracieszymanski04
- May 23
- 4 min read
Updated: May 25
Posts arranged newest to oldest.
Most recent progress:
To Do:
Finish compositing all the layers together, including added refection passes
If time, add a swirl glowing pattern onto the cat body
5/23/25
Today, I did a lot of work in refining the environment of my cat and also did a lot of work in rendering out all the different layers I need.
First, I went into my ripple solver and refined the ripples to my liking and made them interact with the cats paws as well. Next, I went in and added some floating sparkles and stars to the background of the scene. I used simple pop nets for these with some wind and pop speed limit nodes to make them move very slowly. After that, I added some magical moons into the water of the environment. Here is a flipbook of the new particle systems I added to the environment:
I also went into photoshop and increased the saturation of my HDRI so that it would be more vibrant in the reflections of the water. Here is how all of this turned out rendered together:
As mentioned before, I also spent some time rendering different render layers out today that I will be using as masks in my composite. Here are my current layers I have used in my composite:
And this is my most recent composite of everything together:
I still have some kinks to work out and I would also like to add another layer of detail to the cat's body if I have the time before the deadline, but I think I am currently on track.
5/22/25
As mentioned before, for this project, I knew I wanted to render in layers so that I could have more compositing control over them. I started that rendering layer process today and rendered out my particles as well as certain masks that I could use for compositing including a fresnel pass and a ambient occlusion pass.
With the passes I started to render, I also started briefly compositing my layers together.
Here is my most recent composite from nuke with a still background for testing:
Today I also did a lot of brainstorming and tests that did not lead me much of anywhere. I am trying to figure out the best way to elevate my project from the original tutorial I used. I did a lot of this through adding to the environment and not just creating a creature but also a whole peaceful scene. I wanted to think of other ways to change up the actual cat sim. I thought about adding moving spirals that go up the legs of the cat. I also tested using the tutorial I showed in a previous post to add more wispy particles off of the cat. I then experimented with adding a glowing pattern to the body of the cat. I'm having a hard time making a decision and so I am going to finish every other part of the cat and environment and sleep on this issue before I make any further decisions for the cat.
5/21/25
I started work today with wanting to figure out a more interesting way for the cat to fade in and out of the shot. For fading in, I decided to use a boolean to have the cat appear from the bottom up. Here's a beginning pass of this test:
For the cat's exit, instead of doing another boolean I wanted to have it blow away in the wind. I thought this would add to the mystical effect of the cat and the idea that if you looked away for a second, it would just blow away in the wind. To do this, I added a pop wind into my popnet and had it only affect the particles after a certain frame. I also manipulated my other nodes that were affecting my particles to stop working after a certain frame so that the wind could take the particles away on their own. Here is an initial test of the wind:
I did some more work on both these effects, fine tuning the boolean's time and adding another shape to have the tail fade in to feel more natural. I also did a lot of work on the timing of the wind fade out. I didn't want the wind to look too chunky or like the entire cat was just floating off so this took a lot of tweaking with the frames and other effects inside my popnet. Here is a final result of the new fade in and out of the cat:
Adding both the fade in and fade out added more second to my simulation which I am happy about and overall just added more interest to the shot.
5/20/25
Today I continued working on the environment where the cat would be in. Going off of the pond idea, I found these lily pad and flower models from CG trader that I decided to add to the scene.
I added these on top of my grid that has the ripple solver on it. I then did some lookdev work by texturing all of the lily pads and flowers and I began searching for HDRIs. I knew I wanted the scene to be at night but I also wanted color to I searched specifically for shots with colorful night skies. I then also added emission to the flowers to add to the enchanted feel of the environment. Right now, it appears as if the cat is magically walking on water. I think I want to add another plan underneath my grid to make it rather seem like it is a shallow pond that the cat is actually able to stand it even if it weren't magical.
Here is my current environment look:
I don't think I will be adding any atmospheric fog to the background like I previously thought I would. I don't think it is necessary and I don't think it fits this aesthetic as well.
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