This week, I focused on texturing the props and room, refining the lighting setup, and beginning the rendering process for my project.
Texturing with UDIM Workflow
Texturing the room and props was a major task, and I used the UDIM workflow to ensure high-quality textures and renders. In simple terms, UDIM allows you to split a model’s UV map into multiple tiles instead of cramming everything into a single UV space. This method provides more resolution and detail for texturing larger or more complex models.
Here’s how I approached it:
- UV Mapping: I unwrapped the models, ensuring clean and efficient UV layouts.
- Tiling for UDIM: I divided the UVs across multiple tiles, each acting as its own texture map.
- Texturing in Substance Painter: I imported the models into Substance Painter, baked the textures, and began texturing.
I love texturing, and for this project, I aimed for a sci-fi aesthetic. That meant focusing on metallic surfaces with reflective properties, scratches, and dark grey tones. Once the texturing was done, I exported the maps and set up the shaders in Maya using Redshift materials.
Shader Setup in Maya
In Hypershade, I used Redshift materials to create realistic surfaces. The textures I exported from Substance Painter (like albedo, roughness, metallic, and normal maps) were plugged into the appropriate slots. This gave the materials their reflective, worn sci-fi look while maintaining efficiency for rendering.
Lighting the Scene
Lighting the scene required a lot of attention to detail. I’ve been adding basic lights throughout the process, but this week, I took a deeper dive into creating a cohesive and atmospheric lighting setup.
- Character and Object Focus: I used lights strategically to draw attention to key parts of the scene, like the robot and props.
- Dynamic Lighting for the Device:
- When the time-travel machine glitches, I added red lighting effects to reflect the malfunction. I ensured this dynamic lighting matched the scene by adding animated red highlights on the character and surrounding objects.
- For the machine’s functioning moments, I used blue lighting to indicate stability and progress, carefully matching these colours across the scene.
- Atmospheric Volume: To create a hazy and immersive atmosphere, I added volumetric lighting. This added depth and mood to the environment.
I also worked hard to match the lighting to the tone of my Unreal Engine establishing shot. It was tricky to balance everything, but I’m happy with the result.
Rendering with AOVs
I started rendering the scene and included AOVs (Arbitrary Output Variables) in the renders. AOVs are essentially render passes that give control over individual elements like lighting, reflections, and shadows. I’ll use these in Nuke for post-production to fine-tune the look and make adjustments.
This week was all about tying everything together textures, shaders, and lighting to get closer to a polished final result.