Week 18 + 19 + 20: Rendering Tests, Applying Group Critique, and Environment Development

In the last weeks of winter quarter I made slow progress due to a personal situation, but I improved multiple different aspects of the environment and spent a good amount of time rendering the updated environment shots for the quarter’s final deadline.

One of the first things I did was update the texture map of the rocky areas of the height field to be this texture map I got from Poly Haven, this texture looks a lot more realistic than what I was trying to make using different 2D noises.

Rock Base Color

Rock Roughness Map

Shot 2D Most Recent Render from EOQ

Shot 2E Most Recent Render from EOQ

Shot 2F Most Recent Render from EOQ

New Grass Model

New Grass Model combined with Rock

I also updated the grass / wind interaction object from the old shrub to this new grass model to be around the rocks in the scene. I felt the old shrub model looked out of place like it was meant for a drier environment. So I changed it to this clump of grass.

Here is a flip book of the wind animation added to the grass clumps around the rocks.

Here is the new camera animation for the environment shot 2F, which now will seamlessly transition into shot 2G.

And finally here are the shot by shot critique notes I took for scene 1 and scene 2, the highlighted comments were from the team so I made them highest priority and the green just indicates that I fixed the issues. A lot of those important critique comments were mainly about small camera fixes.