other passes

motion vector

depth pass

render pass 2

With a bit of changes and compromising I've managed to cut the render time by 50 minutes. Just hoping my motion vector pass will suffice for the changes.

AO pass

render time optimization

So I've organised a couple of render passes but the problem is that the colour render layer I've done takes a full 2 hours and 2 minutes for a single frame and the 5 second animation is due next week. Gonna have to look into cutting down a couple of things.

Vlog 7: render passes

Its my first time using render passes for mentalray and applying my knowledge about it, Allot of my research came from digital tutors and I'm having to go through multiple courses just so I can get my head around it. I feel I may have only scrapped the surface of linear workflow and render passes but this is the best I can do so far.

Style Frames

Style Frames
https://www.artstation.com/p/VJRk8
Some style frames for my short 5 second animation. I'm gonna have 2 seconds for each style frame.

-Maya
-Mental Ray
-Photoshop

vlog 6: rigged vehicle

A basic rig of my vehicle. Doesn't have a steering function but there will be no as it wont be doing any sharp turning.

Lighting solution

What was happening in this test render was that the directional light was shining through the bridge support pieces and so the shadows were very sharp. To stop this I added a large plane over the whole scene to cast a shadow over the whole scene. I'll next be adding in bridge lights.

With the plane over the top of the scene casting a shadow it gives me this render result. I may add in some custom interior lighting for the scene.

some more lighting

2 different lighting settings and I can't decided which one I want to use. I'll probably do something in post.

reference for lighting and rain particles

vlog 5: linear lighting so far

So this is what I've done with the linear lighting so far. Getting there but still needs some work.

Vlog 4: linear lighting inexperience

Being a noob with linear lighting workflow. First time using this method with Mental ray.

Day 18 Milestone! - Linear Lighting

It's actually my first time ever coming across the term linear lighting and putting it into practice. I'll definitely be using this method allot more in the future.

The lighting is good but its too noisy and I feel there are too many reflections. Here are a couple of my renders. Seeing I'm using linear lighting I'm having to screenshot my renders instead of exporting the images.

highway scene and sleeping late issue

So I built this highway/freeway wich was inspired by the 'tullamarine freeway' bridge.

Issue I'm facing is that I'm going to bed realy late working on this and its a habit I need to get rid of. It's not good for my health and workflow.

Skipped step

I think I should start building my highway before I get any deeper into particles or lighting or rendering. I feel I may have skipped a very important step and that was building the highway. I don't mind I've already set up the shaders but the lighting was all testing for display purposes.

ndynamics rain

So much fun with the particles. Its like I'm at the car wash.

Night time lighting

I want to render this car in a night time scene. This video breakdown has inspired me as to how I can approach a night time lighting.

I first saw this video when I was a kid in highschool and it was when I first saw this video that I said to myself "I want to make something like this!" I'm still not there yet XD.

But yeah I'll focus on having a more of a night time lighting effect in post process. Personally thankful for multi pass rendering :)

Lighting

Problem I'm facing with my render is that there is no shadow underneath the car.

Lighting

Just figuring out the lighting before placing it on a highway. I want to achieve night time lighting which I believe I'll achieve in post process. In real life the car material is not so reflective and has more of a matte effect.

Also I don't like how I have a greybase for the body. I want a darker base.

Teaser Render

Just working on some basic lighting. I'm going to do 3 point lighting for this.

Vlog 3: Mentalray render bug

Coming across an issue I had with the rendering. I personally blame the substance shader for doing this to me. Maybe I shouldn't use it in the future and just go Manuel.

Mazda Furai

Modelling cars is my forte so it didn't take me long to model this. I still wanted to challenge myself so I chose this vehicle for its unique shapes.
I spent 2 weeks modelling this vehicle. The bulk of the work was done in 1 week and then I let my foot off the gas in the second week. I'm pretty much up to the lighting and rendering stage. Some parts will be unwrapped for texturing but not all of it. I didn't model the whole vehicle I just made sure it looked very much like the mazda furai.

Mazda Furai

An Assignment I'm doing for uni which is more of a personal effort rather then a uni requirement.

Modulars

I see Modulars Useful for both a gaming and animation pipeline.

Substance shader

The substance shader is very powerful and highly recommended for texturing. Only thing is that it doesn't render with mental ray so I'll have to bake the map and apply the textures to a different shader. What makes it so fast is that there are presets already there. Each preset also has there own function for there own texture.

uv sets

Learnt something very handy today called UV sets. This will allow me to use more then 1 UV map or shell on the same tile in the UV texture editor. It'll also let me apply different textures. I'm gonna put this knowledge into practice once I've finished modelling my Mazda Furai.