Week 8
- Feb 24
- 3 min read
Updated: Mar 4
Priorities:
Lighting
Shift angle so lighting is not as flat on grass
Lighting on vines is too harsh. Shift in light may help.
FX
Subdivide vines
Add baby ferns closer to the camera in shot 3
Texture
Vine texture should feel more emissive and not plastic or metallic.
Specular is too high right now
Compositing
Darken carpet - could be done in lighting or texture too
More glow from flowers
More mysterious
Add subtle smoke/fog
Darken background objects
Bring back the contrast - less ambient lighting (shot 4 especially)
Add a vignette
Shot 1 is too static in the beginning - push in
Address noise and render issues
Ending title
Sound FX
Credits
March 2nd, 2026
My biggest struggle this week is getting my 2D fog assets into the 3D space. I imported each shots camera into Nuke and put all of the fog assets on cards. Sometimes the positioning worked, but I struggled a bit to get the fog on the table in shots 2 and 4. I think it looks okay now, but it is something I would like to look into further.
Before comp
Comparison with before and after compositing
March 1st, 2026
Today's focus was shot 3, our focus shot. I will post a breakdown later, but this is what I have so far. I may have went a little crazy with the fog, but everything is kind of layered in there so I can dial in and out wherever needed.
A list of things I would like to fix for the final presentation:
shot 1
bring back some contrast in grass
add fog over foreground flower stem
add fog in the glow
shot 2
lessen depth of field
darker background and foliage
add some contrast back to grass
have vines match vines in shot 3
apply camera movement to fog
shot 3
decrease fog with height
add some fog to foreground to cover grass and carpet intersection
February 28th, 2026
Last night, the team rendered hi-res versions of every shot. Shot 1 returned back to an old lighting so I was able to use my Nuke script from last week. I combined the old color with the new fog addition and color graded accordingly. I also ended up blurring those masks I showed on the 27th even further so you can't see any grass.
I think the fog was a really good recommendation! I would like to add a little more to the foreground. Just in front of the front flowers stem and then subtuly in the glow of the flowers.
This is what I have for shot 2 for the day. I feel like the fog for shot 1 is more successful so far. I need to continue working on that and bringing some glow to the flowers. They don't have a lot of light coming in so I will have to try and fake it.
The vines are meant to be a light source, so I have been trying to combine and edit the AOV's in a way that makes it look more like one. I'm not too sure how I feel about it right now.
Tomorrow I would like to prioritize shot 3 since it is our hero shot. However, when I make my way back to shot 2, I want to add some more fog over the ferns and the flowers. I also want to adjust the black levels and the lights on the fern. Make everything a little more hidden and mysterious like suggested.
February 27th, 2026
My focus today was adding fog. The team gave me low resolution renders to work with, so I was able to work with the fog in the grass exclusively. I am using the depth AOV to control what section of the grass the fog is the strongest in. Based off of references, fog seems to be stronger in the background (https://www.shutterstock.com/video/clip-1107817553-close-view-grass-on-foggy-background-early?dd_referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F).
For some reason, our depth pass has always been kind of crunchy. Due to this, I have blurred the masks so we don't have crunchy fog outlines when the fog is merged over the grass.
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