Week 6 - Render Settings / Life Support & Control Module Modeling

Amit prepared us for our upcoming Major Presentation in week 8. He told us these following requirements that are needed for us to showcase in our week 8 presentation:

- Our Models should be done and showcased in this presentation

- We should have a turntable for our models with 250-300 frames

- A revised animatic of our animations

- Rendered Frames of our animations

-Animation & Post Processing Tests

- Our Test Scheduling for the upcoming weeks

- And our Comparison with our References

He also mentioned that we should use Power Point or Prezi for our presentation, and that it should be clear and diligent.

After our short briefing with Amit about our week 8 presentation, we continued on with our lectures.

We learned how to set up our Render settings with V- Ray.

I learned a lot about setting up renders for VRay with Amit's lectures this week, so far these are what I have learned: In the Common tab in options, force 2- Sided must be ticked, In the VRay tab, in Image Sampler, Type should be Bucket not Progressive, In the GI tab, change primary engine to Irradiance map, and secondary engine to Light Cache, in the GI tab as well in irradiance map, Subdivs should be set to 90.

Amit also taught us about Render elements and what they are used for in compositing. We were taught to include, VRay Denoiser, VRay Global Illumination, Vray Lighting, VRay Object ID, VRay Specular, and Vray ZDepth.

These render elements are important to add when you render your scenes in order to edit your scenes with a lot of possibilities with the use of these elements in compositing. Also, with regarding rendering you must also render AO's for every scene, AO's aka Ambient Occlusion is a shading and rendering technique used to calculate how exposed each point in a scene is to ambient lighting. These are basically used to add more realism to your frames.

I also learned what SSS (Sub Surface Scattering)

this is when a light passes through an object. A great example of this is with your skin, when you put a flash light through your hand/ fingers:

Amit taught us about Sub Surface Scattering because this can be applied with our passes as well, and he showed us the whole process of how it can be done. SSS does not only apply to the skin, it can also apply to Grapes, Tomatoes, Orange, Plastic, Fruites, Plastic, Candle etc.

I also started modeling the Astronaut's Life Support and Control Panel,

So far I am trying my best to follow these references that I am using, which are the Life Support and Control Module of Neil Armstrong :

https://www.nasa.gov/audience/foreducators/spacesuits/home/clickable_suit_nf.html

http://www.workingonthemoon.com/WOTM-Velcro.html

After class I also talked to Natasha about the Boots model refinement and topology. Since the boots needed the sole like the Apollo 11 Astronaut suit, She agreed to do that part of modeling for the boots.

Moving on to this weekend, I received the files back from Natasha after she did the re topology for the Gloves and Boots. She also transferred the models from ZBrush to 3Ds Max.

I then started placing together the astronaut suit and its asset

I did not attach the gloves and boots to the suit because when we consulted Amit during class earlier this week regarding this matter, he told us it's okay to attach them but it's also okay not to since they are accessories of the suit.

Here is what the Astronaut looks like after I finished the suit assembly: