Candy Land
Hello! This is the final project that I did during my fifth semester in UNDO! It is a composite renders of a Candy inspired environment! In this render, I did 3 different lighting moods. It was challenging but I had a lot of fun creating this project.
The story behind this project
This is a final year project that I was told to do during my fifth semester in UNDO. In this project, we were required to render out a 5 second video composite of a 3D environment in 14 weeks. I had a lot of fun creating this environment from scratch, and I would be more than happier to show you the process and the journey I went through to bring this wonderful project to life.
The very first and foremost step before starting any project is to gather ideas and references on how the model should look like, including its shape, size, and characteristics. I was highly inspired by the environment from Sugar Rush in the movie Wreck-It-Ralph, therefore, I have gathered and compiled some of the references from Sketchfab (By Luna.tessa) and Pinterest that will aid me during the blocking, modeling and texturing process.
I also drew out a rough idea on where and how I wanted to place the models in my scene. This allows me to better visualize my environment.
BLOCKING & MODELING
The next step is to block and start modeling. This is the very first stage of the blocking and modeling I did. I had chosen to place the candy house in the middle as a center piece. The roof of the house is modeled to look like cream. Then, the road leading to the house is modeled to look like a waffle biscuit. The surrounding of the house is decorated with giant donuts, cupcakes, sweets and gummies.
After the initial modeling stage, I found out that the surrounding looked empty through the camera view. Therefore in the second modeling stage, I added more lollipops and candy canes, as well as creating a variety of sizes for the donuts and sweets. This makes the scene looked fuller and compact.
TEXTURING
After I was satisfied with the result of the modeling, I begin to texture my models. I used Substance painter to texture all of the models in this environment. The first image shows the work in progress during the texturing stage. In this stage, I exported the textures and applied it to the models in Maya so I could see how it looks like out of Substance Painter.
The second image is the screenshot on the texturing process I did for all the models. I had the most fun while doing this as I can experiment with different colour, styles and techniques.
This is how it looks like after I finish texturing the whole environment scene. The mix of colors made the scene looked colorful but it was still lacking in something. I felt the sky was a little too empty, therefore I modeled and textured some clouds.
RIGGING & ANIMATING
The next step is the rig the character and animate a simple 5 second walk. We were required to choose one of the character model provided by UNDO. I decided to choose this character, named Blue.
SFX
After finalizing the rig and the walk animation, it is time to add some SFX into the scene. I had gotten the idea to add in some smokes after seeing the metal pipes on the roof and beside the house.
And since it is a candy house, I decided to add in some colors for the smoke.
COMPOSITING
During the render process, I rendered out the background, albedo, AO, HDRI, fill light, accent lights, and SFX. And then by using Davinci Resolve Fusion tab, I compile it to suit its respective lightings and mood. Above is the image progressions and WIP to create the night mood of this environment.
FINAL RESULT
Finally, after 14 weeks of brainstorming ideas, modeling, texturing, rigging, animating and compositing, it is finally completed. The above video shows the 3 different moods. The first mood is a morning mood. In this render, I made the lighting a little more bluish and white. I also did not make the candies at the side of the house glow.
The second mood is the evening mood. In this render, I changed the lighting to be a little more reddish and orange in color. I also added some glow to the candies beside the house as well as to the sun.
Lastly, is the night mood. In this render, I changed the lighting to a more purplish and dark blue color to enhance the night effect. The glow in the candies at the side of the house is slightly increase to make sure it is able to illuminate the house.
Overall, its been a very hectic but fun 14 weeks. I learnt a lot from many people and I also discovered many different techniques that I could apply to my model and textures. I hope you had a fun time reading and seeing the progression of my work! Thank you!
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