Master and Commander

I intended this demo reel to be very reminiscent of a movie trailer which can be observed in the congruence of the opening shot sequences and the epic soundtrack.

These are the shots pre-post.

RESEARCH

The entire scene, up to the minute details, are coherent to the theme of early 19th century marine exploration. Research and collating references were a huge part in creating this reel. Below is a portion of my PureRef file where I collated all my research.

MODELING

I modeled all assets before proceeding to texturing. The scale of each asset was based on a human. Some minor scale re-calibration was done once all the objects were put together. Geometric spans were kept consistent and moderately tight, especially for the hero assets, in order to hold textures and displacement maps well. 

TEXTURING and LOOKDEV

The hero assets were chosen for the variety of materials. There's metal, wood, leather, glass, mirrors, paper, cloth (thread). Some minor assets showcase leather, paper, metal, and wood as well, distressed differently.

Below are the different passes that I utilized for the breakdown:

1) Diffuse - For fairly matte materials, I would start working on the diffuse channel since this will be the main source of color, as seen below.

2) Specular - For relatively shiny surfaces, I would start working inside the reflection color channel in Mari where all the color information will be coming from, as seen below. I tried using the fresnel values found online, but it didn't give me the level of shine I want, so I cranked up the IOR values in the range of 5-8 for metals.

3) Glossiness - Once I'm happy with my base diffuse or reflection color, I would copy the layers from one channel to another and apply an adjustment stack with multiple layers to get the desired effect I want.

4) Fog Color - I only used this pass for the sextant's tinted glass filter, horizon mirror, and index mirror. See below.

***These are the different parts of a sextant, in case any of you are curious.

5) Displacement - For organic shapes, like the leather wrapping on the main barrel of the spyglass, I sculpted the displacement in Zbrush. The displacement map is seen below.

For relatively geometrical shapes, I simply created them in Mari, like the deep etching on the sundial compass as seen below.

6) Bump - I created the stencil in Photoshop. It's a recreation of the old-London style sundial compasses where the chapter rings are angled. Everything from the cartouche to the scrolling to the decorative ring are created in Photoshop, and then later imported in Mari to be used as a stencil.

***These are the different parts of a sundial, in case you're geeky enough to wonder.

I used this HDRI to lookdev the assets separately. I like this image because it doesn't cast a strong tint onto the objects, but at the same time the different colors on the canvases produce interesting colors and shapes on reflections.

LIGHTING

These are some references of the lighting effect that I wanted to achieve for the scene.

I also used the HDRI above to provide an ambient light to the scene, the result is seen below.

I used this yellow dapple GOBO for the key light and back light.

And this blue dapple GOBO for the fill light.

The hero assets didn't receive a lot of illumination after the basic lighting was applied, and they failed to stand out in the scene despite being in front of the layout. I fixed this by making color adjustments to the GOBO and using light linking for some objects that I want some light adjustments done to.

Using this technique, I was able to direct the eye to the objects I want the viewer to focus on.

I wanted to create an environment fog because this adds to the goal of giving this reel a film vibe, and it also adds to the vintage, mysterious vibe, and stale atmosphere of life inside a ship captain's cabin.

I wanted to add more realism to the scene so I comped in a looping video of small moving air particles, as seen below. This adds depth to the shots as well.

I wanted to add further depth to the scene by utilizing the Z-depth render element. Made adjustments to the focal plane and depth of field in Nuke as seen below. Together with the light linking, this step also draws the eye to the areas of the screen where I wanted the focus to be.

CAMERA SET-UP

These are all my camera set-ups in one scene. I set the focal length this way so I can capture as much of the objects in my shot considering that they're mostly close-up and extreme close-up shots.

POST

I did most of the final adjustments to textures (color correction, etc.) in Nuke using Cryptomatte. I chose to do this rather than in the shader so I can make last-minute changes towards the end of the pipeline without having to go back to the shader network in Maya, adjust values from there, and render everything again.

I assembled the shots with the soundtrack in After Effects. I fell in love with this soundtrack (purchased it here) the first time I heard it and I chose to use this as early as the research stage of the demo reel, even before any modeling work was done. The shots were actually based on the timing of the soundtrack which was perfect for my movie trailer vision.

EASTER EGGS:

1. The signature on the letter belongs to Queen Victoria, Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 1807-1901. Beside it is the Royal Coat of Arms.

2. This letter is addressed to a Ms. Elizabeth, Countess of Sutherland. She was a Scottish royalty in real life who lived from 1765-1839. She wasn't a real explorer, but the idea of having an uninhibited woman of royal rank as a captain of a ship on a quest to unlock the mystery of the Great Serpent is very appealing to me.

3. One of the books is called “Bijbel” which is “Bible” in Dutch. One of the books has Egyptian gods on the cover. This suggests that our woman captain is likely learned, adventurous, and a person of faith.

Hope you enjoyed the reel and this lengthy breakdown! Please follow me on ArtStation.

Thank you everyone!