Shattered Light Bulb

The story behind this piece is:

During my time with Studio X at the Academy of Art University, the animated film Glow was in the production pipeline. I was given the hero-level asset (non-broken) and was asked to shatter the piece while still keeping the unique design element that tied it to the story in the film. This went through a few iterations, and I have provided the reference I used for the pieces of broken glass. The client then signed it off. A few years later, I felt this would be a fantastic piece to experiment with shaders and really try to hone in on some realism in a render.

So I went back, modified the structure of the pieces, updated UVs, cleaned up edge flow, and even tweaked the composition of the render as well, and thought of the story I wanted the piece to say. The story the piece was telling was very important to me as a storyteller, and since, for this piece, the image was going to have to serve as the words I tell the audience versus my voice, I had to put thought into it.

Reference for the shattered light bulb

Below is a slider showing the development of the final product. I started with the traditional clear glass but quickly realized it took a lot of work to see and read the light bulb. I then tried out various colors to later settle on the dark red, AKA Warning Light concept.

Rendered frames showing UV distribution, wireframe, and shader application

A 4k UV snapshot for the light bulb

A (story) reel for the Shattered Light Bulb