The allure of depth maps

Well, this is as fun as my life gets right now. ;)
I decided to do a quick depth map render of my skeletal hand model for fun (I don't think I'll even need it during compositing, though I am a sucker for extremely shallow DoF)!

I have a strange fascination with depth maps. I think they generate such a mysterious and alluring mood. So I let myself have a bit of fun with this. I plan on rendering out an animation fully done in depth maps, but I'll have to make the objects very distinguishable as it's hard to discern objects in depth maps.

I think my love for depth maps stems from one of my favourite artists, Kazuki Takamatsu, who does these beautifully haunting oil paintings. I believe he works in 3D first (?). Here is an example of his work from his website:

Anyway, back to work!

Test renders of the day 005

This one scene has been giving me a lot of grief. It's a complex scene and Maya isn't playing nice with all the SSS, nParticles, etc. I had to sacrifice SSS-ing the whole scene because render times jumped up to 3++ minutes per frame. For now I am using a Blinn with scatter radius tweaked (a la Marc), but I used SSS on the ones closest to camera.

Marc mentioned the scene looked pretty flat from my earlier test renders, so I completely reworked the lighting set up to better bring out the forms. I think it's better?! I have to give credit to Jeremy Birn's excellent book Digital Lighting & Rendering  (who wants to buy it with me off Amazon.com and share shipping? lol). It's a must-read, really!

In an attempt to save more render time, I added sprites to the background, but the transition looks pretty obvious to me. I changed my lighting set up since I rendered out the sprites though, so fixing that might help. I think I will have to add more real objects to make the transition better.

After immense amounts of AE compositing and tweaking, this is the best look I can get so far! I haven't implemented colour-coding for the different types of cells yet. And no hair yet.

Also! I haven't figured out how to composite the cell nuclei in, since the cells are all overlapping... Will have to think about it some more.


I tend to lean towards a low-contrast look for my illustrations and it seems to have spilled over into my 3D work... but I know it can make details difficult to discern, so I'll have to balance that.

 

Need to turn down light on vessel, it's bleaching it out a bit and losing its form.

Lesson learned: Changing accuracy of Final Gathering can significantly reduce render times, but also produces gross, blotchy colours. (Current setting is at 80, seems ok for now)

Test renders of the day

Lighting and shaders did not go very well today - but I was tackling the most complex scene in my whole animation (or so goes my excuse).

The particles turned out super gross! I think I will have to use a linstep set-up to create a depth map for them. I haven't put hair on these lymphocytes yet and I think it's just sporting a purple lambert shader right now. But I did get the nerve impulse to work!

I decided to use sprites for the background with an animated lymphocyte with hair and a wobble deformer. But I couldn't get them to render properly with Maya hardware renderer so they don't exist yet in the above images... will have to work on that. Maya also decides to ignore IFF sequences that I rendered out of AE, so that's another roadblock for now!

Another thing to consider: may have to use Maya DoF - there's that inescapable AE Lens Blur halo effect.

Lesson learned: If SSS doesn't work after tweaking the numbers like crazy, try reversing the normals...

Lymphocyte shaders

I'm starting to use this blog to keep track of my experiments!

SSS + ramp shader plugged into Front scatter colour just for kicks (which turned out to be my favourite so far. Will have to figure out the most efficient way of fading off the ends of the hairs:

Ramp shader only to mimic SEM look. I think it matches the "hairy" look of the lymphocyte best but doesn't really match the rest of my shots.

SSS only with and without speculars.

+ bump using Brownian, with Fractal plugged into Alpha gain channel, repeat UV x 10.

Sparse!

I continued testing out shaders and things today... I abandoned the toon shaders for today. I never realized how sparse and empty this scene felt until I started lighting and texturing today (I haven't added a texture to the membrane).

I'm going to add more proteins to the membrane, particles floating around, and more NGF. I will probably add more fog, or something to indicate density/a fluid environment.

I also need to figure out how to separate the intra- and extra-cellular portions. I think I will use yellow for the intracellular bit (inside nociceptor) and a pale blue-green for the extracellular bit.

EDIT: I've received a lot of positive feedback for this "clean" look, so perhaps I won't add too much more to it, just some floaty particles! (still need to separate intra- and extra-cellular parts)

 

Here is a WIP for the skeletal hand - I haven't textured it in Mudbox yet so it is way too smooth and healthy looking right now!

I need to decide later how my particles should look (used spheres instead of cloud here)

EDIT: I don't think I did it consciously but my palette seems to go from dark to light for gross --> cellular --> molecular scales. Works for me! :)

Look and feel

Hello! I have been working on refining the animation (got my vesicles to work properly, but the final effect will all depend on how well I do with the Shaders...).

I've been really hung up on a couple parts of the animation (e.g. extravasating lymphocyte) so I decided to take a break and work on texturing instead.

I've been having a surprisingly difficult time with coming up with a "look" for my animation. The process went much more smoothly for my interstitial. But I suppose that was only an 8 second animation with a single shot vs. a 5 minute one with many shots.

I tried a subsurface scattering (SSS) look (but still added some AO, which kinda of destroys the SSS effect):

EDIT: Eddy brought up a good point: the dramatic lighting may be obscuring a little too much of the spinal cord, as that will help the viewer situate themselves. Will have to check within the context.

(I think I also have to increase the density of the neurons a bit, they should be pretty packed in the dorsal root ganglion!)

 

But it just does not feel like my work at all. It's sort of my fallback at this point...
Then I tried throwing in some PaintFX toon lines for kicks:

I thought there was some potential, but it does look like a strange mix.

Finally, I decided to go all out and try my hand at toon shading, but it ended up looking like an uglier version of what I would draw. I'm also concerned that it really removes the 3D quality of the work when there is no camera movement and almost looks like a Flash animation (then why spend all that time modeling?! :(  )

EDIT: I've had 2 votes for this toon look! Nooo lol! I know it has potential, but I'm too reluctant to give up the SSS beauty look for this project (Although the crazy 3 minute per frame render times may make me reconsider...). I will definitely work to refine this look (and learn how to get that incredible watercolour feel) in future personal projects. :)

Well, more experimenting to come!

Inspiration log
This animation is probably my favourite 3D film of all time in terms of style! It would be amazing to emulate but I have no idea where to begin! :S This look probably won't fit my content very well, either.


For a more photorealistic style, this series of zune ads are one of my favourites. I love the shallow DoF and colours.


I find many games and anime are adopting an interesting 3D look with contours nowadays, but aren't fully cel-shaded/NRP either. Examples: Catherine game and Tiger & Bunny, both out this year.