My Portfolio
Mushroom 1 Shading - I observed that the reference I had has a lot of subsurface scattering going on in it. It was this and the lighting reference I had from the live action shot that made me articulate the yellowish highlights on the dome and blue reflections and subsurface on the bottom side
Mushroom 2 Shading - This is the Fungi/mushroom I spent most time shading, It has a growth attribute which is only on the edges which I used to import and mask various layers to drive different parameters.
- This is based on the networks that fungi connect through underneath that glow I saw in a Netflix documentary called "Fantastic Fungi"
I grew those roots through finding the shortest path from a bunch of points on the inside to a group of points on the outside.
I then used the curveu attribute to mask the emission to a low at the end an bright in the centre.
I multiplied this mask with maxon noise to breakup the linear emission pattern in between to make it look more organic.
.The outside part is a thin walled surface with transmission and really low subsurface turned on.
Mushroom 3 shading -
- The objective I had in mind was simple, use the shadow mask attribute and give a little emission at the ends.
- But to my surprise Redshift doesn't have the feature to plugin masks in emission weight which at the time felt so uncommon. I thought the systems in Monty had a bug or a glitch which couldn't be fixed.
- I thought of a turnaround and found the material blender node come in handy.
- It made two materials blend together possible with a certain mask that could be plugged into it.
- I then used one material to have emission and the other just a base colour and blended them together to have this output.,
Lighting the scene was challenging all together because of the dark environment and the lighting reference from the first shot we had for colour consistency throughout the shots.
- I used Light linking for each mushroom so that I have full control over how each individual looks.
- I used a combination of areal and spot lights lights.
- Turned on Volumetric Lighting for only 2 background lights for a fog like effect.
