Latest on Project Gold

This week we decided to do a lookdev render test on Mikassa to test our oil-painterly rendering style on a character. Several of us collaborated on this together and this gave us a great base to discuss the stylistic decisions. I also updated the reef lookdev test to make it easier to iterate on shading explorations and added 3d painted brushstrokes on all the assets.

This week was loaded with painterly look development in Blender. I finally had some time to try out the brush stroke generation that we have been thinking about for a while now and it does seem quite promising to achieve a unique painterly look. We still have lots and lots of tests to do to refine the look and the techniques to apply this effect, but we finally have something concrete to look at and experiment with.

I focused on getting the hair style into a state of approval. I also supported the current color and shading tests. The new outfit also saw a first blocking pass.

This week the hair design was mostly finished. Various tweaks to the head and body were also done.

Rocks and Corals! I started putting our current models into asset library files which can be used throughout the production. We also need a better, more unified way to share the progress of the assets, so I worked on several utilities to better display libraries and single assets. This included making modular turntable setups (with geo-nodes, naturally!) and some lighting rigs that can be easily used in many files.

I still spent most of this week in meetings for Blender Development, our asset pipeline and other things. Apart from that I was writing a blog post for the shading on 'Wing It!'. The only work on Gold I managed to do was to try out the painterly shading setup I created on Andy's updated coral sculpts.

I continued this week with the reef lookdev experiment. After receiving a paint-over from Florent Masurel, I adjusted the lighting scheme to try to hit the right colors and underwater visibility and feel. In addition to that I compiled the current rock models from Julien and Beau together - and sculpted over them to give them a unified look.

More work on Mikassa to get her ready for a locked head & body design.

this week i worked on doing some thumbnails for different scenes before storyboarding

After experimenting with loose brush strokes last week, I worked on doing initial tests for painterly shading of the surfaces themselves. At this point the setup is fully procedural and based on the tech we developed for 'Wing It!'.

We decided to create a test shot featuring the environment of Layer 1 of the ocean to test out our various modeling and shading ideas. I set up an initial scene that Simon and I can iterate on to try to nail the painterly style of this project,