Four: Corridor Lighting

  Much of yesterday was spent on animating some of the final scenes, which means that to an extent, act 3 (where we see the adult) has a functional set of animations.

  So today's priority was lighting. This however turned into more work than I initially anticipated as in order to shave off render times I considered looking where I could optimise my scene. Presently my shaders were monochromatic - I would create a single shader for a specific colour, but this proved inflexible and I ended up building up a number of shaders with the same settings just different shades.

  I was able to replace some of the shaders using maps created in Photoshop, which I am considering fleshing out with textures to make the materials feel more like real materials and less like plastic. While other materials use a blinn, the white panels use a mila shader textured to come across more as leather, using similar properties to Four's skin due to leather's properties.

A warmer grey for the bulk material of the corridor appears to work more with the aesthetic I am aiming for. Aside from a number of hot-spots, the lighting in place (area lights positioned opposite each other) works to fill out the scene.

Strangely the frame above took considerably longer to render than the corridors, Four's teeth also appear to be reflecting the light of the surface shader used to represent the sunlight. I could disable it for when the camera switches to this shot as the effect is almost obliterating the sight of her teeth.

Four: Back in the Game

  The Easter break knocked me out a bit but now I'm back in the game! The Juvenile has been roughly worked out so what is upcoming is working on the adult's animations. For all the work I made on the model, this one is the briefest on screen, but it's also perhaps the most tense sequence as it shows Four's final escape.

  At this point, most of the sequences are done, some basic polish is needed for the corridor escape but with its completion I plan to go back and improve the placeholder animations for the grub, as all that form really does is slide around its incubator like it is living on ice.

  To demonstrate her freedom the idea was that she would open the airlock to a blinding light, finally getting a chance to see the world outside of her laboratory prison. Initially a basic white, this was tinged to be more golden to better indicate it is sunlight.

  Four's model does receive light, however due to the shader used she doesn't have an ambient occlusion shader on her form, this and a lack of any external lighting is what is creating the pitch black shape of her profile.

  The idea for the final moment is she will be temporarily blinded from the light from outside, before leaving the base and running to freedom.

Four: Signing Off The Grub

  The grub is almost ready to sign off. Controls are in place and tied to their bones while a basic skin has been added, and a texture map is to be in the works. With time in mind, it is fair to say that I am ready to start animating with this model.

  What is slightly jarring that might be coming from the glossy reflection is the skin appears to be reflecting the body around it, something that I've noticed skin to not really do. Turning off the model's ability to be seen in reflections does appear to remove this mirror effect however this is likely to make the creature's  invisible in the reflections any of the chrome surfaces in the lab (such as the floor of its incubation unit).

  The grub, compared to the others, is quite a simple design. Only one key control is needed for opening and closing the mouth. I might need to devise some teeth to provide something for inside the mouth, although it might not be as easy to see as other 

Four: A Return to Work and Development

Returning from a hiatus refreshed and ready to continue, I'm moving along with the essentials of the project. UV maps have been cleaned up and most importantly for the model, the walls and floor have been separated from each other.

  Together they felt too much like one combined structure, separating it out made it easier to define where they met. After a discussion that it might be inappropriate for Four to be raised in the same room as plants were studied, I set up a system that would effectively 'switch' between a plant lab and an animal biolab. To control the switch, a control was added over the room, in later stages this might be used to switch between the stages of progression. Multiple states would exist on one spot that can be set using this control.

  Separating out the walls, ceiling and floor also allowed me to develop cleaner geometries for these large surfaces. Much of the more dense geometry was due to the edges used to hold the geometry around windows and doorways in place. With these more separate, the layouts for the floors and ceilings could breathe more.

With the rooms set up and the distinctions made, I also set about reworking the camera to make better use of the new layout and serve as a foundation for what objects to place and where, and where in the lab might be seen. At present, only David's first recording and Amelia's first message have been matched to a camera but I'm sure more will quickly come over the coming week or so.

Four: Skinning and MILA Shaders

I can sign off on the shader for the skin, save for the texture map which needs a bit of variance to it.  Working properly, the shader gives a lovely translucency to her fins and the webbing between her hands and feet. From the success I had, I moved on to  trying the mila shader on other textures, There is some on the claws, teeth and on the eyeball, which appears to have removed the rather distracting shadow that kept haunting my previous renders. 

TO get a more solid shine on the eye, I swapped the blinn for an anistropic shader, which while not as glossy as the blinn, giving only a spot so far, does give a cleaner life-giving glint. More could be done, as this is a start for now.

As can be seen by this render, The next task I performed was weighting her model to her skeleton. Starting with blocking out the weights, a second pass will smooth out the differences, then pose space corrections will correct the deformation that can't be as easily managed with weights.

Four: Skin Improvements

With some discussion from Alan, work progressed today on making Four's skin look more skin-like.

I went back to using a MILA shader to make use of the subsurface mechanics, suggested that for best results in terms of light scattering, i needed to mock the consistency of wax.

With that done, highlights were needed. Using the specular map I had designed for previous shadings, I installed gloss and specular layers to the model. The gloss provided a highlight while the specular provided a tinge.

  With the subsurface working properly, she is looking considerably more lifelike than before. Her skin looks more like it has texture and consistency while the subsurface gives a satisfying tinge to more transparent parts of the body.

The next phase will be to add some difference to the colour of her skin, to give blemishes and areas where her skin might be thinner than normal such as on the cheeks, where blood is more visible. This will give hopefulyl a rosiness that gives her a sense of life that boosts the subsurface scattering going on.

Four: Lighting the Biolab

  As well as completing the incubation chamber today, I thought I might play around with lighting.

  The biology branch of the lab will have several incubators. In the middle will be tables for scientific apparatus, clutter and research notes.

  I find that using a spotlight (below) provides a more dramatic light than using an area light (above) as the light created is much more confined. The spots on the roof see ma little off.

  What the spotlight appears to produce well however is a light from the isolation unit. Creating a stark shadow of the unit's doors. The light inside is confined by being made unable to pass through the glass, the light created from the door is being produced by a more specifically-aimed spotlight to preserve the strength of the light. I may need a third light however to illuminate the rest of the room. This trick can be used in other areas where the light may be different ,such as the adjacent office or the corridor - two shafts of light projecting themselves on the wall opposite the windows looking out into the darker corridor.

The new arrangement of the lab is going to mean some changes to the movement of the camera as it navigates the room. With proper lights in the room I can experiment with how to portray the glass.

  Some time in the past few days was also taken to sketching some posing research, how Four might move as she walks, runs, and a few minute movements that would sell the character..

Four: Juvenile Skin Specularity Tests

  Taking what I had done in the week prior, I've worked a little more on Four's skin. To give some resonance I added wrinkles in the texture and later the darkish green patch on Four's back to give her some interesting points.

  There's a little more to do, give her lips some colour, maybe wash out the butterscotch hue, to give the idea that as she matures colour comes to her skin.

  I played about with the reflectivity of her skin, to try and get the right balance of shine and spread.

  The fake rim light that exists appears to be doing its job rather nicely, but that does not mean I can't at least look into sub-surface shading. I feel I am definitely getting somewhere with this current model.

Four: Retooling the Juvenile Skin

Basic displacement map

  Having some difficulty with the normal maps and the Mila shader I investigated another angle. Exporting a displacement map from Mudbox appears to have given Four definition where there was none before, and while it has added a fair degree to render times, an added benefit could be that when these regions fold, the sharper geometry in the compressed spaces will create a (somewhat) more realistic set of folds when it comes to lighting.

an occlusion map was added to bring out the darker regions

The result of a normal map added alongside the displacement map

  One plan was to use a normal map alongside the displacement, as the image above shows however, this caused a couple of errors that annihilated some of the definition; the opposite of what I was after. The experiment concluded, the normal map was removed and definition was kept to the displacement map.

The specular was toned down and a highlight added to give translucency to the skin

 Now that the displacement map is providing something that needed to be supplemented by features on the texture map, I figured the textures need redesigning.

  To od this, the displacement and ambient occlusion maps will be used as a template to work out where the folds are, crevices will be darkened to give colour. The image below is the model with this template, which looks somewhat horrifying as the poor creature is covered in yellow-green marks. After I'm done with the texture, something much cleaner should take this image's place.