Storytelling through lighting

Project 4

VFX_425/Class_14

For project 4, we're tasked with creating an environment with storytelling through lighting. I've teamed up with a friend to create a beach environment.

VFX_425/Class_15

I didn't have a chance to work on the project much, but me and my friend Giuseppe had the opportunity to work on the previs along with starting the environment.

Heightfields in Houdini

I've had previous experience working with heightfields in Houdini, and this project required a large hill spanning across the background.

Camera Motion

Heightfields are node-based like everything else in Houdini, so they are very versatile and can be quite easily controlled.

We also had time to set up a quick camera motion for the scene. Here's the one I'm going with for my side of the project.

VFX_425/Class_16_and_17

Over the past week I've been working more on developing my parts of the scene. You can check out my progress on the pyro simulation here.

Heightfield Material

To create the material for the heightfield landscape, I created a mask using heightfield output node and used that as a mix between each tileable texture.

These masks are also used in the subnets to color correct some of the textures and add variation.

Beach Material

The beach material is a tileable sand texture grabbed from Quixel Bridge. I'm using a Karma hextiled texture to break up the patterns of the textures.

Displacement keeps the sand from looking flat and allows for render-time subdivision without an impact on viewport performance.

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