For this sprint I worked on setting up the initial lighting and main camera shots. After finding a good spot for our shine on Nick's heightmap and white boxing the area, I began lighting by removing any initial lights from the sample scene. I browsed Poly Haven for an HDRI and eventually settled on this one:
Next I added my directional light and sky atmosphere. I created a chrome material to help with aligning the directional light to the HDRI's sun. Then I added volumetric fog with the Exponential Height Fog. I turned on the Light Shaft Occlusion in the directional light to create some subtle god rays in the scene.
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| Lighting shown here is the end result from this week. The following images were taken earlier before some adjustments were made. |
With the scene lit, I began looking for interesting shots of the characters. This was actually super fun because I really like photography. I gathered a handful of shots that we'll either continue to use, refine, or cut in the following weeks.
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| The god, Susanoo, will be controlling the element of water. I want his pose to exemplify the intensity of his power. |
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| The god, Raijin, will be wielding lightning. I wanted to get a good shot of the VFX that will show off the complexity of lightning. |
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| She will eventually be floating in the air, with some clouds surrounding her body. I felt this angular shot would help in showing that off, along with the taiko drums behind her. |
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| The god, Ori, is harnessing the element of fire. The main intention with this shot is to get a balanced and stable full body shot to go with his bulky square build. |
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| This close-up is one of my favorites here. |
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| For our dragon, I felt a centered composition exemplifies it's power and dominance in the scene as some kind of 'overseer'. Gotta check up on our lore real quick. |
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| Yo this is another favorite from the set. If we can pull the dragons body around, this could turn into a really neat composition. I might even pull the perspective a bit more by decreasing the focal length to intensify the shot. |
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| Basic establishing shot. This may change more in the future. |
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| Showing off the stairs that lead up to the courtyard. Might play around with the focal length some more and see if I can get either the gods or dragon into the shot. |
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| Close up of the lion dog statues. I originally didn't intend on getting this shot, but I really liked how it looked so I added it in. |
The lighting in these shots aren't final! In the following weeks, I'll be creating different level sequences for these shots so I can fine tune the lighting for each shot to however I see fit. Below you'll find my references.
