We finalised rendering and compositing everything together. I created a title sequence for the project at the end of it, using After Effects. I used the Saber Plugin to create the fire on the kanji, and generated the smoke using animated fractal noise with a red tint. For the sparks I used particles inside of After Effects to create the effect of rising sparks with the orange smoke. I also decided that I would need a translation for the kanji as most people do not read it. Therefore I created text with a screen wipe effect and timed it with particle effects dissipating away to make it look like the text was turned into smoke.

However, after this I received feedback from others that the bottom translated text didn’t really fit with the rest of the overall look of the title text. Therefore I remade the bottom text to make the overall look more uniform. I think that it makes the shot look a lot more cohesive overall and fits the project well.

During this week we also scanned in the model of my collaborative partner wearing the outfit with the mask that our collaborator made and painted. The scanning process was fairly easy as the technician did most of it for us, and sent us the models with textures attached (though I remade the texture with an AIstandard material and the colour map as the attached texture was a lambert).

I also lit and rendered the scanned model inside of Maya, trying several different lighting setups and camera angles. The model had some issues, with a few parts of the mesh having double thickness geometry, but this was not super noticeable. Ideally I would clean up the mesh and delete the extra parts, but with the time constraints I left the model as is. I wanted to light the model with a fairly dark scene with red highlights as I thought this would help to give more of a sinister feel to the render. I also wanted to keep some distance between the render and mask, as the scan for some parts of the model such as for the mask were not very high resolution so close-ups tend to look bad. Using lighting to hide imperfections in the model with the extra geometry looking like extra shadows was useful to effectively make the model look cleaner. I tried a few different camera angles and shots as shown below, and eventually used the third one.

I also lit and rendered this scene with a seated pose, and I wanted the figures face to be mostly in darkness to give mystery on who he is. I wanted the baby and the general outline of the father to be lit to show people what is happening (a man cradling a baby). However due to the baby not being a real baby and just a blanket, not getting it’s “face” in shot was a good idea. I tried several different lighting setups and camera angles as shown below for this shot too. I chose to use the third shot.

I also lit the axe scene buried in a wooden stump. I found the stump on Quixel Bridge and used the axe that was modelled by my collaborator. As this is meant to be in the first half of the project I wanted it to not be super dark or red, and instead be as if lit in evening or late afternoon. I also tested a few different lighting scenarios, with different camera angles.

The downloaded assets that I used were mostly from Quixel Bridge, and are listed below with screenshots of their download pages. All other models were created and textured by me and Antonio.

I also used the following HDRI’s: