Week 8: Rendering

This week my main goal was to start rendering out our elements at higher quality by testing and increasing render samples and making sure everything works on the farm. This meant while I was working on applying the mentors feedback, mostly working on the beauty layer as the light layers needed comparatively little adjustment, I was also working to render said light layers at high quality 1080HD.

The first thing I worked on was to refine the reflections in shot one based on the mentors feedback. The biggest issue brought up was I needed to darken the side of the car closest to the camera. This issue had come up before, and it was darker than the initial renders, but the reference was still much darker. Additionally, some of the mentors commented the reflections in the windshields should be sharper and the headlights looked over exposed.

To fix these issues I made several changes to the scene including: adjusting and adding environment cards, decreasing the specular roughness of the windshields, adding transparency to the overhead environment cards, lowering the HDRI exposure, and lowering the headlights intensity. The difference from before and after these changes as well as some of my in between iterations can be seen below.

Week 8 Shot 1 Beauty render Week 9 Shot 1 Beauty render

Shot 1 lighting and reflections iterations

Since shot 2 is part of the same scene as shot 1, the changes applied were evident there too.

Week 8 Shot 2 Beauty render Week 9 Shot 2 Beauty render

However, I wasn't sure I liked how the transparency applied to the overhead environment cards was changing the reflections on the car, so I turned it off to compare the two.

Week 9 Shot 2 Beauty render (transparency) Week 9 Shot 2 Beauty render (no transparency)

This weeks final render has the version with no transparency, but I will continue experimenting with transparency next week and go back to our reference for the final look.

I also used the overhead view of the headlights to compare as I adjusted their temperature based on mentor feedback that the lights were too warm.

Week 8 Shot 2 Headlights Road render Week 9 Shot 2 Headlights Road render

I was wary of lowering the light temperature too much and making the lights too blue, but after seeing them in the render they still seemed too warm. For next week I'll lower them further and test them in comp before rendering the whole shot.

For shot 3, I worked to improve the reflections, darken the left side of the car for continuity, and adding the backlights. For the reflections and darkening the side I added environment cards like in shot 1, with a ramp on the card transparency to help it blend in with the HDRI. I also lowered the HDRI exposure. The back lights, which I have been struggling with, were turned into mesh lights. With some slight adjustments to the geometry I was able to achieve the effect of a thin glowing outline within the lights. This effect was the closest to the reference of Porsche back headlights I have been able to achieve, but I am still not happy with it and will continue working on it for next week.

Week 8 Shot 3 Beauty render Week 9 Shot 3 Beauty render

Shot 3 lighting and reflections iterations

Shot 3 environment card set up Porsche back headlights reference