Captain's Log

Captain's Log

This project began as a lighting challenge over at cgsociety.org. The challenge consists in a 3D model of a ship created by Giorgio Luciano and the goal is to light the scene based on the log entries. You can find more here

The captain's log entry I chose to concentrate on first is the following:

July 5th,
It's been 2 weeks without the slightest breeze and
the sweltering heat has become unbearable.
The crew has been burned so badly from the unending sun,
that we are forced to stay below the deck

Research

So, my first step was research. I researched some references in matters of light, textures and also I watched some movies to see the way that they illuminate particulars shots. After all the main goal is to light the scene. I particularity mention the Pirates of Caribbean movies and also HMS Agamemnon by Roger Antrobus website. Next step was doing some texturing and for that I used, as mention, the HMS Agamemnon by Roger Antrobus. This is a website where you can find a ship made by hand in an small scale. From there I took some ideas about the materials and also how they react with light. But since I entered a little later in this challenge, I didn't spent much time doing the UV's, instead I used UV projection inside Maya to do the texturing. This of course added some challenges related with the bump maps and some adjustments, but was a good oportunity to learn a little more.

Ocean Shader

After that I did some renders tests of ocean shaders as you can see in the images bellow:

Composition

Given that I didn't have much time do to all the logs, I started with the first one. My idea was put the camera in a way that we can see all the way the ship till the mast. As if someone was in the water to take the shot. This was in certain way inspired from the Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End movie, where the Jack Sparrow sees his ship moving nexto to him and he looks up to see what is going one. So I used a similar shot to show the extreme heat of the day, as the sun was in the mid day point.

nCloth

Next step, was doing some work in the sails. The initial sails were simple polyplanes and I used nCloth system in Maya to do the work. Using nCloth in Maya is quite simple, when you work in the right scale and using some presets is just a matter of little tweaks. In the log the captain says that there wasn't any slightest breeze for two weeks, so I tought that in that case all the sails were drooped.

Lighting

Ok, lighting. So I started doing some tests with HDRI, but instead I try the Mental Ray Physical Sun and Sky system. Then I used an several lights to create the right mood. The best way to show how I did it is taking an look in the image above:

As you can see, I used the default sun light from MR Sun and Sky to be my Key light. Then I used to lights to give the warm look to the inteior and also to the exterior. Then I used an huge area light to create the bounce light from the sea. Finally I tought that some metals may needed a little push in they speculares. So I used on directional light to do that.

Rendering

For rendering I did use Mental Ray for Maya with Final Gather and also I did use the Unified Sampling to help me speed up the renders. Works like a charm. I divided my scene in the basic passes (AO, Direct, Depth) and used Photoshop for the composition. You can see the all process in the link below:

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