Catacombs: Personal Project
3D Environment Design, Lighting and Rendering // 2D Compositing
The Brief:
As part of Activision’s Level Up initiative, take a course on Lighting for 3D Animation and showcase what you’ve learned in a 3D spec project.
The Technique:
After many hours of Gnomon Workshop training, my colleague Kate Park and I collaborated on this short 3D animation. Kate focused on our Knight character, and I focused on the environment he was in. I created a dimly lit catacomb scene for two reasons.
A dark and moody scene with beams of pale moonlight shining through a crumbling ceiling would not only immediately sell the tone of the piece, but also would help highlight the metal of the knight’s armor.
I wanted to create a warm / cool color dichotomy between the moonlight and the flickering torches to create visual contrast.
Much shader work needed to be done to adjust Blender’s Nishita Sky Texture to a cooler color palette, and very meticulous placement of tree branches and stones in the ceiling was imperative to get the moonlight shining at the right intensity, and in the right placements to spotlight the Knight. Some BTS images here!
The result was a short, but high-quality animation that would have been much more difficult for either of us to achieve on our own!