Collab -- Week 3

To do:

• Finish shaders and create a quilt to display them

• UV the printer model

• Begin generating designs to go on objects in shot 5 (Nano Banana or DALL-E)

Updated shader list (some changes since last week):

• Wood

• Stone

• Reflective black plastic (front cover of printer)

• Matte grey plastic (main material of printer)

• Black Plastic with textured design (printer tray)

• Printed ink (with slight emissive)

• Stainless steel

• Phone case (soft silicone)

• Table

At the beginning of this week, I only had three shaders in progress. I was new to the Houdini Karma and MaterialX workflow. Setting up my lookdev lighting took me much longer than expected. With the help of my team members and the time it took me to set up my lookdev chart and lighting, I started to get the hang of it! I was able to get a steady pace working on the materials. I also had a few lighting changes that needed to be made.

The largest challenge this week was rendering my materials. I rendered the quilt of materials locally, and then I decided I wanted to render the individual materials on the renderfarm, since there were so many of them. I confirmed with my team the steps for using Karma on the farm, and I began the process of rendering. When I received the first batch back, I noticed that the main material I was attempting to show off did not render. The materials of the background and look dev chart rendered properly. I then sought out answers for why this happened. I wrote a new USD file, ensuring that everything was connected the way I wanted, and sent photos to my team for advice. I spent quite a bit of time trying to find the issue, as did my team. Ultimately, I decided that time would be better spent setting up a local render on my home computer and a few computers at Montgomery Hall than to continue messing with it. I was then able to get the individual material renders completed relatively fast.

The next morning, I realized I missed rendering new versions of two materials. I decided to try the farm again, as I thought I had found the issue surrounding the material not rendering. I deleted all of my spheres that were set up for the quilt, except the one I needed to render. I also deleted any paths connecting the materials to the old geometry that was now deleted. I wrote out an updated USD file for the farm and sent it off. When I got my EXR back, the intended material rendered perfectly fine.... but the extra spheres of the quilt rendered (without material). Deleting the unused geometry resolved the warning on my material node, which was thought to cause the original issue. My other nodes were clear of warnings, so I had no idea where to begin to resolve this issue. I tried writing out a fresh USD just in case and the problem persisted. I once again decided it was in the best interest to move on. I sent my compositor the renders I had, as well as the previous renders of my last two materials (the only difference was a slight change in lighting). I am extremely happy with how the materials turned out, and I even have a few materials that came in different colors. The ink I made in primary colors: cyan, magenta, yellow, red, and blue. I made the phone case material in purple, pink, and yellow so that our final shot can have some slight variation and more pops of color.

Our team video going into Week 4

The extra colors for the phone case (pictured above)

The extra colors for the ink (pictured above)

I am hoping to complete the UVs for the printer tonight (Monday) or tomorrow. After that, the tumbler needs new UVs then I am on to generating designs for the final shot!