Gods Of War Final

Here is my final update for the summer project. For the water, I added more gravity to make it more chaotic and give it more liveliness. For the lightning, I switched it so that instead of connecting between her hands, lightning just occasionally spawns around her hands. I also added a lot of smoke for dramatic effect. Lastly, for the fire, I toned down some of the colors to make it easier to light within the scene. I also made it a slightly pinker hue to match the colors more closely on Oni's outfit.

Gods Of War Sprint 5

    For this past sprint, I worked on polishing my three FX. For the water, I worked on making the materials look more water-like, and I changed the path of the water to go around the sword instead of Susanoo. For the lightning, I added some more tertiary detail and stronger embers. Because the pose changed, I also altered the hand lightning FX to match it. For the fire, I added a lot more embers and desaturated the fire a bit so it didn't look like a funhouse effect.

Gods of War Sprint 4

For this sprint I worked on the water and lightning VFX. For the water, I combined a static mesh with a niagara system to give it a semi-animated look. I will be refining the shape of the slash for next sprint. For the lightning, I have a first pass of the lightning branches coming off the lightning. The issue is that they are not totally attached yet to the beam so I am still figuring out solutions for that. I also randomized each section of the beam so they're not all identical in width, speed, or jitter. 

Gods Of War Sprint 3

This sprint, I have worked solely on the lightning and fire FX. For the lightning, I made it less chaotic, created a custom lightning material, and added sparks and smoke to surround the lightning. For the fire, I rendered out a flipbook simulation to layer on top of the VDB simulation so that it has the 3D volumetric look while still retaining the detail from the fire simulation in EmberGen. Next sprint, I plan to focus more on the water FX. 

Gods Of War Sprint 2

 

These past two weeks, I have worked on refining my VFX block outs from the previous sprints. For the fire, I figured out how to implement VDBs so I was able to get them on the character. I used ember-gen to create and render out the VDBs. 

For the water sim, I went back in Houdini and edited the movement of the water so that it had more noise and variation. I'm still working on a solution for implementing the solid water on top of the particles

For the lightning, it is still only done in Niagara. I replaced the bars that held the drum together with the lightning to make it look more dramatic. My next steps are to refine the shape further and add a more detailed material to the Niagara Ribbon.

Gods of War Sprint 1

For Sprint 1, I blocked out the VFX for the three characters, Raijin, Oni, and Susanoo. For Raijin, I created a lightning effect for her drum sticks and a slight lightning spark effect for the drums behind her. For Oni, I created a fire effect surrounding the back of the character and also fire emitting from his hands. For an extra dramatic effect, I added some subtle smoke to surround him. Lastly, for Susanoo, I blocked out a water effect that will emit from his katana. This effect was created in Houdini and then imported into Niagara as both a point cache and geometry cache to layer on top of each other.

HW 4 Lighting Assignment

Environment Shots: Moody, Abandoned

 

Reference Boards: moody warehouse lighting

Common Art HW Lighting 3

This week, I pulled an asset from the Epic Library and created a 3 point set up and an environmental scene around the asset.

3 Point Lighting Set-Up

Environmental Shot - 70 mm

Extra Lighting - Day

Extra Lighting - Evening

Lighting Workshop HW 2

 This week, I worked on creating and lighting an outdoor environment with a skylight. I then took screenshots of the scene with a cinematic camera.

Lighting Workshop Assignment 1

3-Point Lighting Setup 1

3-Point Lighting Setup 2

Alice VR A Stage

For the final stage of our Alice VR project, I worked on putting in all the decals in the start game level. I also changed the lighting in the start game level so that it was less harsh. In terms of interactivity, I worked on creating a win state and a lose state so that the player has the opportunity to either kill Alice or be killed by Alice. I also tweaked Alice's blueprint to make it more optimized. I also updated the mushroom textures to make them fit the environment more.

Alice VR B Level Stage

 This week, I worked on making more objects interactive, and I worked more on Alice's AI Blueprint. I spent majority of my time on making certain meshes break when dropped. I encountered a certain issue where the simulation would not spawn at the right location, but I learned that getting the location of the hit point of the collision box and connecting it to the spawn location fixed this issue. I also changed the font of the Alice text in the start map game. Overall, I need to work more on the scale of the environment and lights.

Alice VR C Level

 For this past week, I have worked on re-lighting the environment, inputting new assets and animations into the engine, importing sounds into the scene, editing the mushroom interactivity, and created a waterfall effect. I also expanded the environment so that the player has more to look at.