Week 2 Update
Lighting Study
Getting the lighting right is something that I have struggled with, so this week I did my first lighting pass on my blockout to get an overall feel. I aimed to get some key shadows into the scene that I felt would pull it together. The video below is looking at the shadows that I wanted to capture in the scene. The green area is the main shadow created by a building in the way of the sun, the blue area is the skylight exposure to the water which creates a bright white reflection in the water and finally is the green area which is the natural light from the sun.
Beauty Shot Setup
Another task that I did this week was placing 4 cameras in spots that I feel would create a good beauty shot. I wanted most of them to focus on the cafe front as this was the focal point of the scene but I made sure to create a couple that would focus on the bridge and the scene as a whole this, in turn, would mean I have a variety of beauty shots to pick from.
Fly Through
This week was full of little tasks, another one was to set up the fly through camera. This seems a little too early to do this but having it done now makes it easier for me in the future. Throughout the project, I'm sure that it will change slightly to compensate for detail in certain areas.
Basic Water Material
The big task this week was definitely the water shader and getting the basic script down. I have played around with around with water shaders before on another project but this time I wanted to come at it with another angel. I really wanted to give it a movement that simulated the Venice canal water, to do this it was important that I got the normal and height maps correct as this would determine the height of the waves and how it would react in the world position offset. Overall I'm happy with the first draft of the material, it is currently a material instance with a couple of changeable options that are allowing me to tweak it on the go, but I'm sure throughout the project it will change slightly. The bare bones of it are there and that's what counts.
Boat Animation
When I was looking around my scene I felt that it was missing something, I came to the conclusion that it didn't feel like it was alive, so I started to fix this by adding a floating animation to the boats so they look like they interact with the water. It was an easy process, I simply created a matinee, and rotated the boat on the XYZ axis very slightly and I was able to create the rocking motion.
