SCAD x The Mill NY update 6

Feedback / Notes:

Mentor David:

1. Great costume design! Overall it feels like it fits into the family of Skittle ads.

2. shot 4abc feels very long at the moment. What is the point of interest during that time?

3. The painting’s transition sim feels a little too big but the skittles spots are over the top so it kind of works. Maybe we can scale down the billowy shapes a little and try to get a little more detail in the smoke sim.

Mentor Natasha:

1. Wardrobe is great! Love the costume.

2. Close up of the fingers and the skittle ( sh2d):: fingers should look manicured

3. during the real shoot (if this shot is still there). Letter “S” should read better (inhanc it in comp)

4. Shots 4a 4b 4c and 5 we were talking about making that transition overlapping in action of the camera and skittles lifting up from the canvas, so it doesn’t feel too long.

5. Lookdev on skittles looks great. I like the variations in specular component.

6. The flying text feels a little awkward in terms of perspective. You ARE on brand but maybe we can try to keep the vertical lines of the text parallel to make it less awkward like in the image below. Maybe only in final resting position? Maybe worth a try?

7. Lookdev on easel looks great.

Adjustments I am going to do this week:

1. shot 4abc, instead of cut, using dolly in

2. scale down the mushroom shape of pyro / add more details on pyro

3. shot 5, transition overlapping in action of the camera and skittles lifting up from the canvas

4. building up the particles at the beginning instead of coming all at once

5. animate the five hero skittles

Professor Fowler:

1. particles pop on very quickly, also are trailing out from the pyro

2. Is there a way at the beginning to see more of the build up rather than all at once

Render in Arnold

Since I was more familiar with Redshift in Houdini, I decided to render the pyro using Redshift. However, it didn’t look good in Nuke; it appeared too transparent and bright. I considered trying a different renderer to achieve the best result, closest to what I saw in the viewport. I planned to use Karma with USD in Solaris, but Houdini kept crashing when I tried to export the volume as a USD file. So, I switched to Arnold in Houdini, and I found that it looked much better in Nuke.

10/5

Redshift

Arnold

Mateirals in Arnold

For the materials, I need to set up a standard volume and map the Cd attribute to the scatter channel.

Aside from plugging Arnold into Houdini, there are a few additional steps required to render volumes and particles in Arnold. First, I need to cache the volume as a VDB. Since I need to transfer the color attribute Cd to the particles, I also have to apply Arnold properties to retrieve the attribute from Houdini.

shot 3 fix mushroom shape of pyro

I received feedback from our mentor, David, who suggested that I scale down the billowy shape in the pyro sim. So, I started looking for ways to reduce the mushroom shape and Kulin recommended a tutorial that uses velocity to control the pyro by limiting the maximum speed.

10/2

Particles / Pyro Render Pass

9/30

10/1

Building up the particles at the beginning / Slow down

Based on feedback from Professor Fowler, I keyframed the scatter count to build up the particles instead of having them all come out at the same time at the beginning.

10/3

Pyro / Particles lighting and shading

Since I have more experience rendering in Redshift, I chose to render in Redshift, and here's the material and render setup. For the particles, you need to enable "Render as Particles" in the Redshift object settings. For the materials, use the Particle Attribute Lookup to get the Cd and connect it to the Base Color.

velocity to control the pyro by limiting the maximum speed

scattering up to 20000

Pyro Spread Setup

I was testing the best motion for when the Skittles spread out across the entire canvas. I used attribute ramp to adjust how far the Skittles move away from the canvas.

I also added one more vertical Skittle on the canvas based on feedback from Professor Fowler, as there was a gap before.

1

.6

.8

Using the absolute max speed from the velocity field helps reduce the mushroom shape in the pyro simulation by controlling how quickly the gas expands. Slowing down the gas movement allows for a more natural diffusion, keeping the shape more compact. Additionally, this method manages the turbulence and creates a more defined look, making the overall effect more realistic.

• Gas Match Field: Makes sure the velocity and gas fields sync up

• Gas Reduce: Cuts down on extra data

• Gas Analysis: Looks at how the gas is moving

• Modify Data: change speed and density behavior

dissapation .2

dissapation .1

dissapation .15

I was tweaking the value of the swirl size for the turbulence.

I also felt the pyro was lingering too long, so I used dissipation to control when it disappears.

Previs Updated

After our slap comp, we decided to cut some shots and focus on those that tell the story. The hero shot will still be the CG integration one. The second shot will be the close-up live action with the replaced Skittles. The third shot will feature the painter reaching out to grab a handful of Skittles, and the fourth will show the RBD shot of the Skittles flying toward the camera. Finally, the five hero Skittles will fly into the sky, with the camera following them to reveal the slogan.

10/3