Firefly ~ A Lively Night of Past Memories

This is the second environment I made this year, it is a personal project I worked on between classes in my free time. The main objective behind this project was to push my knowledge of Houdini's layout and environment tools, while also using and learning VRay for the first time. I also practised the workflow from Maya to Houdini. As for the visual goals I was initially aiming for, I knew I wanted to do a night scene and have less foliage to diversify this environment from my other projects, and after watching "Raya and the Last Dragon" by Disney Animation, I felt very inspired by one regions in particular present in the movie: Talon. I loved the idea of a village on the water, and the very colorful and lively ambiance and overall mood of that location, it really left an impression on me and perfectly fit the kind of environment I was aiming to do for this project, so I took it as a main inspiration for the concept I would later make. Having decided on the technical, visual and a story to tell through this project, I was ready to jump right in and start creating this lively environment.

The process: I started by finding some reference images of the Talon environment in Raya, and some frames from a bunch of other movies for the mood, camera angles, etc. I then made some sketches and drew concept arts to put my ideas on paper while exploring different iterations. I took some inspiration from "Star Wars: Rogue One" for some temples and camera shots. Finally, it was time to start working in 3D, so I made my first layout in Maya using proxy assets and placed the cameras. Once I was satisfied with the layout, I exported everything and moved over to Houdini. Luckily, I found a great pack of kitbash assets so I was able to save some time by integrating some of those, and modeling things that were more specific such as the temples in maya, and foliage in SpeedTree. I had some challenges to overcome with VRay because of how different some things are compared to other engines I was more familiar with (Arnold, Karma, Lumen) but once I got through those initial hiccups, the rest was smooth. I got to learn how to instance and randomize lights, their colors and their intensities. I also experimented a lot with VRay's physical sky, and the lightmix options it offers really allowed a lot of quick modifications and previews without needing to re-render. Shading was also a breeze as it shared many similarities with other renderers. While working, I constantly would ask for feedback from anyone that was willing to give it (special thanks Robin, Anthony, Eduardo) and I ended up revising the camera angle a couple of times as well as the composition. Feedback was also very crucial once I got to the next and final step: Compositing in Nuke. This was the first time I put so much time and effort into compositing (as previously I would do most of the work in render and leave very little for comp) and I really saw the potential and power of compositing, it makes a huge difference and boosts any render by a significant amount. Luckily, I was able to ask for help from my compositing teacher Camille Vaisseur when I had questions and she helped a lot.

And finally, I would like to dedicate this project to Wei, a very kind man that is being represented by the character depicted in this environment and contributing to its story!