Coffee Mug

Employs the use of render layers to create essential elements for controlling the lighting and reflections of an object composited into a still image.

Responsibilities: Modeler, Lighter, Surfacing Artist and Compositor

Tools: Maya and Nuke

Modeling, UV layout, lighting and surfacing of CG mug, platter and counter asset done in Maya. Creation of platter and counter asset for the purpose reflections and shadows of the mug digital asset. Lighting rig is a basic 3 point system with each spot light positioned around the digital assets  120 degrees from one another. These spot lights and their shadows are one of three colors red, green and blue for compositing purposes.

Surfacing of the platter is setup as a mirror to capture the mug assets reflection for compositing over the platter in the background plate. Surfacing shader for the mug is constructed as a layered shader with a base color and a pattern also done for compositing purposes. The shader for the counter is a basic blinn set with the same reflective value as the counter from the background plate.

Render layers are setup for diffuse (mug and platter), specular (mug and platter), reflection (mug, platter and counter), lighting (mug), shadows (mug), ambient occlusion (mug) and mattes (mug and platter) for use in compositing. The reflection of the mug in the platter and the mug on the counter are composited as two seperate trees and merged together before merging with the background plate in Nuke. Lighting is adjusted solely in Nuke from the render layers.