Capstone
Cole Armstrong
Ice Shader Attempt 1
Subsurface Effect
I used a constant vector 4 node to set the general colour of the subsurface. Then used the Fresnel node to create the fade on the edges of the material. So to increase amount of fresnel of the material, I just need to change the exponent of the node. Currently I have it set to 3.5.
Normals
I multiply the 2 Ice normal maps by a vector 3 node. This takes the values of the red and green channels of the maps and halves them. The vector 3 node also removes the blue channel from the normal maps. Then I add the 2 normal maps of the ice to the normal map of the mesh (The normal map of the mesh still has the blue channel values).
Albedo, Specular and Roughness
Albedo: I just tiled a snow texture by 24 using a texture coordinate node.
Specular: I set the specular of the shader to 1 using a constant node.
Roughness: I set the roughness of the shader to 0.1 using a constant node.
Ice Shader Attempt 2
I realized that the first shader I made was good but the subsurface scattering was not as advanced as it could be. I used reference from some of Unreal's assets that were free in the market place and found a good ice shader with in depth subsurface scattering so I applied that to my previous shader and this was the result.
Here I enhanced the subsurface scattering using height maps and using a scalar parameter to control how intense the subsurface scattering would appear.
Final Shader
Now that I had a good looking ice shader, I thought it would be a good idea if I added snow to vertex paint on. So I took what we had learned in class about vertex shaders and applied that but with my textures and my advanced subsurface scattering. This worked well although I found that the snow had subsurface scattering just like the ice did. So I multiplied it by the red channel to remove the scattering from the rest. This worked but then I realized that snow would have a little bit of scattering in it, so finally I duplicated the scattering nodes and scaled the subsurface from 1 down to 0.07 for the snow, then used a lerp node to combine combine them. This was my final material blueprint.
Finished Product
In this picture I took my final shader and applied it to a plane. Then I added a red point light under the plane to showcase the subsurface scattering. As you can see the entire material has the light of the red shining through although it is much more intense on the ice compared to the snow.
Frame Work
Right here I am modeling the base of my ship.
Front Piece
I added a front addition to the ship
Adding a little detail
In this picture I have made more detailing on the front of the boat. Also I have added molding around the boat and a side piece that the shrouds will tie from.
Adding Cannons
Stairs
Sails
Ship Changes
I added more sails, detailing to the back of the ship and re-shaped the front of the ship a little to match the concept art better.
Blockout in UE4
I also textured some of the ship body and a couple smaller assets
Apex Cloth
I played around with Apex cloth in Maya for a few days and honestly I got pretty frustrated at times. I had never brought cloth into Maya and I never would have thought it'd be such a pain. Thankfully I found a past Durham students blog and it went through everything step by step.
Here is the link: https://poirierjason91.wordpress.com/
Here is the link: https://poirierjason91.wordpress.com/
Particles, fog and snow
I worked a lot this week on making the environment feel a little more like an icy snow covered winter wonderland. This means adding fog, lots of different particle effects and covering the ground in snow.
Adding Lighting, Lut and Improved Ice Models
More Lighting and Snow
Now I added a large rectangle in the back and gave it a white emmisive material and lowered the opacity to give the illusion of a lit background with fog. The snow is just a couple chunks of snow banks that I placed around the landscape.
Revisions
I then got a critique from my profs and was told that my icebergs were too filled with ice and not enough snow. Also they said that the ground needed to be fixed up and the ice shards in the water needed work. This was my fix to those mistakes.