Unreal Shaders

I made a set of shaders for one of my older characters in the Unreal Engine.

 

Breakdown of the materials.

 

I also created an animated shader for the substance that is in her crossbow:

Image Based Lighting

This assignment was inspired by Journey.

I used hdr images from this website: http://www.hdrlabs.com/sibl/archive.html

While using just the “texture” as the light source, emit light turned on, and quality set to 2, I get these results:

Using this image that I got from the sIBL Archive:

The same image, but I changed the rotation of the sphere so that a different section of the image is emitting light:

Comparison between the two:

I gave the drop cloth a mia_material_x and some reflectivity so that the sky reflected into it.

with a lighter background and even more reflectivity(I also modified the sky position):

I modified the scene a little so that I could utilize a portal light. I also changed the sky image:

Another sky image and a new color multiplier:

Just an’env’ image:

Rendered without the sky background:

Higher quality render of an earlier image:

 

 

 

 

 

Three Point Lighting

Key light only:

Fill light only:

Fill light with a blocker:

Rim light only:

Rim light with a blocker:

The finished image:

 

Physical Sun and Sky

Mia Material X and Caustics

It took some time, but I got caustics to work in Maya, using mia material x.

I rendered a scene using red glass, painted wood (the chess board), and metal. The metal didn’t turn out as well as I would have liked.

Some other variations on the metal material:

Final Gather vs Global Illumination

Final Gather only (left), global illumination only (right)

Final Gather only (left), global illumination only (right)

Both turned on.

Area Lights

A small sample of area light settings.

I added an area light with the default settings.

The scene layout was inspired by a concept art piece by Matt Rhodes. Reference link here: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/Yqob

Render:

The light placed in a different position:

And another position:

I changed the decay rate to quadratic.

Ooops, it’s too dark to see now.

I increased the intensity to 10. It’s slightly brighter if I increase the gamma.

You can see that the light is effecting the area, but it just isn’t enough. So, I changed the intensity to 150000.

Here is a comparison between the first (1 intensity, no quadratic decay) and last image (150000 intensity, quadratic decay):

 

Ramp Shaders

Messing around with ramp shader settings in Maya.