EXPEDIA - BRING THE WORLD WITHIN REACH
This is a group project I was a part of for a collaborative class with The Mill. I was responsible for lighting, look development, and texturing. My teammates are Jake Diana (Compositer), Joonho Bang (FX), and Imogen Davies (FX). Please view the next video for a quick breakdown or scroll below to read the full breakdown.
Programs: Maya, Photoshop, Substance Designer, Substance Painter, Nuke, Houdini
Responsible for: Lighting, Look Development, and Texturing
breakdown
brainstorming and concept
With the theme "vehicles," it was unanimous among my teammates that we wanted to do something that wasn't a car. We thought about the Avatar movie and came to the decision of making our project a hot air balloon. With this, we decided to advertise Expedia since it's a travel agency. We then decided on substituting the floating islands with other balloons with passport stamps going to different destinations. So I made a quick storyboard for the sequence.
previs
With the storyboard established, me and my teammates sat down and talked about making our previs. Joonho Bang bought a hot air balloon model from TurboSquid which I used to make the previs with my teammates on call. I quickly sculpted placeholder mountains and clouds just to get the placement and scale right for the previs.
look development References
Before transitioning to the next step, I gathered as many references I could of parts of a hot air balloon so I could replicate the materials as best as I can.
early look development
I then jumped onto early look development. This meant that I made basic materials in Maya Arnold using only nodes available in the program and tried to make it as close as the references as I can.
With those early materials, I was able to do some quick render tests with lighting to make sure that everything looks okay before I proceed to making the textures and adding more maps.
UVing and Texturing
First, I started fixing the UVs in order to move on to the next step which is texturing. I had to separate parts of the model and UV them individually before combining them back together. After they were fixed and separated properly, I went into Substance Designer to create a shader for the checkered pattern that my team and I were aiming for.
Then I started making all the maps I needed for the balloons; this includes the balloons in the back representing different countries. I tried using the color palettes of flags from different countries. Here are the maps I generated.
These are screenshots from Substance Painter of the different country balloons.
I worked on the balloon shader and tried to change the specularity and the transmission of the material. I did some research into nylon material and tried to replicate the grid highlight look. I plugged the grid map into specular color and a subtle dirt roughness map into roughness. I did many material tests with just the spec, SSS, and transmission and decided that transmission worked best on its own
Lighting references
Simultaneously, I also worked on lighting. But before I did, I gathered some lighting references so I know what type of feel to go for. My teammates and I wanted to go for a sunset/golden hour look.
Lighting
I also found out that the skydome's perspective was skewed in the renders due to the scaling of the scene. So I switched it to a geodome, which fixed the perspective issue but caused fireflies in my renders. In order to fix that, I clamped the HDRI and also adjusted the render settings. Due to how spacious the scene is, I had to use directional lights to light the whole scene properly and adding additional lights when needed. My lights are then put in a rig so that it's rotatable and adjustable (sun position and etc). This light rig was also used to light the clouds.
Here's the look development turntable for the balloon and the clouds with the lighting I did.
Extras
I helped out with compositing a bit for shots 3 & 4. I also helped with the sound design of the commercial and I drew the assets and made the basic ending credit sequence with final touches from Imogen Davies.
