SCAD X Harbor - Week 4
- Wei Lou
- Jan 24
- 3 min read
Updated: Feb 17
Feedback
From Mentors
Allie:
Camera movement for shot 5—make sure it's smooth and flowy.
Billy:
The Camellia flower color should be subtle with detailed texture and good color depth.
Remove the spritz; there's no need to show functionality.
Reduce the background saturation.
Kyle:
Reduce the background saturation.
The logo is important for the commercial—make sure to emphasize it.
Finalize the previs.
Remove the spritz; there's no need to show functionality.
Hailey:
The bottle animation is stiff.
The logo animation doesn't look good. Consider removing the end card shot.
From Guest
Yong Duk Jhun:
Keep camera moving.
Keep flower close to the camera.
Missing FX Work to Complete this week:
Flower blooming FX.
Petal shape adjustment.
Vellum fluid R&D.
FX Tasks
References
2.0 Blooming flower R&D
[Problem 1]
Last week, I built the network to ensure the blooming FX was working properly. To avoid errors in the Vellum simulation, I kept the inner bud open.
When I tried to match the visual reference (an inner bud tightly folded that later blooms into a full flower), the petals stuck together.
Approach 1 (X)
I adjusted the rig pose of the skeleton and repositioned each petal to avoid overlapping primitives. This worked temporarily, but it became very time-consuming when I needed to adjust the petal shapes later.
Approach 2 - Solution (√）
I set the petals apart before the simulation and then brought them together afterward, now they don't stuck there anymore.
[Problem 2]
After reducing the number of petals, one petal ended up folding in the end.
Solution (√）
After multiple tests, I discovered that the bottom part I pinned was too small. I expanded the bottom area by selecting more points, and after remeshing, it still worked properly.
2.1 Blooming flower adjustment
Since the asymmetrical petal doesn't differ significantly from the symmetrical one, I switched it back to avoid potential remeshing issues.
There are more primitives on the top side, which makes the petal edges look more organic by folding naturally.
The bottom part of the petal has expanded slightly compared to the sharper end in the previous version.
I reduced the number of petals to 22 based on visual references.
Adding noise to create the petals' texture.
I really need to move on to the fluid simulation since I've spent too much time on this. I did notice that I folded the edges too much, making them look rotten, and one petal is sitting too close to the others.
I will address these issues in the next iteration.
Vellum fluid R&D
There isn’t enough time to fully develop the droplets this weekend.
I used distorted spheres copied to points selected from the flower for shot 2 just for previs and set up the vellum node graph for shot 3.
I plan to refine and develop the droplets for both shots in the coming days.
Unfortunately, we are experiencing issues bringing the flower shader from Maya into Houdini, so there won’t be renders for shots 2 and 3 this week. We will resolve this as soon as possible.
However, our team successfully rendered shot 4!
Shoutout to my amazing teammates!
shot 4 render
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