For the second KNGF commercial, I had the opportunity to explore the visual style of the smoke that was a big part of communicating the trauma Roland suffered. To make the transition believable, the smoke needed a rough and graphical feel to reflect his experience clearly. I made many iterations and really liked the artistic and technical challenges.
Based on the illustrations of Audrey, we created textures in Substance Painter for the characters. One texture that only appears when light hits the character and one with different shapes that is only visible in shadow.
This was needed to create the feeling that lighting was painted on top of the models
In Maya, we would combine these textures with Vray toon shading and additional shader magic like stylized rim lighting, painterly gradations, and toon lines.
Museum depot – immersive view through
Style development
Exploring handcrafted ways of 3D art and animation for Dream Droplets
Handpainting textures and 3D geometry
You can change the lighting with Shift + Left click drag
Link to the full article
Look exploration 3D sea
2D painted
Quick 3D style frame / final
Lookdev process
Look exploration seductive gold campaign
Look Development
To make the painterly shaders of the environment, we first tried to get close to the mood I wanted by lighting and shading the scene. Then we would render an isolated light- and shadow version of the scene to be painted over in Photoshop. After that process, we build a shader that uses the light and dark renders as a projected base for the final lighting. This time with characters in the scene, and all the lighting and shadows reacting to the painterly base.
Final
The final result of this close shot of the captain. In this scene, you can see the shadow the captain casts on the table.