Water droplets in Maya

Scene setting in Maya - using water droplets and backlighting

Scene setting and final shot set up

Scene setting and inserting the final shot set ups into the storyboard, so continuing edits can be made and the final footage from the timelapse and winter scenery, shot around Dundee in January can be framed in the shot.

Image directly below shows CG grass stems in Maya, with an image plane behind, of the landscape I filmed. I'm now using reference (left) of how water droplets form on stems and will recreate this in Maya (right).

Once all of this is complete then I will animate the melting ice men and then get everything into Nuke and begin comping it all together - including lots of light rays, God Rays and lens flare.

Dressing to shot

shot_10: Dressing to shot. I've deleted most of the tree and have just left the branches that appear in shot. The icemen have been removed and I will put some ice highlights on the branches...

This will save time on rendering

Green screen shots for the water droplet scene

Green screen image for the water droplet scene

Scene setting for shot 16

Scene setting for shot_16.

Left: Rendered shot at 50%

Right: Perspective panel showing the image plane and IBL.

I've taken a screen shot of the sky footage and have created a jpeg file, with just the sky, for the purposes of rendering refractions. I've eliminated all the hills, grass etc for this shot, so that the perspective on the branches works.

Next step:

To replace the sky image with a screen shot of the green screen footage.

In this case, the image with the hand and finger pointing.

Left: Prelude clips of green screen footage

Right: Perspective panel

Photoshop concept ideas translated into Maya 3D

 Storyboard concept idea in Photoshop

3D perspective view in Maya

Render test of CG elements. Background to be timelapse footage comped in Nuke

Close up of iceman face - idea for shot set up

Sculpt tool on a polyplane to create ice on a branch

 Creating a poly plane and using the sculpt tool to create a riven surface.
Then applying it, sculpting it and using the soft select tool to shape the vertices to the branch and then applying the mia_material_x shader, as per the icemen.
The will help the icemen 'sit' in the scene and be part of the ice on the branch.