Nira's VFX Blog
A journey through my master

Tag: Hologram effect

Categories
Advanced & Experimental Group

Week 9: Hologram Base Textures in Substance Painter & Final Model Animation in Maya

This week I focused on finishing the textures of the hologram and refine its animation.

Hologram UVs correction and base texture

When I started to add the textures to the base of the hologram in Substance Painter, I noticed that my UVs were wrong as I sliced them in sections. Therefore, any time I tried to add a rust effect on edges, the programme was not detecting them and placed the textured in the middle. I then went back to Maya and redo the UV maps, but this time only cutting off the edge that was less visible, and unfolded the UV from that cut. Then, I updated the UVs in Substance Painter and added the rust effect in the edges.

Hologram UV maps corrected in Maya

Originally, I wanted to do the texture in bronze colour to follow the style of most of the objects in the master render. However, I then realised that this texture will not work as hit is too flat and yellowish so it does not really match with the blue hologram effect on top of it.

Initial bronze texture test in Substance Painter with some dirt and rust effect added on top
Rings with bronze texture and dirt effect
Overall look with bronze texture

After testing the bronze texture, I decided to swap to a more reflective and metallic texture such as the copper texture, and then add the dirt and scratches masks I made for the previous bronze texture on top of the new texture.

Base with copper texture for the overall surface and cobalt texture for the small rivets and the central star
Base texture made of copper preset mixed with some previous features from the bronze texture (dirt and damaged edges effects)
Outer ring texture is the same as the base but changed the position and the quantity of dirt effect shown
Outer ring rivets textured with cobalt preset and some surface scratches mask
Both inner rings have damaged cobalt as texture – I didn’t add many effects to these rings as they are inside the hologram so they are not too visible
After I finished with the textures, I baked them all and exported them in Arnold aiStandard (as bmp)

After exporting the textures from Substance Painter, I created the shaders in Maya using the Substance plug-in, and linked each shader the the correspondent part of the hologram. After relinking textures in Maya, I noticed that the metallic textures looked too flat and they did not shine as a metallic surface would do in reality. Therefore, I checked the roughness map of the copper texture and reduced the ‘alpha gain’ till 0.5 (it was 1 before) and then changed the ‘color gain’ to a darker gray so the shadows had some contrast from black to gray (before they were white so they were not visible, hence the flat look). Then, I went to the ‘Lens Effect’ I added for the hologram and reduced the ‘threshold’ from 1 to 0.65 so it did not look that white/burnt shine on the surface of the metallic base.

‘Lens Effect’ added in render settings for hologram effect
‘Threshold’ reduced from 1 to 0.65
In copper shader – ‘Roughness map’ – reduced ‘Alpha Gain’ and ‘Color Gain’ changed to darker gray

After the textures were finally completed, I redid the animation of the spinning of the rings and the little satellites rotation on them with manual key framing.

Final hologram model with textures and animation
Categories
Advanced & Experimental Group

Week 7: Radio & Planet Hologram Final Models & UV Maps

This week I added some more details to the radio and the planet hologram, and tried to finish the UV maps of both of them to leave them ready for texturing next week.

Radio model improvement

I considered that the radio was looking a bit flat and boring. Since the style we are approaching is more detailed and crowded, I decided to add some patterns on the top of the radio following the organic shapes I added in the front part of the model. Also, I saw that Liam and Roos had a specific pattern in their models (couch, arm chair, and coffee table) which made the style of the objects look more cohesive. Therefore, I asked them how they made it and added it to the sides of my radio. For the top decoration, I used curves as before that then I would transform into brush strokes and lastly into mesh. For the pattern on the sides, I created a plane, then used the ‘Poke’ feature to create these crossed intersections on each subdivision of the plane, and then I extruded those faces keeping the faces separately.

Final radio model – 360 render in Maya

Radio UV maps

After I finished with the final version of the radio, I moved on with the UV maps.

Radio top UV map
Radio main body UV map
Radio top decoration UV map
Radio channels screen UV map
Radio top switchers UV map
Radio volume screen UV map
Radio middle switcher UV map
Radio handle UV map
Radio bottom speaker UV map
Radio base UV map
Radio decorations UV map
Radio inner mechanism UV map
Radio inner cables UV map
Radio UV maps with checkerboards

Planet hologram base remodelling and hologram

After Martyna and Roos had a 1-to-1 session with Dom, he considered that the platform of the hologram was too small and it did not feel like part of the composition. Therefore, I remodelled the platform, this time based on Martyna’s idea of taking an old school compass as a reference. This compass idea fits really good with the hologram style as it would look like it is a navigation map for the spaceship’s route. I also made the Earth continents shape in the inner sphere of the hologram, using MASH distribute node to generate particles and then make a road map so the particles follow the shape of a 2D image that I found online and converted in an alpha map in Photoshop. Then, I also added extra particles in the outer sphere of the hologram to give like a more random and glitchy effect. I also animated the rings and spheres so they rotate simultaneously. Lastly, I also found a tutorial that shows how to create a proper hologram effect (using a multiply and a facing ratio nodes, playing with transmission weight and then adding a ‘Lens effect’ to the render settings).

Hologram effect tutorial (Arnold renderer, 2021)
Distribute node to replicate the particle created and distribute it around the inner sphere
Visibility node that is linked to the 2D image of the world map so it follows the alpha map
Signal node added to the particles of the outer sphere to give some random animation to these
Playblast of final hologram model with animation (no textures added)
Base remodelled
Base remodelled
Hologram effect
Final model

References

Arnold renderer, 2021. Arnold tutorial – How to create a holographic effect in MtoA (online). Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glG4dUnSH3o&list=PLAlv9GvsMvnMCUwPx_gcXaCj_yHYdIPqD&index=1 [Accessed 27 May 2023]