Create a chill night in for some robot friends

Introduction

Hello everyone! Ahmad Turki here, and today I will be showing you a step by step tutorial for my latest art work “Chill Night | チルナイト” and how I created it, after downloading the project from https://renderman.pixar.com/robot-room.

Layout and set-dressing

To begin, I always like to make my scene look busy with elements lying around to make it look more interesting, and more objects mean more details in the shot, especially when it’s light and shadow. So what I do is I start first by setting up my camera, and once I am happy with the angle I start shuffling the objects around to fit the frame.

Creating basic lights

I was keen on creating something interesting with the lights. I have many elements to take advantage of, so instead of creating the obvious daylight, I had to create a nice mix between cold and warm, creating cold light to come from outside the window, and a nice warm light in the living room.

Lighting details

After creating the basic lights and setting up the mood of the shot, I started creating extra details with the light. I focused on the heroes of the shot which is the robots, and created a balanced mix between orange and blue without distracting from the many colors – so I kept it simple and neat. The main focus of the shot was the robots.

Unfolding UV's

After I'm done with my lights, and the whole shot setup is ready, I start the next step which is UV unfolding. I start by assigning a checker to my material so it helps to make sure there is no stretching in the UV, or any flipped UVs. After I'm done I start to layout and rearrange my Uvs. What helps me sometimes is using UDIM for some elements to save some time creating shaders.

Texturing

After all my UVs are done, I started my next step which was assigning textures to my elements. I used Substance Painter as it is easier for me to see how my textures look before baking them to the objects and rendering them. I used a mix of the smart materials in the software and some realistic textures I found online (texturehaven.com).

After I’m done I start to plug in all my textures to the shaders, and adjust the shaders a bit according to the lights. I tend to use (diffuse\roughness\normal) as my basic textures, and I can always add more if needed.

Setting up for render

After I’m done with my shot and finished my lights/shaders, I start to prep for render. Using Arnold Render is quite tricky when it comes to samples and at the same time I do not want my render to take long, so I try to keep it clean and not expensive to render.

Compositing

After the render is done, I start setting up my AOV and compiling them in Nuke, using color correction and grades to merge and balance the final output.

Final touches edit

This is new to most CGI artists as I like to use Lightroom to do the final touches and color grading on the final image. The color control I get in Lightroom is very helpful, and as a photographer I tend to use it too often, which makes it a comfortable tool for me to use.