Entomology Table -Redshift and Bug Sculpt

Unreal Engine Render Test

I tested the render in Unreal Engine 5 to encountered some shader errors with transparent materials. Based on my past experience with this program, up to version 5.3- Lumen does not support transparency refraction and shadow calculations. When it comes to my renderer choice, UE5 was a strong candidate for its quick render time and flexibility, but the lack of glass details was critical for my project due to large glass panes and multiple arrays of glass bottles.

After this camera test, I adjusted the glass shaders to better respond to light.

The artifact has disappeared, and the glass behaves more realistically to light- but does not cast diffuse and refraction shadows, thus lacking realism. I figured that there was no sensible way of resolving this issue in the current state of the software, so I had to make a decision to shift the renderer to Redshift.

Rendering with Redshift

The reason for the choice was because of the fast speed and good quality of the render. Redshift also handles subsurface well as well as refraction shadows- so it was a perfect option for me.

I integrated every object and shader into a Houdini file, and all paths were set and cleaned up. However, I encountered some issues such as-

1. I could not figure out how to work with UDIMs in Houdini Redshift.

2. One-sided materials seemed to appear transparent as a whole, thus me having to fix the UVs and geometry of the room.

I plan to address these issues by Tuesday by asking some of my peers who are more proficient with the Houdini & Redshift workflow.

More Props

I modeled and textured some extra props- books, to better crowd the scene and the shelves surrounding the room. Book models vary by size (based on real-life children's book sizes- 10x7, 8x8, 9x7) and LODs to save render time. For example, if it is a book to be seen up close, I would use the highest LOD model. If it is one of the many books on the shelf far away, I would use the model with the lowest LOD. They all share the same UVs, thus textures are interchangeable.

Bug Modeling

Based on the image references that I gathered in my R&D stage, I started sculpting the bugs that would be in the scene. In this stage, I focused on blocking out their unique features and leaving the interchangeable(or similar) parts- such as their legs. Wings would be drawn in 2D, and then projected as a height map or imported as an alpha in Zbrush.

Bug Modeling

Based on the image references that I gathered in my R&D stage, I started sculpting the bugs that would be in the scene. In this stage, I focused on blocking out their unique features and leaving the interchangeable(or similar) parts- such as their legs. Wings would be drawn in 2D, and then projected as a height map or imported as an alpha in Zbrush.