Sword and the stone environment brief

A few shots of an environment based during the sword and the stone story.

Sword in the Stone Brief. Concentrating mainly on the sword, Excalibur, instead of Arthur. Taking place in a forest (possibly Hampstead) early morning. Different shots of the forest leading us towards a shot of the sword and and actor (Arthur) walking towards the stone. Staying with earthy tones as a colour palette. The sword and the stone will be 3D and the rest will be in Nuke

Hampstead Heath

Sword

Storyboard

Making Excalibur

Reference

Modelling

I started off by using a cube and stretching it out then by adding more edges, I was able to add a sharp diamond like shape just under the handle. I was also able to put a dent running down the blade since swords aren't always flat. Once I was happy with the blade I added the hand and modelled it into a shape I was happy with. I then proceeded with sorting out the UVS to bring into substance.

Texturing

Once the model was made and baked I brought it into substance. I based the design off Geralt's sword from the Witcher, I didn't want anything too flashy since I wanted to keep it as realistic as possible. I added a leather-ish handle and added a scratched metal for the sword.

To finish off the model, I downloaded a megascan of a stone .

3DEqualizer

To make sure the model would sit nicely in the scene, I needed to track the shot which I did in 3DE. Once I was happy with the track, I exported everything back into Maya so I could begin with the lightening. It was really important to get the lighting right, as there are a lot of shadows in the scene so it would be visible if it wasn't. I used a skydome light, area light and a directional light.

Once back in Nuke, I had to rotoscope the trunk and merge it on top of the model so the sword in the stone looked like it was sitting in the scene properly.

Keying

I wanted to show my skills in keying, I did this by adding some animals specifically a crow and a horse. By adding the animals it added more to my scene and more "lively". So I started by getting some free footage off of Youtube and I was lucky to have found a real horse in good quality and a crow, the only problem with the crow video was the greenscreen was not great and there was a women going in and out of the clip. By using a keylight node and filter erode node, I was able to get a strong alpha and key (except for the crow, the crow still has a halo around it). Because I wanted the horse in the background, I had to roto around the trees and merge them back on top.

Draft

This was my first draft and since then multiple things in the scene have changed.

God Rays

In a classic Disney or Don Bluth film, to highlight a hero object the use of god rays are mostly present. I had never tried making god rays before. I had to do a bit of research and messing around. I learnt that to make god rays, you can use a radial node and transform node, then merge it over your scene then place a VolumeRays node. From there it's a lot of placing and moving the radial into a place where it looks good as well as messing around with the opacity, gamma and radial fall off. As you can see in my previous draft, I placed the god rays diagonally, which was nice but not exactly what I wanted. So I moved it so the god ray would fall vertically onto the sword. I also needed to time the falloff so it would gradually get stronger.

After having several problems with the grading the back to the front and lightening I decided to change the background to a more haunted one, giving a maleficent vibe. From there I built on top of it adding trunks from different images of trees and then adding some bushes to make the scene look over grown and abandoned. I graded it with dark blueish hue as I believe in my previous version it looked to "happy" and as I had talked with Chris for the sound collaboration about making the sound haunted I believe this was a better fit.