DUST

This scene was more of a test than anything. I wanted to see if I could create a scene with a green screened background and just myself as the subject. However, my only caveat was to keep it as low budget as possible. I filmed the footage on an iphone, used two house lamps for lighting, and keyed myself out using a 10$ green screen I found at Walmart.

I made two tools to help ease the process a little bit. The first one is a custom light wrap shader that allows me to have light seemingly wrap around the keyed footage. this helps integrate the character into the environment a bit more and in some cases helps hide any poorly keyed edges.

The second and in my opinion more interesting technique was using normal maps to create a sense of depth on the character. I used Da Vinci Resolve to create depth maps, then applied them to my character and set up normal map calculations. With this I could bake all of my footage to an image sequence with constantly updating normal data. This helps the light wrap around my character and behave a little bit more normal than simply shining a light onto a flat plane and evenly lighting all of the footage.

The Background scene is a fully built spaceship interior using a mix of handmade props, and some photo-scanned b29 cockpit assets. I spent a decent amount of time on the aesthetic of the surrounding cockpit, blending both sci-fi elements and WWII era military equipment. Overall it is a filled to the brim mess of scanners, radars, and bombing equipment that I personally love. The scene is still a work in progress, but it is heading in a direction that I am extremely happy with.