Coral Reef Scene

Reference

I wanted to create an underwater scene where the Can sinks to the bottom of the ocean. In the original previs, the can is shown at the bottom of a body of water with plants swaying around. However, I wanted the water scenes to be split into different sections to demonstrate the journey the Can is on. So for this scene I just concentrated on a coral reef kind of scene.

I started gathering pictures for inspiration:

I liked the composition of these images and wanted to carry the cavern feel through to my scene. I started with using a subdivided Icosphere and using the Displace modifier, which made some rough rock shapes. By moving the location of the rocks it changes the shape. I duplicated these objects and changed the shape and scale to create a rocky landscape. The tutorial below helped me learn how to create the rocks quickly.

I used a plane and then added a texture that I found to create the bottom of the sea floor. I used the shader editor to add a

I then used a texture map and there is a cool short cut in Blender, Ctrl+Shift+T which allowed me to bring up file on the computer and then select a roughness, colour and normal map.

I then used Proportional Editing and in edit mode I selected the verts to create dips and rises in the plane.

Modelling Coral

Using the images I collected of different coral reefs, to create those shapes I started modelling the coral using Icospheres. After subdividing I either extruded the faces, extruded the faces and the scales them down or used the Inset tool then scaled down, the extruded in. All have unique shapes. Some were simply just Icospheres cut in half. One of the shapes that weren’t icosheres were disk like shapes that I created from scaling a subdivided cylinders.

I then duplicate these shapes and began to place them around the scene to create the composition. Once I was happy with the comp I started on creating textures.

Procedural Textures

I love procedural textures! I wanted to create a texture over the rocks. There were many rocks in weird shapes so thought it would be an easier way than UV unwrapping the objects.

I found this tutorial for a coral rock material

I modified the rocks and added different colour versions to fit the scene. Whilst finding the rock texture tutorial, I found the tutorial below on coral texture also. From there, it gave me a good basics to play around with the nodes to customise it for the scene.

I also used the tutorial below to create a coral texture and adjusted it to customise and make several different versions

This is one of the node trees for one of the coral textures.

After the textures were applied this is what the scene looked like below.

The last step of the scene was to add lighting to the scene. I added sun lights but I needed some caustics to simulate light hitting the water. I found this tutorial

It started off as an emission shader with two voronoi textures connected to an emission shader and using different value nodes to adjust the scale, smoothness and randomness and then using the animating the revolutions or the movement using the W factor. After that it was just able adjusting the timing. This caustics was done using a Spot Light. Then I just played with the position, angulation and the colour of the Spot light.

Finishing Touches

I added a Cube to the scene to create an atmosphere. I added a Principle Volume shader along with a Musgrave texture to make the volume denser and lighter in different areas

I also played around with the colour to compliment the comp and the light. I also added a couple of area lights. I also add a F-Stop of 2.0 with the focus object being the can.

Animation

I added a noise modifier to the camera and the can. This gave them both a subtle wiggle animation to make it look more dynamic in the water. I then added a location and rotation animation to the can to make a really lower moving animation of the can moving through the water. I wanted the can to move from left to right to match up with the other scene I was planning on doing to keep consistency and demonstrate the consent move journey the can is on.

Issues

I think because the scene was so heavy it was really hard to load it on my computer and check what it would look like using cycles and therefore what it would look like when it was rendered. It made the computer very slow and slow to create the scene by the end.

I also had to do the file conversion thing so that it would render on the university renderfarm. Again this took time to open the file in Blender 3.0 change the broken shaders.

The final render is below