Grzegorz Baran
Expert Materials Artist at Ubisoft Reflections
Home page
Resume
Store

The Coast - Photomoteic stereo based asset test

Basically this is my first 3D environmental scene made in Blender (after the Donut one ;P) with the GRASS being a main hero. I setup this scene just to test the grass captured with the Photometric Stereo technique in action. This is a technique I am researching since 2 years already and will share hopefully in my incoming video (hopefully the next one). The scene itself is quite simple and was rendered using Cycles. I believe is a good example of importance of high quality assets. This scene was made of jsut 2 assets - a grass clump (based on photometric stereo) and material of sand (photogrammetry based material). Everything else are just a simple background props made in a couple of minutes with standard color applied. Bear in mind that this workflow's developement is still in progress and it is subject to change. I play with many apps and tools and didnt fully establish it that. So things I share here are temporary and I suggest to wait for final results unless I release it as a video. So, if you are interested to see more details of my research and struggle with this workflow, please subscribe to my youtube channel and hit the bell button to get a notification when it is released:
https://www.youtube.com/c/GrzegorzBaranArt
Hope you wont regret :)
Cheers and till the next one <3
G.

The Coast - Blender Scene rendered with Cycles to test the grass clump :D

The Coast - Blender Scene rendered with Cycles to test the grass clump :D

Grass Texture Set Generated with Details Capture and Tweaked in Affinity Photo (albedo/normal/height/opacity/roughness/transluency)

Grass Texture Set Generated with Details Capture and Tweaked in Affinity Photo (albedo/normal/height/opacity/roughness/transluency)

The HERO prop :) - model used to carry the texture. I used Blenders particle system to automatically scatter these grass clumps, and 'vertex paint' to mark area where the grass should be and where it shouldnt be spawned.

The HERO prop :) - model used to carry the texture. I used Blenders particle system to automatically scatter these grass clumps, and 'vertex paint' to mark area where the grass should be and where it shouldnt be spawned.

Realtime Grass - model with texture applied. I used HUE value (Hue Saturation Node) in Blender to get slight color shift between each.

Realtime Grass - model with texture applied. I used HUE value (Hue Saturation Node) in Blender to get slight color shift between each.

Grass nodes - as said I am on a very beginner level with Blender and it was my first attempt to the actual material NODE system in here, so I could mess up with something.

Grass nodes - as said I am on a very beginner level with Blender and it was my first attempt to the actual material NODE system in here, so I could mess up with something.

Material of sand used for the ground. More details about this one can be found in here: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/ZGLXrN

Material of sand used for the ground. More details about this one can be found in here:
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/ZGLXrN

Blender - and here it is. A full scene preview from the camera point of view.

Blender - and here it is. A full scene preview from the camera point of view.

Blender - another scene shot for scene overview. As you can see its just a plane, and a few shapes

Blender - another scene shot for scene overview. As you can see its just a plane, and a few shapes

Blender - a seagull. Since it was a background prop I didnt spend much time on details. It even has no texture applied, just grey shade set with simple slider

Blender - a seagull. Since it was a background prop I didnt spend much time on details. It even has no texture applied, just grey shade set with simple slider

Blender - a background lighthouse. Initially I made it in maybe 2 minutes but since it was too simple even for a background, I have added a few more details to break the shape simplicity and let it better catch the light. It has no any texture applied too

Blender - a background lighthouse. Initially I made it in maybe 2 minutes but since it was too simple even for a background, I have added a few more details to break the shape simplicity and let it better catch the light. It has no any texture applied too

Photometric Stereo Capture - a grass clump I captured, here with the color checker I used to calibrate albedo value. In this capture I used slim led light as I found, that with this type of light shadows are much softer and subtle (more accurate).

Photometric Stereo Capture - a grass clump I captured, here with the color checker I used to calibrate albedo value. In this capture I used slim led light as I found, that with this type of light shadows are much softer and subtle (more accurate).

Photometric stereo - camera setting for top down shot.

Photometric stereo - camera setting for top down shot.

To capture this surface I took 24 images - each lit from different direction. Unlike most apps, details capture has no image limit to 8 images what allows to get higher reconstruction quality to these limited just to 4 or 8.

To capture this surface I took 24 images - each lit from different direction. Unlike most apps, details capture has no image limit to 8 images what allows to get higher reconstruction quality to these limited just to 4 or 8.

A video I made to show the subject lit from different directions for reconstruciton

Details Capture - an app used for reconstruction. It reads the light position from the chrome ball and applies it to captured images. As you can see reconstruction took about 1 minute.

Details Capture - an app used for reconstruction. It reads the light position from the chrome ball and applies it to captured images. As you can see reconstruction took about 1 minute.

Details Capture - the result of reconstrioction based on 24 images - color/height/normal/normal

Details Capture - the result of reconstrioction based on 24 images - color/height/normal/normal

An improved version of my setup I used to capture different materials. Its still not final tho as I found and solved a few issues already.. so stay tuned as I plan to cover more details with a full youtube video on my youtube channel :)

An improved version of my setup I used to capture different materials. Its still not final tho as I found and solved a few issues already.. so stay tuned as I plan to cover more details with a full youtube video on my youtube channel :)

Incoming video - .. for example I painted the 'background' surface to make it matt as it was catching way to much light :D. Still didnt manage to master spray painting skill and had some issues with this one.

Incoming video - .. for example I painted the 'background' surface to make it matt as it was catching way to much light :D. Still didnt manage to master spray painting skill and had some issues with this one.

Report