Ghost Train

Beginning with nothing

Create the idea for a video or design can seem like the hardest part of the whole project. Our teacher a few generic environments as the starting point, and the rest was up to you. I choose the train station as I knew I could create fantastic textures for the objects already in the scene. But I still needed to think what the video will even be.

I personally believe having limitations can benificial in the design process as you have to be creative to get around it. Looking at my bare scene, I know the whole desert would look bad with the repeating texture. So I could either create more assets to fill the space or add fog to "hide" it. Adding fog created a neat aesthetic and gave me the direction of a spooky video.

Making the models realistic

Having a fantastic idea and great models are important, but all can go to waste if the models don't look or more importantly behave as they should in real life. The human eye is very skilled a picking up anything the is "off"; even if the person doesn't know why. In making it look "right", its all about the roughtness, bump map, metalicness, ect. of the texture to make it perfect. Wood should be rough and reflect little light while the metal should be smooth and reflect more light.

Completing the environment

The final step in the 3D program and the main reason for this project is to create a lighting environment for the scenes. The scenes don't simply have a single light in it. There are multiple lights including a main light, fill light, environment light, and others just to light a single set. For the project, I used a main light hitting the face of the character, a fill light to illuminate the dark shadows created by the main, and finally a HDRI night sky map for the environment lighting.

Finishing touches

Completing the video means performing a final composite in Adobe After Effects. I personaly love this step as I like using After Effects, but this step is also where you can make a mediocre to professional. Adding a background, increasing the brightness, edit the levels, adding a vignette, and more.