MICHELE VUONG
3D MODELER
BATHROOM BARBERSHOP
A young man honors his grandfather's legacy by running what is left behind of his old barbershop.
Bathroom barbershop environment day and dawn concepts. Responsible for all aspects.
Created using Maya, Substance Painter & Designer, and Photoshop. Rendered in Maya with RenderMan.
The main goal of this project was to learn the fundamentals of Pixar's RenderMan through the creation of a simple environment. Props modeled in Maya. Wall and floor texture created in Substance Designer, with extra variation added in Substance Painter. All other props textured using Substance Painter, with the exception of alphas which were painted in Photoshop.
Closer look at final renders and more extensive breakdown below:
(Above) Wireframe render using PxrWireframe.
(Below) A closer look at some objects from the room. All props were modeled and UV'd in Maya, with exception of the liquid drip above the toilet which I personally found faster to model in ZBrush and retopologize using Quad Draw in Maya. All props aside from the leaves and base floor/wall material were textured using Substance Painter. Maps were exported using the Renderman (pxrSurface) preset. I also added custom output maps with the alpha channel of the Roughness and Diffuse maps.
When deciding on assigning colors to the props, I worked mainly from a color scheme to ensure that all the small objects would end up looking cohesive in the final render. I adjusted only the saturation and lightness values of those colors.
I set the goal of hand-painting all masked images in photoshop. This includes the leaves, hair cards, labels, stickers, newspapers, and background outside the window. It was fun to create all the small designs, even though they are so small in the final image. Here are some fun hidden details:
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The image of the little girl receiving a bowl cut is meant to be the barbershop owner’s daughter. The caption in the picture frame says “My first client.”
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I put some personal notes on the mirror. They are appointment reminders, hair product coupons, hair care tips, and even a real recipe for a homemade conditioner bar!
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Although the text is too small to read in the final image, the newspaper on the far right has a “Quote of the Day” by Thomas Jefferson saying “I am a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it.” I chose this quote because I thought it fit with my barbershop concept of a man trying to make an honest living using what he can afford.
Most props are assigned with a PxrSurface. For glass objects, I used a PxrLayerSurface which gives me the ability to have a base glass material and add on any labels, dirt, and scratches on top.
Instead of modeling leaves for the plant and using XGen for the hairbrush hairs, I settled on using planes to arrange a general shape for them. I then used a transparent image on the cards to mimic the look of leaves and brush bristles. Doing so was a fast and efficient way to create the desired look while also cutting back on polycount and render time.
The original painting for the leaves looked a bit too dark and muddy under the lights so I used a PxrHSL node to to adjust the brightness and give them more of a yellow/green look.
For the daytime lighting, I aimed for soft, warm lighting with a haze effect inspired by what you would see from a film camera of the '90s. I use the same lighting process for all my projects, which is with a three-point light system, followed by adding in any extra lights and filters where necessary.
For the dawn lighting, I aimed for a stylized look that was purple color-heavy to portray a feeling of inspiration and ambition. I set the PxrDomeLight to be quite dim, as I wanted the main orange/yellow highlights to be coming from the window. The PxrIntMultLightFilter and PxrBlockerLightFilter were handy for having more control over how much light was hitting certain parts of objects. I also played around with the PxrVolumeBox and set the diffuse color, density color, and density float to a very low value. Additional rays and dust particles were created in photoshop.
(Above) Final Diagnostics of “Daytime” render for a for a 2250x3150 px, 300 dpi (5x7) image.
The most challenging part of the project was trying to get efficient render times with a clean, noise-free image. To figure this out, I started with low settings and worked my way up depending on how different regions of the image looked in IPR. I also relied on RenderMan’s Denoise feature to cut back on rendering times.
Based on the heatmap, it makes sense that the glass and reflective surfaces take the most time to render. To reduce the “hot” areas, I lowered the Max Diffuse Depth of the individual objects and changed the color to be slightly brighter so that it would make up for the loss of ray bounces.
Moving forward, I would like to study more on render settings and optimization for RenderMan. What I would do differently for optimization is use 1k textures for any objects that are too small or far away. I would then lower the overall Max Diffuse Depth and figure out a better way to cut back on transmission rays.
Close up of the final renders shown below!
