Digital Production Arts
DPA 8070 3D Modeling and Animation with Jim Sidletsky
By: Benjamin B. Warner
Exercise 9: Shading and Lighting - an Orange and Jupiter
Date: October 7th, 2020
Objective:
Create realistic shading and lighting for basic models (spheres) of an orange and Jupiter.
Solution:
I found a similar solution for both scenarios, primarily making use of basic Blinn shaders with colors driven by ramps.
Additionally, here is a view with the dome light activated to better emphasize the overall color and shape of the objects. Obviously, Jupiter should have barely any surface displacements, but I included some very slight changes to emulate the effect of thick wispy clouds covering the surface.
To create the ilusion of a natural orange texture, the ramp includes a variety of light and dark orange colors mimicing natural discolorations. The Blinn shader has some low reflections to come closer to reality, then “billow” noise creates the surface pores. The noise is tweaked until the desired affect is achieved, then the displacement scale is actually set to -0.03 to create indents on the surface instead of bumps.
Here you can see the resulting ramp and an upclose shot of the orange pores.
Similarly, Jupiter was made by applying a ramp that includs each of the “bands” going around the planet. In the ramp attributes, “Noise” was slightly increased to create wavier layers. Finally, a “wispy” noise is used to mix some blue into the color output and then gives that output to a Blinn shader. Reflectivity is very small for Jupiter, due to a lack of surface waters.
