Bottled Up! was a concept I created for my senior capstone project. The concept for this project was a story within a story to develop a mystery of a world trapped within this bottle. I began by sketching my idea and identifying what kind of props this scene would have in it. I also created an asset list to keep track of each item in the scene. I found reference images for each asset so I could make sure the scale/proportion was correct and that the props looked like their real-life counterpart. In Autodesk Maya, I began to model each asset in a low poly version to get basic shapes for the final models. I then did another pass through each asset to create high poly versions, aiming for an animated film aesthetic with soft and rounded shape language. Once all of the models looked the way that I wanted them to, I UV-mapped each render-ready asset and exported the models into FBX.

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     I imported the files into Adobe Substance Painter and began to texture the 3D models. For texturing, my goal was to create a slightly realistic look but keep the depth to a minimum so it keeps the soft animated style. I textured each model and exported the textures. I assigned the texture sets in Maya to the corresponding models and started to create the lighting setup. I knew I wanted the main light coming from the right and having the shadows cast behind the props. I used simple 3-point lighting and also added the light for the lighthouse. Finally, I rendered the final image in various passes to composite them and create the final image.