Kris Jasper 2016 VFX Textures and Look Dev Reel

Asset: Cobra Black and Cobra White.
My VFX supervisor gave me concept drawings the client was unhappy with and they wanted a different approach for the Sand Snakes. We thought the best approached would be shell like armour. Whilst eating Seafood at the South Melbourne markets I realised that common shells like Mussels and oysters have the shader properties and textures close to what we where looking for. Rhino and elephant skin has an armour like quality to it which worked naturally on the hard under skin of the creatures. I created a first pass using a procedural mari shader network to get clients approval. Whilst studying video’s of Cobras I realised that when the hood opens when in attack mode it could reveal a soft underbelly, which would be a nice contrast in materials. The creature rigger and modelled adapted the model to allow for this ability. I found that hippos were excellent reference material for mouths and gums. The client loved it. We purchased high res photography for the materials above and I spent the next few months working from home, using the photo’s to take the textures to a resolution suitable for the level of detail needed in the close ups.

Whilst the look development process was going on for the cobra assets, I spent my downtime working on the environment assets and training up the environment team in techniques gathered from other projects and facilities. We made an desert environment of tombs and temples using combination of set photograph and high resolution photographs of Egypt and concept drawings.

Asset: The World Engine. A terra forming machine.
The Look development process began with concept art that the client wanted to be more organic and more ominous. I work very closely with Max Fleuy (build supervisor) who did the modelling and made all its changes as it was rigged and animated . After the uv process I chose crab/lobster shell to be base material, I did lots of high resolution photography of ocean shell to make the organic textures in mari. There were a few small changes made when the world engine was in shots, after ldev.

Asset: F35 and C17 aircrafts
Whilst in down time on The world engine I worked on shaders and textures for vehicles in the sequence. To create the glass, metal, painted textures and dcals (labels), I used lots of high res photos which created the imperfections in the albedo and highly detailed reflection maps required to make them look believable.

Asset: Silver Samurai
I worked very closely with Martin Hill (VFX supervisor) and Brandon Onstott (senior shader artist). I was new at Weta and my first assets was the Silver Samurai Swords after my supervisors where happy with my progress I was given the Silver Samurai itself after the previous look development had was not progressing. The concept art and the metal suit prop for closeups  on set, was approved and created before I came on the project. The brief initially was for textures and shaders was to create a brand new suit with no damage. I created many detail reflection maps and light scratch maps for textures from high res photography. The look development process was so successful and the client was so happy with the result that the 3d version was used for all the closeups. I was asked to stay on during shot production to supervise the shader and damage variants for the asset as the film progressed.

Asset: Silver Samurai Swords.
The swords are a prop for the silver Samurai that is made from adamantium, which is a fictional metal, they heat up when Silver Samurai is fighting and melt metal etc. I was given a prop sword from set to match too and lots for High Res Photography of the asset. The textures for the main swords consisted of a combination of reflection maps. I did lots of research and created concept art for the burning metal. The heated bands of colour for titanium/stainless steel was chosen for the heated section. I created glowing maps for the heat treatment.

Asset: Koba fight variant
Koba texture look development was done in a previous film but during this film he is in a fight sequence and required variants to reflect his injuries. I created bruise and cuts and blood maps to add to the existing asset. I used high res photography to create the drips, drops and clotting blood.

Asset: Poison Spider variant
Building on top of a client approved asset for the spider sequence, my job was to make a variant that looked poisonous. We did three pieces of concept art for the back of the spider and added more dried skin. Once approved, I added to the existing maps and changed the textures but kept the shader network the same as the other variants.

Asset: Flaming Necromancer/Sauron
I was asked to create concept art which used an existing model of the necromancers armour.  I made glow and added burnt maps and built on the  shader network that I had created for Wolverine's glowing swords. 

asset: Tropical forest

For the tropical forest we were ask to create over 100 high resolution individual assets. Early on I worked with a shader writer to create a shader that rendered a lot quicker than a shader that uses Subsurface scattering. I went out to the botanical gardens a took lots of high resolution photo’s to create the colour maps.

asset: Paul

When I started on the 3d character Paul at DNeg, the look development process was well underway. The lead texture artist, Andy Middleton and I started by doing shot fixes and dev on Paul, as his eyes where rendering washed out. We sorted the problems with shader and textures and I created new iris textures for Paul, which I made from shooting high resolution macro photography of human eyes. I worked and sorted out the texture network so it was easier and more efficient to use and make changes. I continued to do shot fixes on Paul skin as the camera got closer to the character.

Tree of life matte painting had already been in progress for 2 months before I started. These are 10k matte painting for Imax. The client wanted the galaxies to move slowly, as if the camera was covering vast distances but be true to the NASA photography. The production didn't have the budget for 3d. After talking to the other artists on the show and about how many of the matte paintings had been rejected, I realised that what the director really loved the original NASA photography, but wanted it to come to life. I came up with a plan on how to break down all the elements using mattes and supply them to the compositors, making layers of stars and galaxies while remaining true to the source photography. I automated this process as the client was very detail oriented and demanded numerous subtle changes and we wanted to get the most out or the amazing NASA photography. I applied this to 16 other matte paintings.

asset: space elevator
concept artist, generalist
Payload needed a ground station for a space elevator.
I created all the 3d and the matte painting