#av realisation

Progression of adding emissive materials and point lights:

The biggest struggle I faced after moving onto using path tracing was how the glass was rendering. As shown below, glass placed behind glass would render as black which isn’t realistic, especially when compared to the reference image to the side:

After adjusting shader nodes and settings didn’t help, and after I couldn’t find relevant solutions on UE forums, I thought the issue could be caused by the mesh so I revisited my model and deleted all interior faces. As shown below, this helped to minimise the problem but did not solve the root of it. Although the glass is clearer, you can still see the stems of the glass behind rendering as black:

I then revisited the UE documentation and found a very thorough explanatory video about path tracing by William Faucher. In this video he went over glass in detail and helped me realise that my issue stemmed from my post process volume settings. In order to get rid of the blackness, I simply needed to increase the max bounces under path tracer rendering. An increase in bounces allows for light rays to penetrate further before being eliminated.

Results after increased bounces:

Storytelling is just as important as lighting in my project. I wanted to create a simple prop that could be universally recognised as a symbol of childhood, such as colourful wooden blocks. I modelled the pieces to look as though a child had been playing with them and placed them on the carpet with the light spill acting as a sort of spotlight, highlighting its significance as the focal point.

Since I’d like to be able to showcase this area quite close up, I spent a bit more extra time on the texturing process, making sure the wood of the blocks was readable through the use of a wood grain height map and worn down paint around the edges. I also edited a quick product label for the bucket in photoshop using royalty free images.