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PIXEL CAT
Arnold pixel test
Anchor 1
PIXEL TESTS
Tools
Tools: Maya 2022 Substance Painter, Arnold, After Effects
Attempts at pixelized 3D renders in Arnold, Maya.
I wanted to push the limits of stylization a bit and use procedural methods to make a pixel animation. The style always fascinated me, but I never had the patience to make a hand painted scene.
Shaders
I utilized the arnold toon shader with lights driving the shadows and highlights, and linked ramps to the color of the highlight/shadow. This made it easy to create a different look and have the colors animated, but it limited the ranges of colors I could use.
The main aspect of making the stylized scene was setting up shaders, if the base color is different, the shader has to be different because every color has a different colored shadow/highlight.
Shadow
Highlight
Midtone
Render Passes
For Rendering I tested a few settings for camera AA samples, and liked the look of -3 the best. Each render was about 2-3 seconds each. Since we're using the toon shader and using ramps to simulate lighting on a base color map, we can turn off the other options since they won't be used.
Renders
A few still shots of the final processed render. I added on some noise for more texture in after effects and looped it a few times so it was presentable on social media.
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