Rock Salt Bunny Floating
After seeing my roomate's interesting rock salt nightlight above our sink, I knew I needed to recreate that material in 3D. In this project, all aspects were created by me except for the bunny model. The bunny model was from the Stanford Library. I created a small display of crystals (courtesy of my roommate) and shot my backplate, references, and HDRI. I then used Maya to recreate the rock salt as a shader and used Nuke to integrate the model into the plate.
Final Video
Breakdown
Reference Photos
Shader Creation
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To create the rock salt shader in 3D, I used the marble shader in Maya along with an aiMix. I created two versions of the marble shader, one that would be the darker veins of the stone, and the other than would be the main base color. The veins were a darker color whereas the base was lighter. These marble shaders were plugged into the subsurface scattering and using the aiMix were adjusted for which one would be more prominent.
Look Development
Front Lighting
Back Lighting
Above are examples of front and back lighting. With the backlighting, you can see the subsurface scattering working, especially up at the ears where the geometry is thinner.
Nuke Node Tree
After exporting the sequence of the bunny floating and it's perspective render layer, I brought it into Nuke for integration.