We wanted to create a character visualization render and had the idea of a scene where Clementine is pouring water to wash herself in a dark room. The setup includes just a wooden stool, a jug, and a water basin, all illuminated by a top spotlight effect with lots of glare. We also thought about adding some cloth simulation to learn the technique and to try and achieve a better result.
MEDIEVAL ROOM PHOTO STUDIO SET
For the background, we prepared two planes (a wall and a floor) and shaded them using default substances from Source—nothing too fancy.
For the lighting, we set up various lights around the scene: an ambient light for the room, a top light with a spotlight effect, a backlight to make her silhouette pop, and a second backlight to intensify the color of her hair ✨
To make the spotlight visible in the render, we learned about volumes in Blender to achieve that light rays effect. It was surprisingly easy! We simply added a box mesh, placed it where we wanted the spotlight, and applied a volume material with the necessary settings.
When it came to posing the clothes naturally, we rigged the skirts using a spline IK, so we could lift both skirts above her knee. However, after two days of testing, we got quite frustrated. The spline IK didn't give us the results we were aiming for.
In the end, what gave us a realistic flow for the cloth was using a mesh deform lattice (previously rigged to a simple armature) to modify the skirt meshes. We then applied that lattice to the skirts and ran a cloth simulation, which helped everything fall into place beautifully.
We also watched a few YouTube tutorials to learn about water simulation, and we simulated the water pouring from the jug. We thought it would be difficult, but it turned out to be surprisingly easy and a lot of fun!
Once the simulation was done, we rendered the image and took several render passes, which we used in the compositor to blur the background with a bokeh effect. We also experimented with different kinds of glare and sunbeams, blending them in Photoshop for extra flair.
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To finish up, we added a layer of dust using the screen blending mode in Photoshop and adjusted the levels and exposure to get the final image 🎉
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