Soft Pastels

Using instanced planes to turn 3D geometry into animated soft pastel artwork!

I am responsible for all technical art, rendering, and compositing in the video above.

Step-by-step breakdown of the creation of the pastel planes.

Wipes of the different geometry layers that make up the final look.

Quick look at the important pieces in my Houdini scene.

PBR scene with Quixel assets. Lighting and set dressing by Adelyn O'Neil.

Instanced planes with pastel stroke alphas. Planes dynamically orient and cull based on camera orient. Color driven by Renderman illumination maps and Quixel asset albedo.

Artistic adjustments in Nuke using custom cryptomattes from Houdini.

Postcard Test

This was an early test of the workflow I had developed. Since then, the workflow has only gotten better, but this shares the same general idea.