Week 4

January 26 - February 01, 2026

During Week 4, mentor feedback shifted toward refinement and continuity, with a strong emphasis on material consistency, texture clarity, and improving how the paint interacts with the printer.

Mentors Feedback

This week’s feedback focused on refining details to strengthen readability and continuity across shots. Mentors encouraged us to further refine textures, particularly by adding a wood texture to the plank on the printer to make the printed surface more immediately understandable.

Another key note was to commit to a single paint behavior—either liquid or grain—and maintain that choice consistently across all shots. This continuity would help reinforce the visual language and avoid confusion.

Additional notes included adjusting Shot 6 by bringing the objects closer to the printer, improving the lighting and emissive qualities of the paint in Shot 1, and allowing the paint to interact directly with the printer rather than spilling into the surrounding environment.

Week 4 Work Plan

Based on this feedback, we organized the following priorities:

• Printer UV + assigning material + lighting (Shot 1 is priority) - Benji

FX Testing

• Liquid Simulation - Yiqi

• Paint Shader + emission/lighting test - Yiqi/Sofia/Benji

• Shot 4-5 reduce speed and add continuity + lighting test- Riley

• Shot 6 objects movement change - Itim

• Shot 3 get grains to be more "liquidish"

Compositing

• Shot 1 comp - Sofia (if rendering allows)

My Focus This Week

This week, I continued refining the AOV setup from the previous week and worked on developing a paint material during Professor Bridget’s class. While this shader exploration helped us better understand how to approach the look of the paint, the team later decided to move in a different direction by transitioning fully from liquid paint to a grain-based ink system for better continuity across shots. As a result, this shader will no longer be used in the final sequence, but the testing informed our updated approach.

Unfortunately, due to severe weather conditions over the weekend, we were unable to complete the necessary render passes for this week. This prevented further compositing progress, but the groundwork for the updated material direction has been established and will be carried into the next stage of production.

Next Steps

Moving forward, the focus will be on finalizing the updated grain-based paint system as we still need to work on the emission, completing render passes for testing, and continuing to refine lighting and material interaction (particularly in Shot 1) so the paint becomes a primary visual and lighting driver in the sequence.

Review presentation for Week 5