The Last of Us was my first project as a generalist at DNEG. I was brought on to assist the environment department with some Houdini scattering and one-off shots that I could quickly take through environment and lighting to deliver. I was only on this project for a couple of weeks around the peak of its production, but I learned a lot during this time, and it helped me get acquainted with how environment work is handled in a larger studio.
The first set of shots I worked on were these car shots. My task was to populate the scene with vegetation and provide the DMP artist with a solid lighting base to work from when doing the paint-over for the shot. I populated the scene with different varieties of plants and ivy in Maya, lit and rendered the scene in Clarisse, and delivered it to the DMP department for integration.
The next section of shots I worked on involved adding vegetation scatters to destroyed buildings. I used Houdini’s Solaris tools to scatter different levels of vegetation on various buildings and in different locations on each building to give the shots more interest and shape. I had to give extra attention to the tree scatter in the background of the shots in front of the Capitol building, as it was important to maintain continuity for sequences later in the show.
The last shot I worked on was the one with the child on the right. I handled more of the scattering in this shot, and my primary goal was to populate the large destroyed building on screen left with ivy and large everyday objects to break up the outline of the windows.