Basement Billiards
This concept was to take a reference of a snooker or standard billiards table and 3D model the table complete with textures and lighting. The background and objects were optional and had no requirements. The complete animation also required 3D modeled pool balls and pool stick completing a break while having textures and a full animation sequence via a standard node camera.
Play Blast and Early Set Up
Action shot 1
Establishing shot
Close up shot 1
I began by modeling and animating the table, balls, and pool stick. For the background, I ended up choosing to model a scene similar to what my old basement looked like when I was a child since it had a pool table that I was extremely fond of. The scene also included two love seat chairs, two cups, my JBL speaker, and a fire place. I then started animating and texturing the scene better.
Updated Action
Updated Establish
Updated Close up
After doing the basics of the scene I noticed the background still felt very flat and the textures that were working were really only the pool balls and some of the table. A lot of the textures were reflecting too much and the camera angles felt scarce. So, I went back in to clean up the textures, add better lighting, and continue tweaking the animations. I also added more objects such as a TV on the wall.
Render Test 1
Test Render 1
Render Test 2
Test Render 2
While this had better texturing and lots of tweaks to the cameras and initial break motion of the first shot, it still felt too basic and not realistic enough. There were no decorations or anything else visually appealing enough to notice in the background. I also desperately needed to fix the sound design on this one as they did not match up close enough.
Revisions
After completing this simple animation, I still felt the background was too bare and not interesting enough. There was also issues of lighting being too dark in some areas as well as texturing problems where they felt flat, basic, and not professional enough. The sound design was also a huge problem. Thus, I had to go back in to revise the scene, its animations, adding new lighting, better textures, and posters to help the background of the scene.
Updated Establish
Updated Texture
Updated Close up
New Angle
New Action
Final Product
Basement Billiards, Maya and After Effects 2024, 1920 x 1080
For this revision, the addition of the posters and new camera angles helped to capture the basement a little better and give more visually interesting dynamics. The new lights also helped brighten up the place and give more atmosphere. I also added a composited video on the TV object as another interest point. I was also able to fix and better align the break and snap sound for the pool stick and ball reactions, which felt much more complete. Altogether, this became an extremely solid project and professional piece worth being in my portfolio.
