Adventure Awaits – A Hypixel SkyBlock Animation
Client: Hypixel
Role: Effects artist, all lighting, rendering, and compositing
Link to the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Gos__QDyss
Hypixel is one of the most popular Minecraft server networks. They have many different minigames available, including one based on the very popular Minecraft map Sky Block. I was hired on to work on an animation set in this game-mode.
I was brought in to be in charge of all of the lighting, rendering and compositing. This also meant figuring out a look for the video together with the director. The sets, props, and characters all has a messy look to them, where most things weren’t axis-aligned or squared off. I wanted to replicate this imperfectness in the cinematography. The director wanted a realistic / naturalistic look to it. I pushed for a 2:1 aspect ratio, with imperfect CG lenses, and a look heavily based on naturalistic lighting. The CG lenses were meant to replicate anamorphic lenses, with lens distortion and imperfect bokeh. The lighting for most of the video is a day light with sun lighting setup as a base with generally an added back light to highlight characters, but it’s purposefully kept simple to keep a natural look to it.
In the middle of the video, the main character ends up in a strange void world. To help convey this strangeness, I changed the look up and went to a very stylised lighting. Strong blue back lights and soft key lights on the character, making it easy to see the character and creates a strong outline, even though there technically isn’t any light source in that void world. The stars that appear were created in Houdini.
As part of the look, I also wanted to make it look like it was shot on photographic film to help with the imperfect look. For this, I used LOOCS which is an upcoming colour management workflow that I have developed. LOOCS provides artists with multiple colour renderings, rather than forcing everyone to use a single colour rendering even when it’s not appropriate for the project. This allows artists to more easily create the right look for their project. Next to that, I have also added in halation and gate weave to further create the filmic look.
