Serenity

This scene was created Maya and Pixar's RenderMan, and depicts a pop-up book inspired by the courtyard of Muckross Abbey in Killarney, Ireland.

PHYSICAL MODEL

To get an idea of how pop-ups work, I made a physical model before beginning the project. This was my first time making a pop-up, so I began with a staircase, something that I thought would be simple, but proved more difficult than my initial assumption. I am glad that I started with a hands-on, physical model—even if it did not resemble my final concept—because it allowed me to get an idea of the planning and thought-process behind creating a pop-up; which helped me plan a CG model that pushed physical limitations and had just enough believably.

INSPIRATION

I drew inspiration for this project from the courtyard of the abandoned Muckross Abbey in Killarney, Ireland that I visited over the summer of 2017. While there, I discovered that this abbey influenced Bram Stoker’s Dracula—one of my favorite novels— which instantly sparked my imagination. I knew I wanted to do a project that drew reference from this abbey. As I conducted further research, my intentions crystallized into a substantial vision: this abbey inspired one of the most famous novels in history, so I decided to make my own book from the same source of inspiration. After more consideration, I came to the conclusion that the courtyard—with the giant tree at the center and with the arches and windows on the surrounding walls—would make an interesting pop-up book; and I hoped to recreate the serene mood that washed over me when physically standing in the abbey’s courtyard.

MODELING

I modeled everything the traditional way except for the tree and praying figure. For those models, I used a presence map (shown below) to get a "cutout" from a plane. I was able to use this method thanks to the book and paper context of the project. This method allowed me to model paper cutouts in greater detail while reducing modeling time.

LIGHTING