it's been a while

so haven't posted in quite a while, this has been due to a number of different things, christmas shopping, dissertation, my other unit but mainly it's done to me being tooo LAZY!

what's been going on?... not much unfortunately, things seemed to have really slowed over the holidays.

i have been assigned the job of modelling a tree.
there are a few shots in our storyboard that have a tree to one side which really helps crop the scene nicely and helps draw the eye towards the main focus of the film (our two characters)

the tree is a maple, here are some of the reference images i looked at








this tree needs to be believable, can't be having one that sticks out like a saw thumb, it needs to be fairly photo realistic.

i first looked into a couple of different ways of creating a tree in maya

the first being modelling it from the ground up literally. first creating the trunk then adding the branches to get something a bit like this



the only problem i found with this was the fact it looks too empty, to literally go in so in depth to create a photo realistic tree like this would take forever and would be highly complicated. the amount of large branches wouldnt be a probelm but if you closely at a tree it has thousands of smaller branches.

the good thing about this would be a way of making the leaves. i found a tutorial on creating leaves by attatching them to particles then create them using ncloth so they move in the wind.

have a look.(follow link to part two after)



the bad thing is if i only do the major branches then it will look too empty, especially considering its a maple tree.

after some deliberation i have decided against this, i think it would be a pretty insane idea to attempt this.

and also i have discovered a new, quicker and easier way to give the impression of a large amount of branches, leaves and detail.
by using the paint effects tool you can generate a number of different organic models, and it just so happens there is an option for maple trees :)

unfortunately the brush for the trunk of the tree is rubbish. it looks like this...




its a bit too skinny. and the textures aren't great.




so i have decided to use the paint effects only for the branches and leaves. then model the trunk from scratch.

pendant

also on my list of things is a silver, butterfly pendant.
seeing as i have made the butterfly previously i thought it only made sense to do this next.

i used the exact same model that i made for the lower poly butterfly. i did this because there wont be any close ups of the pendant so it made sense not modelling a new one.

i started off by making a loop from the head by extruding each side and matching them together in the middle. This will be the loop that the necklace will go through.




i didnt want to make a straight copy of the model, plus jewelry tends to have a little bit more detail so seemed to make sense to give it a bit more depth so i raised some of the vertexes to give it a simple detail.




next up i wanted to apply a shine to the model, a silver finish, chrome like almost.
i will show you how i achieved this.

started off with my model, assign a blinn to it.
go to the blinns attributes scroll down to reflective colour, select the checkerbox then choose env ball




then assign noise to the env ball. do this by going to the env ball attributes on the right, click the checker box next to image. make sure you assign 2D noise not 3D.

bring up your hypershade window and hold right click down on the blinn material and select graph network and it should look like this.



with the attribute panel on the right you now need to go to hardware texturing, then in textured channel drop box change it to reflected colour.

then you need to create a point light and place it somewhere in your scene.

press seven, and change renderer to high quality. and it should look like this.



so i did this but for the butterfly pendant and i was quite pleased with the results, i tweaked the colour a little bit and added a slight blue tint to it, which i thought gave less of a standard look to it.




i am fairly pleased with the results i got. it's a small detail in the grand scheme of things but links well to the outcome of the story so hopefully this will be one of the things you notice, not first time watching but maybe the 2nd or 3rd time.

flutterbye

on my list of things to do there are quite a few things.
one of them being to create a model of a butterfly.

i will need to make a couple of different models.

one will need to be quite low poly for when we attach loads of them to particles when a swarm flies out of the tarot card and the girl is lifted into the air. we dont want to be crashing our computers!

the other will be in a close up so will need to be high poly with a fair amount of detail.

i thought it would be good to start with the low poly version. this means i can familiarise myself with my subject and hopefully make the second one slightly easier to make.

its lauras job to design the butterflies wings, this what she came up with


so i put this in maya as my image plane a started modelling

first i created a shallow cube i then extruded it roughly into the shape i needed, re-extruding where i thought i would need vertex's later on.



i then used the insert edge loop tool to create loops going horizontally across my model.
with these in place i started to move them around and the butterfly started taking shape.



next up was the body. remember this quite a low poly and will be moving around quite quickly so won't be highly detailed.

started off with creating cylinder, turned it 90 degrees and matched it to the image plane



i then went on and changed the size of the body as shown on the image plane.



next up was to duplicate the wing onto the other side and connect them to the body. aswell as to make the the feelers. to create the feelers all i had to do was extrude out from the head of the butterfly curving each extrusion as i went along.

i did a quick texture onto the wings of the model but the image wasnt high res enough. like i said just a test hence why its a bit blurred.



i have not textured the body yet. im waiting to see what everyone thinks before i start to finalise the model and we need to discuss the colour of its body.

good news!

the bench we were originally going to use has returned!

so we have scrapped the whole compositing our own bench idea for now.

more character design

so we've still been debating over this character, a few ideas have been flying around and contrasting with each other.

should it be a man?
should it be a sort of energy?
should the character be represented by something?

its part of the girls imagination so really we could do anything... thats the problem.

it has taken us way too long to decide on what we are going to do.

we have chosen to go for a male character.

i drew a design but i cannot for the life of me find it anywhere. so i will give a verbal description.
Tall, well built (maybe just a little over weight) black male with a moustache. He is the park attendant (film set in a park). he wears a green jumpsuit with boots and has a matching green hat. He enjoys nothing more than having time to himself to think and to sweep the leaves from the path.

so i drew this character up, joe then asked me to give it to iradia so he could clean it up in photoshop etc.
these are some of the awesome drawings he came up with



this was he first hand drawn, he then went and put it into photo shop and came up with this.



i really like the fact he's used colour and texture in this one, the texture almost helps in a way to imagine the final thing.


so while he was doing this i went ahead and started making character sheets for our two characters. (i apologise for the quality)





i purposely chose these expressions and actions because they are similar to what will be in the final film. This goes for the following drawings of our female character.







after i saw what Iradia had done, i thought i would give it a shot in photoshop myself. so using the new character sheets i had drawn up i came up with this...



then i did something similar to Iradia's and added a texture to the image.



i was quite happy with my results, for someoen who doesnt really use photoshop too often or a graphics tablet i was pleased with what i created. I know they are quite si ple and nothing too technically brilliant but i think it shows everything it needs too. the finilised drawings of the character obviously and then gives a good idea of colour and a brief look at the type of texture that good be used on our final model.

top woodsmith

seeing as the bench has now been moved we will be modelling one and it is my job to texture said bench. taking this into consideration i have started experimenting with texturing a box till the bench is made.

start off with a normal lambert cube (polygon)




next i opened up the hyperdshade and added a file shader



then linked the file to colour the lambert.

after this i placed changed the size of the the faces to fit the image i was using for the texture.



after that it looked like this




textured but has no depth, this can be easily changed, by adding a simple bump map and playing around with the values in my channel box i can change a flat image into an image that reacts to the light which therefore gives the flat texture depth.

here are some examples of what i did.



heres a close up example of what can be achieved with a bump map



i know the planks of wood dont perfectly line up in the last image, this is becuase the texture i used wasn't straight.
when it comes to finally texturing the bench i will make my own texture so it will all slot together nicely.

i am quite happy with how this box looks, i think its quite convincing but i will deffinitely carry on developing it and seeing what else i can achieve for this bit of the project.

who took our bench?

some of the group to Greenwich park today to where we are planning on getting our live action footage.

it used to look like this



but when they turned up it looked like this!



not cool!!

right so now we have decided we will be creating the bench in 3D and compositing it in with the characters. this may prove to be harder when it comes to the composite, but may prove easier when having the characters interact with the bench.




it is my job to do the texturing of the bench, so along with character development and story board development i will now be practicing my wood texturing skills.


talking of storyboard, we spoke to Dan our tutor today and he gave us some very good constructive criticism to do with the story board i created. too many of the same shot, not enough intimicy with the characters etc.

i will bare this in mind when creating the next one.

character designs....2

so we've spoken to our tutor Mike, he has brought up a point about our characters. he said seeing as we are doing the characters as animated we should really look to make the characters a bit more over the top, sort of move away from the 'realistic' look we had settled on.

i have two main views on this

on one hand i can see exactly where he is coming from and that maybe making the characters more exagerated (big burly man, small innocent woman) then the piece would look quite different to how i had imagined it but could work well, especially when it comes to framing and the compositions within the camera frame.

on the other hand i really liked the design i had come up with and felt like we were getting somwhere with the characters and that we could start thinking about moving onto something else to do with the project. i thought because of the design, they would still look animated, its not like they were photo realistic, thought it would look good with a nice subtle style that could be complemented with good realistic textures.

taking this into consideration, joe did a rough sketch or two of how he thought this new character should look. i took this and did some sketches of my own.

joe's rough sketch





i drew this then thought it looked a bit 'despicable me'






this next one fitted what joe had thought of more, just pretty much cleaned up the lines.



not sure how i feel about it, i mean i'd be happy to use this new character if the rest of the group likes it...i'd just rather use my first concept....we shall see

character designs....

ok so have done a few different designs for the old man character. didnt have too much of a discription about his appearance so just rolled with it and saw what i came up with.

i was told he was strange, mysterious and you wouldnt know where to place him, i knew he was old, and was wearing a hat.

so these are the characters i came up with.













the last concepts are my favourite, and i think its the more comprehensive out of them. I've shown them to my group and we have all picked the same design, so looks like we are going forward with him.

i like how he is quite stylised in a way but still holding the foundations of a real man, looking at some of my 'old man' research i have started thinking of colours for the characters clothes, im thinking a light brown tweed kind of blazer and maybe some deep reds and earthy pale greens....