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.