This Week and Beyond

This has been a texture MAD week! All 4 of us have put a lot of effort into texturing this week and last week and so much progress has been made. I have grasped the techinique of UV mapping which I'm am extremly happy about because it is important to be able to UV map and texture in the Computer Games Industry. One of the latest techniques I have learnt is the Bump Mapping which has been very useful for making my textures stand out. Everybody in our group is addicted to the Bump mapping process which can only be a good thing! ^_^


My latest struggle has been with texturing glass. I ran into this problem last Friday when I was texturing a wine bottle. I asked Josh for some advice and he said to make it transparent. I tried but it didn't have the characteristics of glass like the reflections. I found a lovely tutorial on the internet that was very easy to understand you can find on my tool bar on the left hand side. I used this tutorial religously trying to get the best result I could get. Well, my first attempt is the first image of my wine bottle that I posted up. I stayed late on Tuesday night tweaking the Ray Trace values and lighting to finally get a glass render that the and I were over joyed about. Now that I have over come that hurdle of making glass I can now render the windows and the ink bottle for the Study. Spencer wanted me to do a Crystal texture for the Shandelia so that will be one of my next tasks (I LOVE RENDERING).


Last week we had guy come in for 2 days called Rob Jones. This guy was fantastic! He showed us how to render our scenes in layers on Maya and After Effects. We were also shown a film that used the technique of rendering in layers and compositing. I was fortunate enough to have with me a book that I ordered called "Mental for Maya, 3D S Max and XSI" by Boaz Livny. Rob told me that it was the best book on the market for teaching people how to use Mental Ray, so that was reasuring to hear. So far I have read about the creating soft shadows and what each type of light is good for and how to use them effectively. Earlier on, I did some practice renders with lights in the main room. I had a problem with the shadows, as they became distorted and looked like some sort of "cross hatch shading". I need to get some help from Rob on this issue as the deadline is looming.


We have come along way since the begining from this

to this!

I am very happy and proud of what we have achieved so far as a group. I can already visualise the lighting and I can't wait to back on to this on Monday. Because we are short on time, Stewart will be animating the camera next week while Spencer and Josh is texturing the final bits. I will be starting the lighting as next week is our last week.

We have have cut so fine to the deadline but the out come should be Mind Blowing!

Door Texture

Door Texture done!

Close up

It took alot of tweaking!

Okay, I've managed to create the wine bottle with some vrolume to it. I've also played around with the specular shine and the lighting which seems to make the glass effect stand out. I need to look into caustics and photons a bit more so that i can get a decent reflection.

I've turned a new page in this chapter! hehe

Wine Bottle

First attempt at rendering the glass wine bottle. I am having trouble with the transparency and specular shine. I'll experiment a bit more with it so that the whole bottle doesn't become transparent.

Stair candles Textured

.

I am going to cut the stair candles in half and use the on the walls in the study

Vase Textured

Stair-Candle Textured

Plant Textured

Lighting the Main Room

I have asked my family which image has the spookiest lighting and they all voted for the blue light. 

This week and beyond

This week I was determined to get some textures in our mansion as we are pushing it for time.  On the week end I had ago at laying out UV's and texturing.  This extra bit of practice payed off when I came in for the the next morning so I could get straight to the texturing while the other guys where adding the final touches to the main room.  

Whilst I was texturing, I was realising that I was taking along time on the texturing one object.  I think that the reason it took me so long is that I was trying to create a realistic texture in Photoshop.  

In the image above is one of my UV textured objects.  I am pleased with the result and the fact the the UV mapping has worked, but I feel I need more practice after listening to Jared's mini lecture he gave to our group on UV mapping on the Thursday.  I remember him talking about stretching and relaxing UV's because surfaces may not be even.  I am going to take in account the (stretching and relaxing) for the more complex models.

During this Project I feel that I have improved as a 3D Artist and that I am getting better by the day.  Helping others in my group has opened me up to problems that I have never come across and helps me to problem solve faster.  

My Formative Asessment with Dan Dali was a success as I have managed to get two questionaires ^_^.  My questionaires from Ubisoft and Chase London, have helped me to confirm that I want to progress as a Modeler in the Games industry.  Speaking to a Games Animator and the Euro Gamer exhibition was refreshing and gave me a morale boost.

Overall, this week has been good so far because we have finished modeling the main room.  

Things to do for the next 4 weeks is;

1) Model the Study and the Torture Chamber

2) Texture EVERYTHING! (Hehe we can do it guys ^_^)

3) Lighting

4) Animate Camera 

A lot of work to do with PPD and everything else we have in our lives but its possible.     

This week and beyond

This week I have managed to create the candles for the main room.  The progress on the main room is being maintained and is starting to take shape.  I have notice that we are over half way through the term with about 5 weeks left till we hand the project in. 

For next week I know that Spencer is going to be working on the shandelia.  He has shone me a picture of the shandelia that he is basing his one on at it looks like crystal and glass will be used to texture it.  I'm looking into rendering glass and crystal.

Because we have 5 weeks left till the hand date, I am going to make a start on the texturing as that is one of the longest processes with things tending to go wrong.  I'll also bring in my External hard drive to store maya files and textures for the group as our college computers only allow us to hold 1 MEASLY GIG! WTF!

I have a CD which has alot of useful textures on it which will come in handy ^_^.  I'll bring that in on the Tuesday Guys!  I also have a book that tells you how to create certain textures in Photoshop STEP BY STEP! yes I said it Step by Step! I will up load some after I've finised writing this.

Overall, I am pleased with the progress and the speed we are working at.  Everybody is enjoying the project which is the most important thing and everybody is going out of their way to make this Enviroment the best it possibly can be.  I would like to see some textures done next week in the main room but at the same time we can still model because there are enough of us to do that ^_^

We own! Yeah! 

Candles by Stairs

Exterior research.

Concentration camp/ Prison

From the comic "Walking Dead"

Resident Evil

Screenshot from the game "Resident Evil"

I chose this image because of the cold blue tinted lighting and the 

way it portays feeling alone with the shadows framing the image.

Condemned 2

From the Game "Condemned 2"

Inspiration for objects in the study.

Hostel

From the Film "Hostel"

I like the minimal use of lighting and objects. The less you see, the

more scarier it becomes. 

Dennis Server's House (Inside view)

I managed to get a photograph of the steps inside the house where it leads down to the basement. This is the sort of stairs that we want to lead down to the corridor. The brick walls and stone floor look grim and the fact that walls are so narrow creates a clostrophobic feeling which we wanted to incoporate.

Risky Photography

This is another photograph taken in the Design Museum.

I got way with it... again lol but it was worth it though.  This piece has giving me an idea of creating a statue for the mansion. It's unlikely as we are tight on time for the moment. but it would be nice ^_^

Design Museum

This Photograph was taking in the Design museum. I thought it was quite scary and unusual.  I like the contrast between the black and white photography and the coloure illustrations.  

It would make a haunting portrait in the Resident Evil mansion.

How we came to a Final Idea, which everybody agreed with

First an foremost, as group we all have one thing in common, which is a passion for violent films and computer games.  Naturally, we began to talk about creating an environment with a dark and miserable atmosphere.  Stuart, a member of our group came up with an idea of creating a dungeon scene where the main character would have to travel down a flight of dark steps to witness the terrifying horror.  I listened to the idea, and liked where he was heading with it.  I liked the dungeon idea because dungeons tend to have no windows and minimal light sources, which would give us the opportunity to play around with shadows and flickering lights to enhance the scary mood we wanted to portray.

With a dungeon idea in mind we told Josh the idea who was happy to hear that we were directing our ideas towards horror.  We decided as a group to hold a team meeting on the Friday in the year 2 animation room.  It was in this meeting that we brainstormed all our ideas on to paper.  We put down influences such as, The Decent, Theif 3, Hostel and Resident Evil.  After the brainstorming session, which took about 45 minutes, we went onto YouTube to look at some video clips of scary films and games.  This was very helpful because it aloud the group and myself to point out what we liked visually.  Once we had gotten bored of looking at horror games and film on YouTube, we photocopied the brainstorm and gave everybody a copy so that we could find some more visual research.  During the brainstorming we highlighted the influences and ideas we liked so we knew what to research.

Josh and I did some research in the LRC, looking into Gothic architecture.  I found images of stairs entrances that looked similar to the Resident Evil ones.  Josh did some drawings in his sketch book of the arch ways that he wanted to put into the mansion. We photocopied the images of gothic architecture that we wanted.  I also took out two books which I thought could help myself and the others with the making of the environment. The books are called “Digital Lighting & Rendering” by Jeremy Birn and “3D Game Textures – Create Professional Game Art using Photoshop” by Luke Ahearn.  The texturing book also came with a CD with holds royalty free texture which I may use. (hehehe).  

When I got home I started on some digital painting for the concept of the corridor which was inspired by Hostel.

The next time we met up as a group Josh and I brought in some books to help up visualise what we wanted our environment to be.  Josh brought in a Resident Evil game guidebook, which had screenshots of the game play.  I brought in two books on Art Nouvea architecture and furniture and screenshots of the Hostel film, Condemned 2 and Soul Reaver.  From the research we had brought in we decided to created the interior of the Resident Evil mansion entrance.  The reason for the Resident Evil entrance is that it looked haunting and spooky without being too obvious.  Secondly, we chose to include a dark corridor inspired by the game Max Payne , where the audience would hear sounds of crying babies and things of that nature that would scare the audience psychologically.  Next, we wanted to include a Study room that had a secret door passage behind a book case, which would lead to a torture chamber below the study.  The look of the study was inspired by the baroque interior and the images of Condemned 2. The torture chamber was inspired by the images of Hostel that I had brought in.