christianmodelling-blog

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Week 16 13/01/17

Here I have uploaded my finished renders of my lantern and door models. I’m happy with how the models turned out in the end as they were my first ones. I’m looking forward to see what future models I will be creating with the skills I have required.  

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Reflective Writing (Week 16 12/01/17)

In fundamentals of modelling, we were introduced to a 3D graphics software called Maya. I never used Maya or any kind of 3D graphics software in that matter, so using it was very new to me. At first I was very confused; I couldn’t tell what any of the interface’s icons did and didn’t have a clue what I was doing. Watching tutorial videos on YouTube and one’s given from my tutor, I started to slowly understand more and more of what Maya had to offer.

We were given a brief to do two or more simple environmental artefacts’ to be in either a 3D video game or CGI film. The objects should be based around a chosen theme. There was a total of five themes and the one I chose was Fairy Tale. I’ve always been a fan of fantasy whether it’s movies, books, games or pieces of art. So, I thought this would be a theme that I would enjoy to do.

I was inspired by the play A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream written by Shakespeare. As my theme was Fairy Tale, I really wanted to use the idea of actual fairy’s, and that is why I chose A Midsummers Night’s Dream as my main inspiration. The second inspiration I had was The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker HD. One of my favourite video games of all time due to its cel shaded art style. So, my objects would be used by the fairies from A Midsummer’s Night’s dream, using the Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker HD art style.

The first object I decided to create was a lantern. I was looking through images of A Midsummers Night’s Dream and noticed a few having lanterns in the image that caught my eye. I also looked at lanterns in the Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker HD to see how the artists designed them. When I finished making my lantern I wasn’t very happy with the way it turned out as it looked wonky and uneven. I learnt a lot more after I created the model so I deicide to start all over again and to learn from my mistakes. When I came to the UV mapping I also did a mistake which was not making the object a whole. It leaves me with unneeded face on my UV plan, so I had to go delete them to prevent any confusion when it comes to sewing the edges together.  

My second model was a door. The creating process went very quickly as I had a bit more knowledge of Maya from making the lantern. When I made the model, it was then time to texture it, I had problems because for some reason the texture wasn’t appearing. I didn’t have this problem with my lantern so I was very confused, but the problem was fixed when I pressed the textured button viewed on the tool.

When I finished both models, I then start to do lighting and rendering. At first I used area lighting, but then changed to directional lighting as it casted a bigger shadow, also I didn’t have to make a “studio light setup”, I just include walls and a floor so the shadow could still be cast.

When it was time to render, I asked my tutor to view my work and see what she thought. We found out that I had been creating new individual materials for my textures instead of print screening the UV’s and texturing them in photoshop. So, I fixed the problem by doing what was needed and it worked out okay in the end, I could play around with the textures a lot more freely which was helpful. I’m happy with how the models turned out in the end as they were my first ones. I’m looking forward to see what future models I will be creating with the skills I have required.  

 Reference

 A MidSummers Night’s Dream images (accessed 18/10/16) –

http://bloggingshakespeare.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Study_for_The_Quarrel_of_Oberon_and_Titania.jpg

http://sensesofcinema.com/assets/uploads/2013/03/a-midsummer-nights-dream.jpg

http://theshakespeareblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/arthur-rackham-the-meeting-of-oberon-and-titania_large.jpg

  Cel Shading (accessed 18/10/16) - http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CelShading

The legend of Zelda: Wind Waker HD images (accessed 18/10/16) - http://www.followingthenerd.com/site/wp-content/uploads/windwaker_hd1.jpg

https://assets.vg247.com/current//2013/01/154116_468954796498989_1177731505_n.jpg

http://img.game.co.uk/ml2/2/5/4/8/254830_scr5_a.png

http://www.rocketchainsaw.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/wind-waker-3.jpg

 Arthur Rackham’s illustrations (accessed 19/10/16)  - http://www.peterharrington.co.uk/blog/the-golden-age-of-illustration-arthur-rackham/ 

 Philostrate draws sword (accessed 20/10/16)  -  http://nfs.sparknotes.com/msnd/page_2.html

 Paper craft lantern (accessed 20/10/16)  - http://www.papercraftsquare.com/legend-zelda-wind-waker-lantern-free-papercraft-download.html

  Maya Tutorials

 George Maestri Modelling Toolkit playlist (accessed 14/10/16) -  https://www.lynda.com/Maya-tutorials/Maya-2017-Essential-Training/432363-2.html

 Online Media Tutor (accessed 14/10/16) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tElsku3aKQI

 Online Media Tutor channel (accessed 14/10/16) - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOeB7iML5JQPOQjbwDWHXSg

[christianmodelling-blog]

Week 15 04/01/17

For the lighting I’ve used the same approach that I did for my lantern. Directional lighting was the one I ended up using and of course I had to have a surface area for the shadow to show.   

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Week 15 04/01/17

Couple of week ago, I had problems when it came to applying the textures to my door. For some reason the textures wouldn’t show and I was still left with the default grey. I never had this problem with my lantern, so I wasn't too sure what was going on. I emailed my tutor about the problem and the problem was solved. It was simply pressing the “textured” button that is displayed on the top tool bar. 

The wood texture I found is from “The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker HD” one of my inspirations for this task. Using the UV editor, I would arrange the models faces so that you can see the textures on the models. The beams you see surrounding the door is the same texture, all I've done is added a darker tone using photoshop. For the door handle all I did was used the handle texture from my lantern and applied it to my door handle.   

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Week 13 22/12/16

I’ve decided that I’m not going to use the area lighting as I couldn’t make it work for my model. so instead I used directional lighting. This works a lot better for me because you can clearly see the shadows where the light cannot reach, with the area lighting it never displayed the shadows strongly, not compared to directional lighting which I chose to use.

After that I decided to delete the studio light setup as it wasn't needed. So I just settled with a plan floor. I got rid of the setup also because I wouldn’t let me display a shadow for the lantern. There were was you could customize the shadow such as whether how far or close you positioned the directional lighting, the shadow would either stretch or shorten. I was also able to render the shadow as well to prevent it from having large pixels.   

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Week 12 12/12/16

Now that I’m on the lighting and rendering stage. What I’ve done here is made a studio light setup which immediately produces great results within the scene.

To create this I first made a cylinder with a sub division of 40 but deleted the top face. I then extruded the top edges so that it made the bowl deeper and change the material to white lambert. This is because it will differ between the model and the setup.

I then selected the bottom edges and used the bevel tool. Once it was beveled, I then smoothed/increased the segments so that it made a bowl shape.  

The lighting I chose for this was an area lighting. I chose this effect because my lantern isn’t lit (due to me not making a flame animation) so I used area lighting because as my model is rectangular, area lights cast rays of light within a set boundary and are perfect for something that is rectangular. 

When I added an area light I pressed “T” which would let me choose where to aim it  

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Week 12 12/12/16

Here I have now applied the textures to my lantern. I'm not impressed the detail as the lantern looks quite boring. But now I feel I should focus lighting and rendering for my next step. I will replace the texture I have done that.

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Week 11 10/12/16

These here are my textures, the wooden texture is for my door and the two flat colours are for my lantern. The wooden texture is one of the textures from the game I'm inspired, "The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker HD". I didn't really want to design a whole texture for this task as I'm just learning about Maya and really focus more on the modelling side. For the Lantern. I had a look at what the game interprets the textures of the lantern and to be honest honest there just flat colours with a slight darker tone to break up the flatness.

[christianmodelling-blog]

Week 11 06/12/16 I realised that I was doing the UV mapping all wrong because of connecting the wrong parts too each other. So I was told by my tutor to select the parts I want to sew and use the automatic tool on the UV editor which lay out the parts I want to connect neatly. This has made it so easy for me to keep things organised, plus I'm able to change the sizes on the UV editor without effecting the model.

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Week 10 30/11/16

The first picture you see is the UV mapping of my lantern where I didn't delete the unnecessary faces that you couldn't see on the model. Then on the second image shows that I have sewed the edges that make the layout of each connected object. I do have a problem that some parts (mainly the corners) will overlap other edges if they are connected to the roof. So I'm left with little parts scattered across the grid.

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Week 10 30/11/16

Because the mistake I did connecting solid objects to one another, what I had to do was cut out some face areas in order to connect them another object. using tools like the face selector and multi cut tool helped me a lot in this situation. 

After the faces were deleted, I needed to find a way to connect them to each other. I researched a tool called “append to polygon tool” which connects objects together by introducing a new face. You do this by selecting an edge and connecting it to another edge. 

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Week 10 29/11/16

I started to create the door handle. I made the poly’s low on the sphere to make shaping a lot simpler. I got rid off the triangle faces/edges on the sphere and then rotated it onto the side for aesthetics. 

This I found really difficult which was making the windows for the door. I used my multi cut method to create the windows which does work, for the one side. I’m not really sure what I need to do for behind the door. I will need to do some research on how to do this. 

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Week 10 29/11/16

A door needs to open, so I planned to move the the pivot point. But in my process as you can see the opening looks really strange. So instead I changed the design just a little by making the door more blockish and squarer. 

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Week 10 29/11/16

From last weeks lesson, I reaslised I shouldn’t just combine to objects. I need to create a cutout so that when it come to doing the UV’s, it’s a lot easier to do. Again using the multi cut tool as it was the only thing I knew what to do in this situation.

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Week 10 29/11/16

What I did then was create some depth within the door and the side beams. I used the multi cut tool to help delete the edges and faces. After, I created the the top beam separately and cut off the the back part so that it was inline. 

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Week 10 29/11/16

I thought I should start to make my second object which is a door for the lantern to hang from. I imported an image plan of the design onto Maya, and started to create the model. 

I created a cube and simply edited the width, height and depth for it to fit the image plan. the side beams as you can call them, I just selected the side face and extruded them. Then use the vertices tool to make the jagged look. 

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Week 7 18/11/16

Here is the finished piece. I’m really pleased how it turned out, much more than the first attempt.

The next stage would be me creating textures to my lantern. I will study the elements of UV mapping so I have an understanding of what to do.

After that I will be designing my next model. I will be doing a door, I’d think it would look good with the lantern hanging in front of it, also I can play around with placing the pivot point so that the door would open.