Week 9: Lighting Sam's Scene

Here are some more shots of lighting I have done, this time I have worked on Sam's scene and try to simulate the same lighting effects. obviously this was a little different as the environment is much larger and the illumination needs to cover a bigger area. But we managed to get some interesting shadows and some nice dramatic lighting here.

Week 9: Project Summary

Well the end is nigh! Finally there after many weeks of stress, sweat and tears! Can't say how glad I am at how this has all come together, especially these last couple of weeks. Really thankful to the other guys in the group for helping me out while I've juggled my Uni work, weekend job and my work experience at the Sci Fi Channel.

So yeah it's all come together at the right time and although the production schedule seemed to be slipping through the texturing phase it seems we have made up plenty of time through the lighting and rendering where extra hands have been available after completing their other tasks. Everyone's attitude has really been outstanding to pull together and come in with the work on time despite some errors with rendering and difficult with dodgy scenes! Think everyone should be proud that we all have a very quality piece of work to present on our showreels and promote our wicked 3D skills!

Also think we have all learnt a great deal in terms of Maya and some new skills that are gonna benefit us in later projects, particularly with modeling and texturing.

Overall - great success!

Harvey

Week 8: Lighting Jeff's Environment

After completing my section ready for renders I've started work on Jeff's lighting to get it the same throughout the piece. or at least a similar style so it all seems to flow like its the same place. Here are some of the lighting effects I've put on his street, again I've used lens flare and spotlights to create some nice shadows casting down the floor.


Also I worked on some of the textures on the old lady. I did some simple mapping on the clothes and also found anew texture for the head scarf which I put a bump map on to try and give it more detail and depth.

Week 8: nCloth on Flag

Also to add a new dimension and a new skill shown in the environment I got Sam to show me how to do some basic cloth dynamics. I've made a Spanish flag in the main street and got a slight breeze blowing on it. Should be a subtle bit of animation in our otherwise desolate environment.

Week 8: Lighting

Okay so finished off some last little tweaks on the texturing this week and then moved onto lighting my scene. I've been in charge of experimenting with the lighting and I'll duplicate similar effects in everyone elses envrionment sections so that everything remains generic and flows.

The style I have used has tried to make the lighting really intensifying and generally making the streets seem incredibly hot. Ive put a sphere around the environment and and put a big glow on this to basically wrap around all thwe edges of the geometry joining to the sky.


On the other lights ive used mainly spot lights to cast some long shadows and catch specular. Also from these I've experimented with some lens flare. This has a slight yellow/orange tinge so that it conveys the feeling of heat again.



In the alley I've used a series of downlighting spot lights to cast shadows quite intensely and this then contrasts quite well to the streets on wither side of the alley which are really bright. I think the lighting helps to break up the intensity of the whole piece and will clearly show changes in the environment.

The end section of the street is quite intensely lit also and this leads on nicely to the courtyard. It makes it seem like the cat is 'going towards the light'.

Week 7: Texturing

K the model was complete by this point and here's some of the texturing I've done in my section. Mainly i've used photographic images and then planar mapped them to the planes of the buildings. Seems to have worked well and some good bump maps have really brought out the best in the photos. Obviously will have more impact once lit. Mainly I've kept to photos for the larger planes and for smaller touches I have made my own textures from the Maya defaults.



Also I've tried to work with some specular (blinns and phongs) for any metallic or glass textures so this will bring out the lighting even more aswell as any reflections where elements of the environemtns will be picked up.

Week 5: Modelling the Main Street

These are some more modelling shots. I have started branching off from the alley onto the main street where the cat will lead onto the courtyard. Here I have had to kind of blend some of my earlier architecture with Sam's more expansive archways and courtyard areas so it flows nicely. Generally I think this is working really well and I will continue to fill the street with more buildings by Monday as this is my production deadline for the modelling part.

Week 5: Adding detail to the alley

This is were I have really started bringing the alley construction together. I have started to add the window and door elements modelled by Jeff and also some lights from Sam. Also I've started to destroy some of the parts I made earlier to add to the destruction and give the impression of areas collapsing.

Week 5: More Modelling

These are some more shots of my modelling. This is a continuation of my work on the overpass in the alley and also a stairwell I have worked on for further down the alley. I have put these in a quick mock up alley which I aim to extend with Jeff once we have started to swap elements such as windows and doors.

Week 4: Environment Design

This is a rough layout of the side on view of the alley which should give me a good idea for scaling and positioning of the features. I will work to this as this seems to fit the narrative and allow for the camera we want to use.

Week 4: Production Schedule

Hey guys, I've updated the production schedule for the week, obviously changed it because Matt has finished his modelling and rigging, Also I think we would like to spend a little longer on modelling considering how good the results are, and we can obviously spend less time on texturing now because we found it will be easier texturing on the large flat planes we have for the sides of the buildings. Anyways heres the plan.

Week 4: Modelling

This is a screenshot of the first piece of modelling I did. I started from this as a central point in my alleyway. I will then start to develop around this. I have also worked on a roof for this overpass area. I'm also working closely with Jeff as he is modelling alot of the smaller features such as windows and doors so we may use these again on different buildings in both our areas.

Week 4: Storyboarding

This week we brought our final storyboards together to see how the narrative would work. We each storyboarded our own designated section and then linked them up and we agreed this was working well. Here are my storyboards I illustrated.

Week 3: Production Schedule

I've whacked up this as a rough production schedule. It might be different to the one we put together as a group but I think we can use this until next week and then re-evaluate it then. Its got a section for each person and its very rough and sketchy at the moment. Also I've noted down the lectures we have on each of the days and a progress tracker for individual tasks on the right hand side. I'll post this on the main blog aswell as my own blog.

Week 3: Finalising Our Narrative

After returning from Barca we decided to finalise our narrative and bring together any new ideas we might have. I drew up a new map sketch that I felt would work well for a 1 minute piece and we also have had some new ideas incorporated into the narrative.

We have basically divided the narrative into 5 sections and by Week 4 everyone will have storyboarded their section and we will re-evaluate our idea, although we think it will fit together nicely as we only need to storyboard 12 seconds each. These are the sections that have been assigned:

Section 1: Matt, Cat walking out of hole in side of house after dragging ball of string down, then exploring street
Section 2: Jeff, Cat exploring down street and examining alley and turning into it
Section 3: Harvey, Cat going through alley taking in narrowness and darkness and then emmerging out the other side
Section 4: Kanika, Cat going down a new wider street going towards an archway which is entrance to a courtyard
Section 5: Sam, Cat going into courtyard with shot widening to show the whole city and all the destruction.

The big change we have also made has been not to having the ground cracking like an earthquake is happening, but have it more like an earthquake has occurred and the cat is investigating it. Also in the final shot the city will pan out to show the city practically ripped away on a kind of cliff edge. This will be better explained in Sam's storyboards later on.

Week 3: More ideas for style and architecture

These were a couple of postacrds I picked up in Barcelona showing off some good back alley areas from the gothic quarter. I really liked the style of this especially with the texturing. I also liked the lighting and the intensity on one of the postacrds and would like some of our own shots to appear like that. Also this will act as extra reference to our own photos we took while in Barcelona.

Week 2: Barcelona Study Trip

In Barcelona we collected alot of photographic visual research, we felt this would be important to work from for building design and texturing later on when we returned home. In my own photography I have tried to work towards getting some images that could potentially be used as flat textures like the ones below:




































We also found some interesting buildings which we think really suit our style we are going for some we maybe be referring to these regularly for inspiration and ideas. Some of the really run down buildings are really what we want to aim for and we might even have to use these for textures if they work well enough.



























Also this was the moment Matt realised he had had too much cheap wine!