Cerys Ford Computer animation arts

  Here is the final scene for this project. Even though it isn't complete, as I wasn't able to do the matte painting for the outside, I'm still pretty pleased with the result. Modelling always seemed quite daunting and complicated to me, so to be able to model some of the objects in this scene (especially the elephant heads) was quite an achievement for me.

 Here are the finished models with their textures that I completed yesterday and in the morning today. These are all of the objects that will populate my scene and make it feel alive. When texturing, I tried to bear in mind that a lot of these objects would be far away from the camera, so I tried to ensure that they would look right from a distance and no getting too much into detail that wouldn't be seen. This shows off the textures of the walls, pillars and floor. I decided that I would go slighty more stylised with my texturing, as I knew that I wasn't quite skilled enough to make something more realistic that would look good in the scene.

Today I was focused on mapping out the UVs for all my objects. I had a lot of issues with the UVs, at first, I just couldn't understand them.So, I had to go back and re-watch some of the tutorial videos from toolkit and even look up some videos on youtube to try to get a better understanding of them. In the end, I was able to get the hang on laying them out so they look good, but it was quite the process to get to that point.

 Here is one of the final objects that needed to be modelled for my scene - the stacks of blankets. This one involved a lot of mirroring - I first created half of the bottom fold, mirrored that to get it looking symmetrical, and then mirrored again along the y axis so that the two folds looked right.

 A large chunk of today was spent modelling the candles. The process was relatively simple, but took a long time to just looking just right. This is the first variation of the candles, which has only just started to melt. This was the simplest of the candles to create, only invovling a couple of extra edge loops and pulling the vertexes at the top to create the shape. For the second variaton of the candles, I wanted it to look like they had been burning for a couple hours. For this, I created extra geometry around the top which I then pushed and pulled into place to create the effect of the wax dripping down the sides as it's melting.  The final variation of the candle took the most time, which was mainly due to making silly mistakes, such as not making sure I had the right faces selected when extruding. I also started out by making a bowl-like shape from a cylinder. At first, I tried cutting into the geometry when  realised I could just push and pull the faces, vertices and edges

  I found the modelling for the wicker baskets suprisingly difficult to get to look right. The main body of it was quite simple, but the rims at the top and bottom were quite a struggle. At first I tried to extrude faces from the body of the wicker basket, but that created a gap on the inside that it wouldn't let me fill. Next I tried creating a rectangle, putting in edge loops and deleting the middle face to create the shape. This would have been alright, but I couldn't figure out how to get it to be the right desired thickness whilst still being even. So, next I tried something admittedly a little out there; I created a torus, got it down to a diamond shape, then rotated it to be square with the basket. This worked really well as I was able to get the right shape I wanted for the rims that looked right on the body of the basket.

 The model for the sheaths of wheat/grass were by far the easiest model to do, as it only involved changing the shape of a cylinder and a torus. I decided that it would be quicker to just texture the wheat rather than make the individual pieces of wheat to make the sheath more detailed.

  This is the finished model for the pineapples in the scene. After discussing it with Simon, I decided it would be best to texture the segments of the pineapple as opposed to modelling them, which would be quite difficult and time consuming. As the pineapples qould be quite far away from the camera, it seemed the best course of action just to texture the segments.  Modelling the pineapple was relatively easy, but quite time consuming. Modelling the main body of it only envolved using a lattice deformer on a sphere to get the right shape. For the leaves, I used a plane which I made into the right shape, then used a bend deformer to make it look more natural. Finally, I duplicated it and mad it larger where needed to get the crown of the pineapple.

    At first I dreaded modelling the pumpkins as I thought it would be much more difficult than what it actually was. Once I had figured out that I only needed to push in the edges in on a sphere, it became quite easy. I first used a lattice deformer to get the shape of the sphere to match the pumpkin in the orthograph, then pushed in the first set of faces on the top and bottom of the sphere to get the general shape. I then got rid of half the sphere, then pushed in some of the faces to get the surface of the pumpkin to look right. I then used a cylinder to create the stem.

  For today's photoshop session, we were asked to take our 2D painting from last week and apply realistic textures and objects to create a realistic looking image. I found applying the textures from photos to the layers I had created quite fun, although I did have to fiddle with which texture I used for which bit of the landscape, as some of them were lighter than the others which ruined the depth of the image. I decided to use some diferent photos I'd found on the inernet in some places as I felt they fitted my scene better than the photos provided, which were the sky, the mountain in the background, the wolf and the clouds.

  Here is the finished model for the Elephant heads. The last things i needed to model were some details on the headress and the tusks, which I did today. After modelling the head yesterday, everything else was quite simple to do in comparison, but involved a lot of repetition. For the tusks and the string on the headress, I used the curve tool to get it to look just right. I had to do a lot of fiddling with the string to get it to sit properly on the head. For the medallions, I just created the simple shape from a polygon cylinder and rotated it to get it to sit right on the head, then copy + pasted it into the right places. Once I'd got them modelled on one side, I mirrored each element to get them all in the right place on the other side.

  Today I was mainly working on modelling the golden elephant heads in maya. Originally, I planned to have this as one of the last parts of the scene I modelled, allowing me to have a bit more experience modelling before I moved on to arguably the most complicated object to model. However, after Simon's tutorial yesterday showing me the best ways to go about modelling the Elephant head, I decided to get this model out of the way while the info was fresh in my head. It's nearly finished, but I have a few details that still need to be modelled. So far, this has been quite the difficult challenge for me, yet quite fun. A lot of it was moving the vetices and edges around to get the shape just right, and figuring out how to make the area between the beginning of the trunk and the connection point of the tusks look right.

    Here is the completed model for the pillars in my final scene. I decided to do this model first because it consists of a  lot of simple, geometric shapes, that would serve as a good way to help me get more used to using autodesk Maya, before moving on to the more organic models like the offerings and the Elephant heads. Most of it was pretty simple to complete, except for he curved beam. I used the curve tool to create it, and it took a bit of fiddling to get it right.

  This is one of the last, if not the last, orthograph that I needed to complete. I thought this one would be a lot more difficult than it actually was, as I thought I would have trouble making the weaved sections look right, but all I needed to do was draw one sectin then copy + paste it. The basket is going to be the same on all sides, so I only did the one view.

  Another orthograph. This one is for the blankets in the scene. I found this one really simple to do, as I just had to do the middle view and then edit it for the other views.

I spent a large chunk of today working on the 'Organic modelling' tutorial in Maya. I had a lot of issues getting to grips with some of the techniques used in this tutorial, from making sure I was using the right tools when manipulating the shape of the alien's body, to deleting too much geometry. At one point I even got to the point of frustration of just deleting the alien's body and starting over. This was as far as I was able to get with this tutorial today.

 At first I thought that this Orthograph would be one of the more difficult ones due to the complex shapes, but once I had taken a closer look at pineapples it became clear that they're just a series of repeating shapes. First I figured out the shape of the pineapple segment, then repeated them to fit the shape of the pineapple.

  This is the Orthograph that i will use to model the pumpkins. I had quite a bit of trouble with this one at first, stuggleing to get the segments to look even and to get the pumpkin to have a round shape, but I think it came out well in the end.

  These are the orthographs for some structural details of my final scene, which are the pillars that line the walls, the beams that support the ceiling and decoration where the beams meet. These were the easiest orthographs so far, as most of it was just staight lines that could be copied and matched easily.

 These are the orthographs for the candles that can be seen dotted about the temple. I decided that I would model three different candles at different stages of burning, which will help to give my finished scene more variety and hopefully make it seem alive. I had a lot of issues with the second and third orthographs, as I found it quite difficult to make sure all of the little details lined up properly. In the end I'm quite happy with the final result, although I'm not sure they mtch up perfectly, it should be enough to create the models from.

    For todays photoshop session , we were tasked with creating a monchromatic flat painting in photoshop, using the video tutorial provided as guidance. I'm quite happy with the result, although I think the highlights on the mountain need to be a little darker, as at the moment they pop too much. I also think the sky might need to be a bit more saturated.  I found this tutorial really useful because it showed me the render function in photoshop, which will allow me to create trees very easy, and how to build up a flat painting like this in a way that looks decent.

  Here is the first orthograph for my project, which is the Elephant Head that can be seen on the pillars in the temple. I found the process quite challenging at first, but also quite enjoyable. I started with the front view of the Elephant, then based the side and top view off of that. I also used the guides function in Photoshop to make sure everything lined up properly.

 When I discussed my project with Simon yesterday, he suggested that I slightly expand the view of the temple so that the Elephant Idol could actually be the Matte painting. I decided that this was the best course of action because modelling a full detailed Elephant as one of my first experiences modelling was a bit over ambitious, and i likely wouldn't have been able to do it well in the time I have. I also decided to only do a sketch for the expanded version of this painting, as it is mant to be a guide to create orthographs from, and i thought it would be a poor use of time to fully paint it.

The second set of production art was focused on the Elephant objects that can be seen in the scene, as I wanted to try to make the gold look more realistic and I intended the Elephant statues to have more detail than what is seen in the concept art. I decided to do the Elephant heads that are on the pillars first, as I thought it would be better to try and get a grasp on painting gold on a smaller object. I found it quite difficult to figure out how to paint the complicated shapes to look gold. Although it's definately not perfect, I'm really proud of how this came out.   This is the production art for the main large Elephant idol. I'm glad I decided to do this after I'd done the smaller Elephant heads, as I feel this came out much better and I was able to complete it easier. I had quite a lot of trouble figuring out how to make the base look like wood, and after numerous attempts I was able to get an effect I was happy with.

 I decided that I'd do some production art of the wicker baskets and the candles that are used numerous times in the scene to get a better understanding of the details that would go into each item, but also as a sort of warm up/practice before I did the production art for the large Elephant idol in the middle of the scene and the smaller elephant heads on the columns. The wicker basket was the first piece of production art I did, which I think came out alright. I was quite proud of the texturing and the shading, although I think I should have tried to make the weaves more regular.   When it came to the candles, I wanted to experiment with different sizes and different stages of burning, which you didn't see in the original concept art. I'm quite pleased with how these came out, especially the flames.  

For the first part of the what if? metropolis assignment, we were asked to do some revisions to our digital paintings based on the feedback our tutors gave us. I decided to focus on my exterior shots for revision as I felt I couldn't improve my interior shot with my current skillset.  The revision I made to my low angle exterior shot is quite simple, but I feel it made a lot of difference to the image. The critique I got was to add more depth by adding some blue to the areas that are farther away, which in this image are Ersilia in the distance and the farthest bit of grass and path. I feel like this has made the image much more atmospheric and added distance to it. I made a couple of revisions to the exterior establishing shot, which were adding some blue into the farthest areas and to lower the contrast, which adds more depth to the image. Again, I feel like the small changes I have made to the image have made a vast difference to the quality.