Cerys Ford Computer animation arts

 As stated in previous posts, I'm unhappy with the realistic texture that I'm currently using for certain items, particularly the wood texture. I did quite a bit of reserach and looking for more stylised textures online, and in the end I decided to follow this tutorial > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBQFu6LZfzI to create a stylised wood smart material to use as a base, which i then went and added extra wood grooves and highlights, and then finally using a fill layer with lowered opacity to blend everything together to create the look I wanted. I'm so happy I decided to do this, as I think the texture looks so much better than before. Creating the smart material base -  Wood smart material on the bookshelf- Extra painted grooves:  Extra Painted highlights: "Blending" Fill layer: Now that I know this texturing technique works, I'll go back and re-texture the wood items I've already done, like the table and chairs.

 Now that all the modelling was done, i moved on to texturing. The main aim is to get textures onto everything in the scene, and then go in and add details. I'm happy with some of the textures so far, but I think some of them are too realistic for what I have in mind, particularly the wood texture, so I'm going to do some research into how to get these to look more stylised. Here is the current textures in maya. I still need to add the lighting but it is giving me a good idea of how the textures are working together. It's much clearer in this how the realistic textures arent working. I think I will also change the floor from wood to flagstones, as the scene is quite wood heavy at the moment.

 I wasn't happy with how bare the kitchen was looking, so I decided to populate the kitchen with things like jars and fruit and veg to make it seem more lived in and used. Im really please with how these turned out, I think they bring a lot of detail to the scene. The final modelling that needed to be done was the fireplace details. I'm really happy with how these came out also.

 The next part of the kitchen I modelled was the witch memorial. It was a fairly simple process, as alot of it was created using techniques I'd used elsewhere in the kitchen. At first I was going to use wand models I'd found online, but after a while of searching all I could find were bad models or ones that were incredibly high poly, so I realised it would be easier to just model them myself. I did this by taking a cylinder and manipulating and extruding it to get the shape I wanted. 

 In order to properly start texturing, I needed to figure out the colour scheme for the witch, as a majority of the kitchen's colours will depend on the colours of the Witch. I haven't quite decided which colour scheme I'm going to go with, except that no 3 isn't right as I think it's too dark. Out of all of them, I'm liking 2 and 4 the most.

For the fireplace, I decided to use the high poly to low poly baking technique that my tutor showed me. This started with creating a high poly mesh, composed of many individual bricks: Next, using the quad draw tool, I created a low poly mesh using the high poly mesh as the base: Finally, I took the Low poly mesh into substance painter and baked the high poly mesh onto it:  I think I need to tweak the meshes a little bit to get it perfect, but I'm really happy with the result. I tested out some texures on it as well, but I need to do more research on how to achieve the style I want, as everything I tried was too realistic.

A big part of the atmosphere I want to create in the Witches kitchen is that it holds a lot of knowledge, both old a new. The best way to get this across is through books, so the books and bookshelves are an important part of the scene. For the bookshelves, I wanted them to be older looking but quite ornate, so I used this antique bookshelf as inspiration for my bookshelves, mainly the carving at the top, which I will create during texturing. For the books, I created a very basic book shape, which I then reshaped to create 5 unique books. I then used these books to clutter the bookshelves and also dot a few book piles elsewhere in the kitchen.

 For the Table and Chairs, I wanted these to be older looking, so I used antique tables and chairs as inspiration. I will also be able to age them more with the texturing. For the Sofa, I liked the idea of a bench with a seat cushion instead of  a sofa with armrests and a back. I think I will make cushions to go in the corners though to make it look a bit comfier. 

 At this point I decided it was best to get all the most important elements of the kitchen modelled to ensure I could start animation, starting with the Counters, Cupboards and Sink. All of these were fairly complicated, especially the cupboard doors with the cross bars going across the front. 

 Next was the Bin and range hood for the oven. These were both very easy to model, as they're both simple shapes that didn't involve much detail. With the bin, i again used the rounded shapes to make it fit with the other modern elements in the kitchen.