Visualisation Project 2 - "Location, Location"

"Design and model an interior location base on a story from a different time period."


"A well designed environment can act as a form of expression to communication a story visually and is important in setting the time, place and mood of any game, animation or architectural visualisation.
For this project you will need to design, model, texture, light and render 60sec walkthrough of a location of your choice based on a published story or script from a different time period. The interior location should be set either in a room in a residence or monumental space i.e. church, factory or historical building. You will need to include all the visual elements such as the furniture and objects that described in the story.
The design of a location is an important for supporting a story and the characters. It is essential to consider the different architectural periods, genres, dramatic atmosphere and mood, colour and lighting conditions of the location.
Two locations have been provided for your use; see the page 2 & 3 of this document. If you choose your own story you will need to submit the passage/s taken from the original text that you have used."

I think this project sounds really interesting, and takes a much less technical route than I thought we might face for an architectural visualisation module. It has taken me pretty much a week to look through some older books that I have read in the past or have heard of for their quality of description. I originally thought I would use the first paragraph of "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" by L. Frank Baum, which described Dorothy's family's farmhouse. However, I have now remembered reading "Of Mice and Men" by John Steinbeck (all those years ago!) for my English Literature GCSE at school, and found a pretty good description of the bunk house at the start of the second chapter in an online copy of the book.

Here is the passage I plan on using for this project:

"The bunk house was a long, rectangular building. Inside, the walls were whitewashed and the floor unpainted. In three walls there were small, square windows, and in the fourth, a solid door with a wooden latch. Against the walls were eight bunks, five of them made up with blankets and the other three showing their burlap ticking. Over each bunk there was nailed an apple box with the opening forward so that it made two shelves for the personal belongings of the occupant of the bunk. And these shelves were loaded with little articles, soap and talcum powder, razors and those Western magazines ranch men love to read and scoff at and secretly believe. And there were medicines on the shelves, and little vials, combs; and from nails on the box
sides, a few neckties. Near one wall there was a black cast-iron stove, its stovepipe going straight up through the ceiling. In the middle of the room stood a big square table littered with playing cards, and around it were grouped boxes for the players to sit on."

This description is actually much more detailed than I thought I would find, so am very pleased with this find! :) Next on the agenda will be to start re-reading some of the book to remember the characters and style of the book to help with architecture and artistic research later on. I will also soon start to produce some mock up drawings using quick perspective renders of shapes in 3DS max or maya, before editing them in Photoshop or on paper. These will help with my visual ideas and research for my presentation at the start of March.

More character progress. Been working on portfolio too!

Here is my character model (hopefully finished now after I possibly check it with Andy incase there are any problems with it), with the addition of very simple modelled hair shape (the rest will be painted on in mudbox) and geeky glasses! :)

Once I am sure I am happy with this and such, I will start to unwrap it so I can add some texture and colour in Mudbox and Photoshop. I am pretty happy with my progress so far, and think this process is a particularly good one to feature in my showreel/portfolio dvd...

Talking of which, I have decided on producing a DVD/video style for now rather than rushing a (likely to be) poor website before the deadline, as I think it will work much better if I spend more time on it after this. However, I am hoping my menu for the DVD will resemble my previous web wireframe design, and to produce a new website and blog design very shortly to match with this simple style - consistency!

Today I have been attempting (and failing a lot...) at getting to grips with Adobe Encore, as I seem to have it on my laptop from downloading After Effects last term. I am finding it quite difficult to get to grips with, and have no idea what image size or quality I need. I guess I may need to get a load of DVDs just to test out these theories! :P

Here is a screen shot of the menu I created (that is, if it does work, and I did do it right! haha) :

Character Modelling

Here are some screen captures I have been taking to record progress of the modelling of my character design.

I suppose it still looks quite similar to Andy's style - have to unwrap and add textures next - will hopefully make it look very different :D Also need to make separate glasses to make him wear...

Texture & Lighting Library

Texture & Lighting Library, a set on Flickr.

This is my texture library

Still Life Visualisation Project - Texture Library + Evaluation

Click here for my 'Texture and Lighting Library' flickr set

                This project was my first work specialising in the field of visualisation, and was focused on recreating still life scenes with 6 objects. These objects were to be objects I found or owned, and were to be modelled and textured accurately to give a realistic style, to fit in with the theme of visualisation.

                When I first started this project, I thought I would like to produce work similar to that of Ralph Goings – still life scenes including items associated with food and diners (ketchup bottles, napkin holders, etc.), due to the high amount of reflective surfaces in his work and liking the actual objects he uses in his work. However, I later decided to photograph some of my own objects from my bedroom, and decided that, when placed together on a desk in a certain way, could have a strong theme and almost tell a story in an image, influenced by pieces by Kevin Frank and William M Harnett.

The objects I chose were my sketchbook, pencil, drinking glass, desk lamp, small wooden drawing figure, and miniature model of a guitar (with stand). I thought these would be a good way to show my interests in drawing and character modelling (from pencil and life drawing of the wooden figure on sketchbook) and music (from the guitar model). The empty glass would also show that someone had been there producing the drawing very recently, and left their things on the desk, with the light still on.

                Throughout the last term, I feel I have learned a lot about 3D visualisation techniques, particularly modelling objects accurately and correctly in 3D. For instance, I feel I have learned a lot about different ways of modelling items, such as using the lathe modifier on a spline, or, alternatively, modelling straight from a 3D object such as a box. I think I now would be able to choose the most appropriate of these different methods, whereas, before, I was perhaps using the wrong technique for some objects, causing problems with texturing. I also feel I have learned about the importance of modelling correctly using only quad polygons and no triangles, as this can also cause problems with texturing and rendering.

                A lot of my modelling involved started with a number of 3D objects, editing them to the shapes that were required, and then grouping them with other parts of the same object. For example, the guitar was made up of a large amount of smaller shapes such as the main body, knobs, frets, and bridge, and took a long time to put together. The glass was different, however, which I drew a line of the side profile for, then used the lathe modifier to create the main shape. I then discovered how to use the shape merge compound object so I could put the Coca-Cola logo onto the sides of it.

                I also learned a lot about texturing throughout this project. The main aspect of this was unwrapping objects to texture them. Although I only used this for one part of my objects in the scene (the main body of the guitar), I feel it has helped me understand texturing a lot more and is something I plan on using a lot more in my future 3D work.

                Overall, I am pretty pleased with my final renders from this project, and think that my modelling and texturing has been very successful, in comparison to how I used to work in the past. However if I could have more time learning about this subject, I feel I would probably give a lot more time into lighting and camera work, as this was slightly rushed towards the end. I would also put more thought into producing more adventurous compositions, due to mine being very similar in some areas.

               

               

Context 2 Assignment 2 - Portfolio - Initial Ideas & research

For the next 5 weeks or so, we have our second Context 2 assignment to complete in conjunction with our lectures and seminars with Danny. This task is linked with the last assigment on networking with companies, as now we are making a portfolio of our work and development, which is a useful part of showcasing your work online, as well as being an often vital part of applying for work or placements in the industry or multimedia.

To start with in this project, my first idea was the obvious of just producing a demoreel/showreel of some of my work so far that would follow the assignment structure given in the brief:

- Title splash page

- Finalised work section

- Work-In-Progress section

- Design Development Process section

- Contact Me section

Now I have thought more about this and researched other practitioners in my area of virtual environments, I have found that is often more suitable to have a website containing a number of pages to show both stills/development and final work and showreel videos. Although, sometimes a Vimeo account with my work and showreels may be enough to show people my work, I feel that an update to my website is needed anyway, and that this could be the perfect opportunity to do this and to make my online presence more professional. As I am not an interactive media student, however, I think it is important to produce a simple but effective design, rather than making it too technical or busy.

Here are a few practitioners' web portfolios that I found in my seminar yesterday that I thought were pretty interesting in simple but effective styles:

David Astley - 3D modelling portfolio  ( http://www.davidastley.net )

This was my favourite of the designs that I researched - a simple colour coded, quite plain webpage of just links to different images of 3D modelling (textured and wireframe development). I think this is a very successful layout and quite simply coded webpage with a professional finish. I think I could produce something similar to this in layout and style, but that also shows videos/demoreels as well as stills and development to show I can do animation as well as just modelling (for now!).

Paris Mavroidis - 3D artist/programmer portfolio ( http://www.parismav.com )

This is another very simple design I came across in my research - a website consisting of one consistent layout, with only 3 separate pages showing off the artist's best and most recent work and demoreels in the main content section in the centre of the page. I also like the simple use of colour and font in this example, keeping it simple rather than too busy. It also features a sort of "title splash page" as given in the brief, where a still/promotional shot of his/her most recent work as the front page of the website.

Sarah Petherick - 3D visualisation portfolio ( http://www.3dmice.com )

I chose to look at this website due to how only two shades of grey and white typography can be used in a basic style, but can still look quite effective when put together. This website also features a flash feature, however, with rolling/animated images down the side, which is something that I wouldn't put time into doing when I don't specialise in web design, but think it can add interest to a simple webpage. This site is also quite small in size, centred in the browser, rather than filling the whole page, which I think is a quite interesting way of laying out a portfolio too.

Stuart Smith - Visualisation/web portfolio ( http://www.stuartsmithdesign.co.uk/portfolio )

This webpage is the least simple of the examples I have looked at, and seems to use many more complex web techniques that I am not quite sure how to use or produce (flash, javascript, etc.), but have looked at the layout of showing images as to links to information and more detail on that project, and think it is a design feature to consider if I was to produce a webpage with more pages in the future. However, the design of the navigation/banner at the top is still very simple with just shades of grey and white, which is something I would like to experiment with.

I am now going to produce a couple of quick wireframe designs based on this research to try and make a decision on what sort of layout and style I want my portfolio to have.

Silent Comedy Idea & Character Drawings

I have been starting to think about my next animation project (Silent Comedy) and how to use up a minute worth or animation and to make it at least slightly comical! :)

It took me a long time to come up with some ideas, but the one I have decided to work on for now is this:

A geeky character decides to try and play basketball with his new ball and hoop in his front yard. He starts to dribble the ball and then takes a few shots at the hoop - each time spinning around the hoop then failing to drop through. He then gets very frustrated after quite a few misses and aggressively throws the ball straight at the hoop, causing it to bounce straight back at his face and knock his glasses off, leaving him unable to see. Whilst 'blind' he walks straight into the dustbin, knocking it over, then walks straight onto a banana peel and slips over onto his bottom (perhaps breaking his glasses in the process). 

This is quite a complicated idea, but I think it could work well within a minute + of animation, and think it could be a good way of playing around with the funnier approach to slapstick comedy which is mentioned in our brief:

"The second, funnier way to film that same sequence is as follows: Cut to the guy, walking. Cut to the banana peel, lying in wait. Then cut to a wide shot of the guy approaching the banana peel. Cut to a close-up of the banana peel, just as the guy's foot almost hits it. Cut back to the wide shot, as the guy deftly steps over the banana peel, smiling smugly . . . and falls into an open manhole…"

Also, here are some drawings of the front and side profile of my character design, which I plan to use as drawing planes in 3ds max to help me model it, like I have done so far in Andy's tutorials...

I have decided to stick to a character style and shape quite similar to Andy's, due to taller, slimmer characters apparently being easier to model and rig. My 3D version may end up looking quite different to this initial design, yet this is the general shape I will want to produce.

Small Wooden Figure Model (yes I have a lot of mini stuff!)

What I assume to be final object if I decide not to include the blue beads in my compositions anymore, was the miniature wooden drawing figure. It took me a long time to get my head around how to model the harder parts of this (such as the torso, head,waist and feet areas), before deciding on modelling them from boxes using vertex adjustment.

I have not yet tried texturing this model yet, athough I think I will probably use a UVW map modifier (box) on each part to see if this will evenly distribute a wooden texture. I will also probably use one of the wood textures given with the 3ds max software, as these are accurate, tile-able and have bump maps supplied with them.

Here is the progress of making this model and the outcome so far:

Modeled the parts of the arm (edited cylinders/spheres)

Both arms arranged in position, head and neck modeled (edited box and a sphere)

Torso also modeled by editing vertices of a box

Final model all placed together with stand - most wooden parts with mesh smooth modifier

I am pretty pleased with this model so far, but may need to tweak it to make it more accurate (I have not done the cut-out parts of the wrist, for example, due to difficulties) and hope that the texturing will work out well on the finished product.

Character modelling - finally

So for the most part of the christmas hols I have been getting on with my visualisation work which I pretty much neglected before the last week or 2 of term. Now I feel like I am totally neglecting the animation project, although its deadline isn't until April, I feel it will be a lot harder and take longer to get to grips with!

The project is called 'Silent Comedy' and basically involves us designing one or two characters, and animating them to produce a slapstick style comedy piece (1 min+). In the brief, it also says that we should 'design, build and animate a character that can apparently think, decide, pick something up, drop something, walk, climb, trip, slip and fall'. I am not quite sure of what exact plot I want my animation to have yet, or indeed what my character will look like. However, I have so far focused on learning character modelling techniques so I know what is easiest but most effective to produce in 3D.

Therefore, I have finally got round to starting to get on with some of Andy's tutorials from the NOW on character modelling using his design as practice. Yesterday I finished the whole of the body and clothes, but still have the head and face modelling to learn (it is a long time since that seminar - can't quite remember).


Anyway, here is the smooth (NURBS) model of my headless character from following the tutorials:

It is pretty much the same as the finished model in the tutorial, so I am quite pleased with it, and feel I have learned more about how to approach modelling a character (choosing whether to extrude or attach a new shape, for example).