Bunkhouse Moodboards and Mock-ups

I have now produced a moodboard on Photoshop after reading the descriptive passage from 'Of Mice and Men' thoroughly and researching and collecting images, textures and general styles, to help with my design process.

This moodboard features the "black cast iron stove" from the description, which I actually forgot to include in my previous 3D mockups/drawings. However, I think when I make my final space, I plan to make the room longer and thinner than in my mockup anyway, so there will be room for this on one of the main walls where there is no window. I have shown what this might look like by editing my quick 3D mockup:

I have also added some texture labels to one of my previous drawn/3D mock-ups, following on in more detail from some of the textures I found when producing my previous moodboard.

Pirate Camp/Procedural Animation

Over the last few days I have been playing about in Maya some more, trying to get my head around particle effects and nCloths (dynamics). I feel pretty happy about basic nCloth techniques now - creating an nCloth on an existing mesh and then using a constraint such as the transform tool to make it stay in one place. I also feel a little more comfortable with particle effects, although I am still not very confident with texturing and rendering them.

I did discover the preset fluid effects in Maya for fire, smoke, lightening, etc., however, I probably should not use these in my final project, as the main part of the brief is that I understand how particle systems work and should make my own.

Maya "Create Fire" preset tool test on campfire logs

Here is a quick screenshot of what I have modelled and half textured for now to just give a feel of what it might look like when I come to my final renders:

So far I have made a few similar logs for a campfire to be in the middle of the campsite, a flag similar to that I made for Baris' nCloth tutorial using a wooden pole with metal accessories, and a pirate "jolly roger" flag. I have also recently made a quick tent shape using 3 edited boxes, and have turned the front of these into the door of the tent, and made it into an nCloth which blows slightly in the wind. There are also a few logs similar to my campfire holding up the tent, although two of these logs have forked tops to hold up the third one. :) (see below)

Logs/sticks holding up the tent

Next I need to make pins and string holding the tent to the ground, and perhaps work a little more on the ncloth animation of it to make it slightly more realistic. I also need to learn how to make a fire that won't crash my laptop and will actually look quite realistic in mental ray!

"Location Location" Project Planning - Mock-up/drawings

I have now started to plan my "Location Location" visualisation project, where I will recreate the bunkhouse from Steinbeck's 'Of Mice and Men' in 3D and show it in a 30 second walkthrough.

First of all I simply sourced some examples online of other people's interpretation of the bunkhouse, mainly from films and theatre productions, and made this basic moodboard of the best images:

Today, I have also made a quick mock up of what I want my 3D space to look like, using simple shapes (boxes, planes...) in 3ds max to produce a birdseye (top view render) plan of my proposed design, as well as to give me some basic perspective views to draw on top of.

Here are the renders I did with cameras at each end of the room, and the wireframe top view plan:

Front view camera (door end of room)

Rear view camera (window end of room)

Wireframe screenshot in top view of the 3D mock-up space

After producing this quick 3D mock-up design, I then used the camera renders above as a template for drawn perspective plans, and roughly drew the main detail and shapes over the top. Below are these two drawings I have produced, which give a much more detailed view, in terms of aesthetics, as to what my space may look like when finished...

Front view render with drawn detail on top

Rear view render with drawn detail on top

(I guess it should be noted than I forgot to reverse the position of the pillows, etc. when drawing over the bed shapes. However, this will obviously be consistant in 3D :] )

I have also been collecting ideas for textures online, and will be making another copy of one of the above images with textures around the outside, pointing out which would be used for which objects in the scene. From my moodboard and reading the original passage, it is apparent that most of the textures in this location will be wooden.

These drawings and mock-ups also do not feature a roof/ceiling, but this will be something I consider before starting to make the space in 3D. As seen in one example in my moodboard, the ceiling will probably consist of beams, to fit in with the wooden, barn style of the bunkhouse.

Pirate Camp Stuff :)

Here is the main part of this brief for Procedural Animation in Maya, given to us by Baris...

" Use your creative skills to produce a dynamic pirate camp that has at least 3 procedurally animated components or environmental effects in it. When designing and animating think about articulation, presentation, timing, camera shots, texturing and lighting.

• Produce a 30 second animation to demonstrate your procedural animation skills.
• Present at least 3 different uses of dynamic effects. 
• Demonstrate your lighting and rendering skills.  "

To start with, I have done a very rough moodboard of the theme and possible objects I may need to model or produce with particle effects within Maya. This features a few googled images of pirate-y objects such as hats, swords, eye patches, chests, etc. as well as camping related things such as campfires and tents. It also features a 3D examples of a pirate camp that I found (surprisingly!).

I have also had a go at modelling a couple of objects to get me started and used to Maya. The first was a sword, although this was just pure practice and I am pretty sure I will produce a totally new model for my actual project, due to it not being the correct style. I also just made a log in Maya, which is quite smooth and roughly textured at the moment. I hope to correct these slight flaws soon as I learn more in the software.

Showreel Portfolio - Context 2 Assignment

This is the online Vimeo version of my showreel for the Context 2 portfolio assignment:

Game Environment Research

I am not going to lie, I do like a bit of gaming when taking a rest from all the uni work! But I am currently looking at some of my games to find examples of what I think is very good architecture and environment design within them.

Yesterday I restarted the game "Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands" by Ubisoft - I never finished it last time! Anyway, this game features some of the most amazing architecture and 3D environments I have ever seen in a game and think it reflects the Persian/Arabian style very well.

Here is a video of some gameplay posted by Ubisoft, with some description and detail on architecture and environment design towards the end.






I have also played two out of three of the "Uncharted" series of games by Naughty Dog, and immediately noticed the quality and detail of the environments within these games. I plan to get "Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception" as soon as I have time to dedicate more time to playing it as it also looks rather awesome in terms of design and gameplay. :D

Here is a couple of pictures of maps/environments from the second game I found on the web, which I particularly found appealing.

The Flooded Ruins- Set during a lightning storm around the customs house from the first Uncharted.

The Facility- Submarine pens from the first game.

Portfolio Update - DVD Showreel

I have been working A LOT on my portfolio this week, especially on actually producing work and imagery to put in it (Maya skills, character modelling - see previous post). I have edited my original wireframe design for my DVD navigation menu today using Adobe Encore and Photoshop, to give it a more visual/graphic style - making it more appealing to the eye, I think.

Here is a screenshot from within Encore of my menu at the moment:

As I said before, I am also currently working on practicing working in Maya as well as 3DS Max, and producing some quick examples of skills such as particle and nCloth dynamic systems. So far I have done some basic examples of dynamic particle emitters producing snow, sleet and rain effects:

Rain - streak particles with splash effect

Sleet - small sphere particles with splash effect

Snow - larger spheres colliding with ground plane

Character Texturing

I have spent most of this week attempting to unwrap my character in 3DS Max, before painting it in mudbox and then re-opening it in 3DS Max. I had quite a bit of trouble making the subdivisions/meshsmooth fit with the texture I made in mudbox, so had to keep editing it in Photoshop until the shape of the hair seemed to fit as neatly as possible with my smoothed model.

So, this is my final textured model for now and the UV map that is texturing it.. unless I decide to change the colours (which should be easy using the UV map I have already edited in Photoshop! :D )

Character model with texture in 3DS Max - he looks so shocked/scared at the moment :p

Original UV unwrap map from 3DS Max

Final UV map for character - Mudbox and edited in Photoshop

Character head

Character shoes

Character torso

Screenshot of painted model in Mudbox