Multimedia Degree Done! :(

So, I have now finished the Multimedia course, with my final research presentation completed last Thursday! Sad times. I now have the final exhibition over the next couple of weeks and then a week or so to wait for my results before the big graduation in July. Nervous times too.

Anyway, in terms of the exhibition, I produced a showreel as my main asset, which I also produced some extra imagery from my developing knowledge of the vray renderer. The imagery I created is of an interior space and is quite simple in terms of design, but I think the quality and realism of the renderer is much higher than I have achieved previously with the Mental Ray renderer. So far, for the showreel and exhibition pieces,  I used a bright daylight set-up using vray lighting, such as vray sun, vray light, and global illumination settings.

Here are the two stills I managed to render in time for these exhibition assets:

As I say, these then became part of my final short showreel for the exhibition and my website, featuring the best of my work that fits within the specific field of 3D visualisation. This included my vray interior visualisation, the 'Castle Attack' client project, the ATRG internal client advert, examples of my research artefacts, and my 'Still Life' objects from last year.

3D Visualisation Showreel 2013 from Samantha Freeman on Vimeo.

I am now using this scene I created with vray to experiment with lighting using the renderer - such as night scenes and similar tests to what I did in my research project - in order to get the best portfolio I can.

External Client Flyover Video (forgot to post this!)

Just a quick post to show a short flyover style video I did for my external client project of Nottingham Castle. Like my stills, it shows the parts I have modelled with full textures and the parts my peers made in a grey texture. :)



'Castle Attack' Client Project from Samantha Freeman on Vimeo.

Artefact 5 Outcome

From the storyboard I posted previously, I then edited a short film using rendered images, effects, and sound. I only managed to render it slowly at 640x360 because for some reason a tiny bit of volume light adds days to render times! It's not great quality, but sufficient enough for what I was experimenting with.

Here is the video from Vimeo (for some reason the start quality is worse when uploaded online - it's usually better on the original file!)



The Classroom (Artefact 5 - Editing) from Samantha Freeman on Vimeo.

Artefact 5 - Finally close to rendering finished & storyboard

For my final artefact I chose to continue from the shots produced in my previous one, and to focus on editing skills - including some animation and effects.

So, the main reason I haven't updated here for such a while is because of very little progress due to ridiculous render times. I am only rendering at 640x360, which I thought would save time, but it still takes about an hour per frame so has been taking rather a long time! Anyway, it is nearly done now, just rendering as many frames for the final camera shot as possible to lengthen the video.

I have started editing the shots I have already rendered in After Effects, fading them together using opacity, as well as adding effects and some sound. It is quite amazing what difference a backing track can make actually, when I tried adding some horror style music it totally changed the feel of the video so far, which wasn't totally what I was expecting.

I have also produced a quick storyboard following on from what I planned in my previous artefact presentation, using ink style renders (Quicksilver renderer) in Photoshop...

External Client Project Outcome - Rendered Images

The main outcome for my client project was to submit my 3ds max project file and texture folders, but I also decided to render stills of each wall in their environment using a merged file of all of our models in one scene. I did these using my final textures on my parts, and texture the rest in a light grey to highlight to the client which part was created by me.

Here are my rendered images of my final models:

Castle Texturing - Diffuse Maps Done.. I think

As the title suggests, as I aimed to do, I think I have completed the main diffuse maps (colour information) for the textures of all three of my walls of the castle now and it is looking pretty good. I know I am not great with normal maps from what I have experimented with so far in photoshop, but think I should be able to add a little more detail with this when I have made these maps from my diffuse textures - hopefully by tonight or earlier tomorrow. If I have time, I may also look into how specular/reflections can be creating through texture maps, to see if I can improve the effect of the windows.

Below are a few renders of the (pretty much) final diffuse textures on a merged file of the castle walls. (Notice I have also added a basic plane for the roof... not sure if I have time to do the chimneys too - I shall see!)

View from East front wall

View from North front wall

View from South front wall

Texturing Update - North front wall and Basement/kitchen

I am currently rather ill if I am honest, but still trying to do a bit work here and there until I start to feel the effect - trying to get the texturing done a couple of days before the deadline would be nice! At least I don't need to do a walkthrough for the client, so no rendering this time (woohooo).

I have tried to texture the north front wall and basement areas in a similar style to the other sides of the building and here are some iterations of the texturing process so far, up to the point of having most of the diffuse detail mapped out:

1 - Texturing the main walls and edges

2 - Texturing the windows, door and pillar detail

3 - Texturing the window and door frames to add final effect

I think this is working quite well, although some changes to be made before creating the normal maps could be to change the colour and aging on the main balcony area (edges and pillars) on the basement, aswell as slightly more detail on some window frames, and making these match with other walls a bit better.77