Areas i would like to be marked on...

The two areas are 2d concpet and modelling and texturing.

The End for Me...

Its the small things you forget about... yeah there some stuff that could have been useful in the finished movie, like the exercises i was doing and polygon counts for the interior, which is 20,000 polygons. Bit anoyed i forgot these.

Erm handed my dvd to Sam Saunders hopefully he will remember it on Monday, otherwise Jared wont have my work!

The finished piece...

Yeah very pleased with how my skills have progressed not just in maya but my drawing ability and understanding of photoshop, as before this project i hadnt really used photoshop at all. My texturing has vastly improved and im happy that i am working to a standard they do in the games industry. That applies to my modelling as well as i have had set targets on poly counts.

I feel my exterior is stronger than the interior i think this as i had a bit of difficulty with the lighting and rendering of the final thing. Alot of weird flickering, i think it may be some sort of reflection? But not sure as i checked all my textures?

The project has helped me understand my long term goal that it is the games industry i want to go in to and that i feel my expertise are in modelling exteriors, but as i said my texturing is getting better. I feel that actual animation isnt my thing any more and there are a lot of people in the class better than me, but practise makes perfect. I also want to look in to rigging a lot more, it feels like your the unsung hero, something i like to think of my self.

I felt at times that i hadnt done enough in this project though looking at what other people were able to do made me think that i have just stuck to the brief and didnt expand upon it, but then i thought about it and i was working on my own and i am pleased with what i was able to produce in the time given, if i do it again i would like to shread the hand in by at least two weeks, as there were times were i just didnt get on with the project or had i down day.

I was pleased with my planning and organisation i was rendering throughout the project which helped a lot in the final week, i stuck to my dates of completing modelling etc.

Looking at my brief again i feel i ticked all the boxes i wanted to do, i feel my building could be placed in a game like far cry 2, i feel the building has a good structure to be put in a multiplayer map with nooks and crannys for the player to hide, ambush and defend. This was a big issue for me i wanted the building to make people think how they would approach it would they just run in? try and sneak round the back? wait fot the guard to go? all these different responses.

I felt my interior suffered due to the amount of time i spent on the exterior i think it got to like week 6 and i had only just started work on the interior properly, this was the only lack of my planning.

So on the whole very pleased with what i produced, going to try something similar over easter :)

Tasks

Well, Final Week...

Rendering; as i speak rendering the interior two shots if these fail then it will be some screenshots of the interior i would still like to do one exterior high level of detail pan, from mesh to normal to show i created the chop shop.

I have also started to composite in after effects and put some stuff together, its coming a long pretty well at the moment just hope the renders dont take to long as one has benn going for nearly a day and done half, oh crumbs.

Production Sequence

Following a tutorial on video co pilot i created my production titles, going for the orange theme!

Interior done

So finished the interior in terms of texturing, may tweak the lighting a bit, below is an image. Now its all about looking at rendering and fifferent camera angles and effects i want to use like depth of field. I think i have given myself enough time, in my head it seems so.

Late Research

Just some refrencing at cel-shaded games thought it would be quite nice to look at, not saying my work looks like this but it has some comparisons. Mob is the latest game to use a style of cel-shaded it is going to be using the cry engine which some people have questioned the need.

Cel Shaded?

Here is a video of my work in a cel-shaded style, i quite like it, but i am now thinking being able to see through just makes the work look a bit messy but hey i wouldnt have known un less i tested it and i have learnt a lot about the toon shader from doing this!

A lot of new images

Well this morning i have played around with the render and wanted to give my work a new look, its kind of a cel shaded look to it. Wel the progression is below of how it changed.

Renders

Ok some shots for the exterior i would like done...
1. Camera going towards building Depth of Field effect and switch between Levels of Detail.
2. Pan showing switch of level of details close up.
3. Back of building
4. If those fail some decent screenshots.

Havent thought as much about the interior but some walkthroughs, pans and maybe some screenshots.

At the moment im batch rendering from the computer as the render farm has given me some problems.

Well, that was intresting

Did a bit of testing today looking at render settings and lighting, talking to a few people getting advice. After getting the lighting sorted and done, i got the classic C++ run error and the program shut down, meaning all the work done today got erased luckily i remembered the last settings so here is an image below, of the work done.

Exterior (How it should come out)

The images below are what i want my renders to come out, i hope i have sorted the light out now and all will be good from now on whilst rendering.

Why!!!

It always seems to happen toward the end of the project that things go wrong with Maya, i am starting to get runtime errors and the program has to shut down, not amusing.

Some of my renders come out rubbish due to me not setting up the lighting proberly, why did i play around with it.

I am hoping my next render comes out well and i can start editing in after effects, texturing is almost there as well and i have around 1000 polygons to play around with may just duplicate some stuff already there. In other news here is an image :)

Lighting/Texturing

Something i definatly need to look into is lighting, especially for the interior i have had a bit of hel from Grigsby and it is getting ther but sometimes it just looks a bit yucky. I also think i am starting to get a bit slack on the textures, but with only 2 weeks i want everything to have some form of texture on it and then if time to tweak them, i know this is cutting corners and not showing my work to its full potential, but i can always coome back to this project at a later date.
Food for thought!

His such a Teaser

Well from home i have started to work on a new project or two this is one of them a cheeky little Bugatti. Nothing to do with the project unless i finish it and i can put it in my scene, part of me thinks it wont fit the scene...

This week

Ok this week all texturing must be finished whilst this is going on render out some exterior shots. Texturing can be a long process moving UVs etc but it is a vital job to do and i want to take time on it and do it to the best of my standards. This will leave me with the last week to render the interior and get it all in premier pro/after effects.

On a whole i am very pleased with the way the project has gone so far, i have only had 3-4days where i have been demotivated. I am happy with the success of the different level of details i have created and sticking to the poly count. I think this is very useful as it is a step in the right direction towards the games industry. I think all my skills have improved in this project from understanding modelling a bit better and prepering it for texturing to different light and shadows.

I have also learnt a lot about the games industry and have started to breakdown games when playing them to see what happens when eg. depth of field and the effects they use to the color used. I think its easy to say though that i could have changed the brief and added a bigger poly count as ame engines are better equiped these days. But by doing this i could have gone way over my head and ended up with unfinished work.

Interior

Interior

Still working on the interior, it is going to be done in two UV layouts, the first one was shown on a later post, the other hasnt been complied yet below is an image of how the interior is coming a long. Not to bad at the moment.

A Quick Sun Test

I actually got a video up on here of some work whoop whoop!

UV again, Fun Times!

Well today i worked a bit on the interior, i have started one UV Map which is below looking pretty sweet at the moment its 2048*2048 may change it though to less. I also got in to college to see the render farm working well on a 10second bit of footage, its looking pretty good at the moment so all is going well at the moment and im about to start looking for textures for the UV Map.

Tasks

This weeks tasks sees me researching different render layers, depth of field, modelling the interior might start UV mapping it too. Rendering the exterior and deciding on rendering techniques, camera angles, pans etc.

Rotation

Yep i wrote down some numbers again, no one knows why but they are useful to me
1. 100, 70, 110
2. 255, 25, -50
3. -10, 80, 55
4. 15, 200, -80
5. 80, 200, -80
6. 120, 200, -120
7. none
8. 250, 10, 300
9. 300, -20, 300
10. 235, -20, 300

Time of Day

Below are some test renders of different times of day i decided to looko into this a bit more as i have now finished the exterior texturing and modelling so this is the next stage and i can add more detail now to the interior.

Lighting :)

Well after yesterday when Jared and I looked at my scene and realised why i had 3 different shadows and why they were triangles i looked this morning just to check my hypergraph... I forgot to hide/deleate my old ligh system, silly me! So, all is good now the image below shows what the scene could now look like and i have also learnt a bit about the mental ray light system like how to change direction which allows different times of days. I may look into this as it will be nice to see how the shadows change etc over time.

Texturing Reflection

Looking at tutorials i can now see why some people rough out the texture map, place the textures first and then move the UVs around.
Whilst doing the low poly version i found it so much easier to just move the UVs round as i knew what had to fit where and the amount of detail the texture will have, so i may in future projects and the interior try to sketch out what the UV map may look like. Saying that laying out the UVS first did work but it seems it took along time to do.
I am pleased with my texturing abilities and they have greatly improved since the last project and i am happy that i actually enjoy it as it seems it can be a bit of a boring job.
In other news my render failed so hopefully it will work this time!

Advice Taken

Quick bit of tweaking, think this could be the one! Maybe?

Discussion

Talking to the others so far 1 and 3 are on top, they remind me over resident evil 5. Interms of color.

Rendering

Ok i got a bit bored of texturing, the same thing over and over again so i decided to have a look at different render types. This has 4 different layers and i used overlay in photoshop now im not sure if this is right, i also decided to change the opacity of some of the layers below are the images in one place so i can see what works best.

Texturing Report

I wanted the texturing done, the texturing is now done i have added specular and bump to the scene now as well. At the moment i am pleased with it if time allows me i may come back to tweak some stuff. The rest of the day will be UV mapping the low and medium level of details. At the moment i am rendering a Test of 10seconds to see the outcome, doubt i will be able to put it up here though! but here is a pic on it!

Update

So today as seen me working on compositing for the other project, but near the end i did start to work on the chop shop again! I reckon if i push myself tomorrow the exterior will be completly done on all LOD's

Never say Never

So yeah this weekend i been doing a lot of thinking and not a lot of doing, not like me, but sometimes its needed. i had been worrying about this project, if there is just to much to do for one person but right now i am determined to do as much as i can in a day, game sare out the window at the moment tutorials will replace them, researching about games, not just for this project but for the future i want to give myself the best chance of completing my long term goals.

Eventhough we have other projects that i am getting into i still need to balance my time on all the projects. Monday-Friday are going to be heavy days from now on 9-4 at college and then research in the evenings and prep for the next day!

I am going to do this as i have other commitments on the weekend that are just as important like the youth group i teach.

Dont worry Mandy we will still have our own time if you read this :)

Im writing this whilst being inspired by the fray good band

Thats enough for now

FarCry2