Hello everyone!
This week I have been focusing on finding good research materials and go through a couple of tutorials and exercises. To really get a feeling of being in control of my workflow I wanted to cover the basics again just in case there was any basic uses of the tools I was missing. I’ve focused mainly on the two tutorials mentioned below; one being more of an excercise:
http://www.3dtrainer.com/maya/lighting/
The first couple of videos where very basic and I didn’t really agree with with the set up of lighting he used for the first scene but it was good to see and think about how I would do it differently and maybe even more efficiently. The later videos had some good points and directed me into thinking new thoughts. For one I hadn’t thought about mapping a cutout on a lightsource colour to create a nice illusion that there were things offscreen. Overall I got some pointers, and it was good to go over some basics again.
“Lighting a Hallway” Instructor: Jeremy Engleman
I thought this was a really good tutorial. I was not aware that you could tweak the intensity curve of a light using the graph editor which I quickly realized can be very useful. He worked his way around creating bounce lights first which is opposite of how I usually light my scenes, but he made some good points showing that it can be a lot more efficient using a simple straight up standard for the bounce lights to make the lighting more efficient. There is of course a risk that the scene looks a bit off if the bounce is too even throughout the scene, but it could be a very good starting point. Anyway, I did this exercise while following his instructions and then I tweaked it a bit so it suited my textures a little bit better (we used this very scene during a lighting assingment in our Advanced 3d Course so I already had a textured version of it). It took about 7 hours and I used 14 lights. Since this was only an exercise I won’t be doing anymore tweaking on this one, although I know that there are some problems still that could be fixed to make it even better.
Here is the result of the exercise:
I have also UV-mapped my scene, which feels good. I have yet to make those curtains, but since modeling is not even a secondary part of this project it’ll just have to wait.
Now, that’s all for now I think.
It’s Christmas next week so I expect that I will be taking a few days off and so it may very well be that I won’t be posting next week.
Happy Christmas to you all!
I have finished most of my modeling now. I still have some curtains to do and a lot of UV-mapping. I hope to be finishing all of this on time so that I can get on with the research part of the preproduction face. As you probably have noticed there aren’t any lights modeled into the scene yet. I have chosen to wait with these until I have planned out the different light settings. This way there will be no random lightsources and I think this might help optimize the process as well.
Scene:
I decided to make a sort of narrow corridor with big windows that could make some nice contrasts for the creepy type of mood. I made a smaller upstairs room that would benefit a more cosy type of mood. I decided that a fireplace might be a good idea both as a compartment for lots of dark shadows or as a small mysterious source of light or as a cosy sort of element. I wanted some artefacts but not too many so that I could manipulate it both into looking lived in or abandoned.
(excerpt from Research.DOC)
I was asked to complement my MS1 Delivery with a research document.
Can be found here:
Research Document.
This is v.1.0 of this document. It contains references with conclusions (was: Reference.doc) and the sceneplan (was: sceneplan.doc, although somewhat altered), some conclusions for the structure of the environment and a rough sketch (already posted once) of what the environment will look like.
During the preproduction face I will be adding more to this document as I will be doing most of my research during that face.
So, hopefully this means I will be getting on to the next face now.
Thank you and good night.
So it is Delivery time! I have below linked to the documents and sketches related to Milestone1.
MS1 Delivery:
General Documents:
Project Plan
Research:
I have made some small research during the planning process. These documents will later be a part of the Research Document created during the preproduction face and delivered on MS2.
Mood References
Scene Plan (as seen before)
Scene Sketch:
I have also been reserching a bit to try and figure out an environment that would be suited for all the stated sets of moods. These are rough sketches on what I have narrowed it down to:
Well I guess that’ll be all for now, so until next time; Take care!
So, third post. I am still working on my Project Plan with all the planning and structuring of the project that comes with that. I have been trying to break the process down into smaller pieces which has given me the basic structure that soon enough will turn into a timeplan. The overall production and what I want to deliver in the end is becoming clearer and so far the Scene Plan I have in mind looks like in the document here:
Scene Plan
This is a very optimistic plan and probably not very realistic with the timeframe at hand. However I am going to wait to scale it down until I have gone more into detail with the timeplan.
So this is roughly what I have been occupying myself with. :)
So until next week; Have a nice life.
I have this week started to work with the Project Plan, I have set the purpose and some goals and am trying to put down on paper exactly how I want the whole thing done. I don\’t feel like I have decided on how the process should look just yet. I am being a bit indecisive on how much research and how much learning-by-doing there should be to reach the goal with as much gained as possible. But it is only week two and the picture will have become clear enough in due time.
Have a nice Weekend!
The Proposal has now been approved (a link can be found in the sidebar to the right) and a new exciting project has begun. I am really looking forward to learning more about lighting and rendering and hopefully I won’t get bored with it on the way. You can find the Proposal document by the link to the right.