"Special Jam" Time Trail 17/10/16

I did a time trail with the rest of my next gen group to try and get us going back to our pre-holiday mind set. The way that it worked is that we had 2 hours to create something that can represent a keyword. This time it was "Loop".

As you can see from the image, I decided to create a model of a desk fan. Why? Mainly because the word loop can apply how something repeats in an endless cycle. One of the best way to see that are thing that go around in a circle, and I just thought of a desk fan because I had other ideas such as creating a landscape of a racing track. The reason I did not do that is because I only had 2 hours to finish, and to make it interesting the landscaping would have to be altered by a large amount.

The only criticism that I got was that the fan should have been spinning in the cage. Aside from the time limit the reason for this is because I don't know how to do animation in 3ds Max and because the fan blades are part of the main body of the fan mesh.

The main pointers from this experience were that, for the bars of the cage were all extrusions from the rings however they were to thick for what a fan appears to be so I scaled them down however this affected the ring to make it abnormal. So adding in a small extra extrusion at the base of each bar stopped the unwanted scaling. The other point is that (for me) there are a few extra shortcuts that I never knew such as double clicking on an edge highlights the entire edge loop. This was useful for using the chamfer tool, too smooth out parts of the model like the fan blades.

The main point that I took for this is that the company Framestore sometimes does time trails from all that are willing to participate in the challenge. This can be something I can use to keep my skills with different modelling software.

UV Mapping In Maya

This is the return of the most tedious task in 3D modelling, UV unwrapping. This time around it was done in Maya instead of last years 3ds Max. After finishing the Mudbox version of the golem I imported a lower poly version of it back into Maya. The reason for this is because the amount of poly's that would have to be taken into account for the high poly model would be over 33,000! The lower poly version is around 6,000 but it will still have the amount of detail that the high poly model will have for the textures.







This task was much easier in Maya than in 3ds Max, because you don't have to register every polygon individually and scale it. You treat the polygons as like a 2D cloth in pieces to peace it together. The way that I UV-unwrapped the model is by taking one part of the model and splitting it down the middle (like vertically down the middle of the arms). Once in two parts the polygons are then smoothed out into a flat plane and scaled right to size the planes are then sowed together in one of the cuts of where you want the texture rip to not be visible.

This tactic also applies to most of the model including the arms, legs and torso. However the hands, fingers, the head and the feet have a bit more complicated. Some specific features need individual parts to get there own mapping. Next week I will finish the mapping of the model and start texturing.

Drawing Story-boarding and Concept art Catch-Up

For the past few weeks I have been taught a few drawing techniques for concept art and storyboards, some of them have stuck but most have not, a main reason for this is that we mostly use digital programs rather than physical paper and pencils. I don't have those programs so I have no way of practising these techniques.

Other points that we went over are using many different shadows to tell a concept of the story of a image or storyboard. How to order a storyboard to add extra concepts into a scene.

This is an image of Mr Greedy from the child stories of 'Mr Men'.  This was created by using the pen tool in Illustrator, drawing lines and curves around an background image of Mr Greedy.

Most recently, we were creating silhouette images by going into Photoshop, using the lasso tool and scribbling on the page filling in the blanks and with black and editing the scribble to create some form of an image, these images were my results.

The reason for this exercise was to let lose imagination, most concept art you complete is done by first researching what you want to draw but without it you create what you think can look good, because it is a silhouette you can use your imagination to fill in the blanks of what you think the image is.

Finally, the image at the end of the post is an attempt of using elements of film making shots into an image. The idea of the image was to re-imagine the plot little of red ridding hood. The idea that the group came up with is to use sci-fi (it not like it's been overdone or anything), even though the image is very sloppy in detail the premise for the image is that it is a stand off between the alien (wolf stand in) and little red. The main feature of the image is the shadow on the alien. The reason for that is for the audience to put together what the alien can look like, with an idea given the eyes. The reason you can see the body in the image is that the other option was to use black and that just look stupid for a drawing considering it would take up almost half of the image.

The final point was, we were asked to create a game idea with a storyboard about a news story online. It was to see if we understand basic components of creating art. With certain perspectives and what attracts the viewers attention.

The point of the image was to demonstrate if you can have a narrative in one image. If you have elements of mystery and suspense into an image it makes it much better. The image is meant to look like a stand off between a relatable human and an unknown entity.

The Line Enrichment Project

This was a very awkward project to work on, the idea was to enrich a line to make it

more appealing. Examples that they gave us were, Cinderella (1950) dress scene, Catch Me If You Can intro and The Hearthstone Target arrow. I struggled to come up an idea to do this project especially since I am not the best artist. The idea I had was to create letters held in place at a construction site. The pallet will brown to black for most of it, the letters are red to standout more to be noticed in the image to show there importance and that they are what the image revolves around.

The main reason for this was for the group to try to use www.nextgenskillsacademy.com. However, (at least for me) it was a very awkward project to try, even though it could be useful?

Finishing Maya Model 05/10/16

 This session was less of improving the model I had, but rather fixing its issues. The model hardly appears different compared to last week the difference now is that all of the major issues have been resolved, such as any gaps in the model, extra polygons inside the model and unneeded vertices. This was needed because the next step to improving the model is to import the model in Mudbox. The issue is that there were many issues within the model that were hard to find. To help with this there is a tool to use to identify any issues in the model. It identifies anything that can be an issue for the model.

Even when I tried to export the model into Mudbox it showed the errors, but not the model (for some unknown reason). The way I got the model into Mudbox is by reversing all of the polygons (so it is inside out in Maya) then imported it to Mudbox.

After all of the tedious fixing and getting into Mudbox it is quite a different program because it models in a very different way. It can reduce the model I made in seconds into the image on the right.

This program works very differently than Maya and 3ds Max. It acts as more of a sculpting tool than a modelling program. Something immediately that is a problem though is that the scale of the models in Maya creates the model incredibly small which makes precision a pain to do because the tools on go down to a certain limit. So sometimes I can't make precise tool adjustments in the mesh because it is to small with no way to enlarge it, from my experience.