Fixing My Problems With My Work

For the past 2 weeks I have been facing problems and now I have slowly but surely fixed my issues so that I can get back on track.
Firstly, with the Mudbox import of the synoptic project. To recap, I imported the main body of the player star fighter into Mudbox to sculpt and texture the model. The issue came in the fact that I exported the model as a FBX and I could not sculpt it. So I exported and re-imported it as an OBJ file. The problem was I added two subdivision levels to the model so when I started my work the UV map was not part of the file (which mean I can't paint the model without problems in Maya). So, even though I put a lot of more into the mesh I decided to cut my losses and restart from the beginning of importing in Mudbox with keeping the UV's. My designs for sculpting remains the same for now however.

For my industry standard issues, the problem (the most recent) was that the objects would not bake down because either mostly the objects couldn't map out the normal map on the lower poly model or the low and high poly objects would not match up, which causes problems for the textures. The object that worked out mostly is the main body however the colour wouldn't bake on because the UV's were in different spots. So the main task now is to repaint the object in Mudbox to finish.

For other progress, I have started to sculpt the main body but not to the extent as the first time and have started trying colour palettes for the colour scheme of the ship. Then, once I have finished baking the desk and the objects the scene will be finished for the industry standard project.

I am happy that I have almost fixed my problems for my current projects and started to make more progress, after these tasks are done the next steps are to finish all other objects for the player ship in the synoptic project and pose all finished low poly objects in a scene for this Wednesday.

Synoptic Project Update

Our team project is taking shape now. Most of the coding basis for features and mechanics have been finished and the player code is done, Has my modelling also kept up?

Well, both of the main models that I have been working on have been fully designed and UV-ed. All of the additions for the main ship have been finished. I am just fixing any errors in the meshes so it s ready for texturing. The only main point of content now is "What colour palette will the models have?". My opinion, I believe the alien ships should a purple or blue main coat with additional green additions. For the main ship, it could have a silver coat with bronze additions and placement of bright lights.

I haven imported the main body of the ship to work on. For extra detail I have added small trenches across the main body because on science fiction spaceships you can see they have plates of metal spread across them, this is to show where the plates end. If I did small but a little wide ditches and pull the edges together with the grab tool, then lightly flatten the surface (with the flatten tool),
gives the best impression for this. I will admit this my not be the best choice but I will follow through until it has been completed. Another addition is the vents at the front of the body like some ships have.

My next steps are to finish the body and texture it before moving on the the other parts that will not take as long. I plan to have this model finished before the beginning of April.

Final Stretch for Industry Standard Project

In the last few days I have updated my objects for the detective scene (mainly the typewriter body). Since my last blog post I have found out how to increase the poly count in the models without altering the rims. Their are two tools to get this effect. Firstly, the 'Crease' tool allows you to lock an edge into place with their vertices.  The other tool is the Smooth tool, this multiplies the amount of polygons that the model has based on which polygons you have selected, meaning a very large polygons will have the same amount of extra polys that a smaller one would. Mind you this is for the mesh not for individual polygons.

To use these changes, I have added extra sculpting into the bodies of the mesh to add extra detail. Adding sculpts for the screws in the side, minor holes for small levers and ironing out sharp corners.

I have redone some of the textures for the objects and have have added some extra layers (besides diffuse maps), such as gloss and bump maps. I do want to try and redo these textures in Substance Painter later.

However, another snag is that I have imported all of the objects I have finished back into Maya but when I try to bring in the low poly version into the scene as well all of the objects are screwed up and some of the objects just disappear. I think it is because the program thinks that the similar objects are the same. Even though the file names are different.

When the bake for the scene is completed that will be the end for this task for a while.

Week 8 For The Industry Level Project

In the past few days I have finished the textures for the typewriter, the lamp and the desk, although I feel that I can improve on them I am happy as a first result, especially with the desk.

The typewriter was separated into 6 separate objects (minus all of the keys and legs), each had to be painted individually. Unlike the desk and lamp, the lamp was 2 objects (the shade and the stand) while the desk was one object.

Something that this project has shown me is that Stencils in Mudbox are awesome. They are the reason the get high detail while you are painting your models. In this project is allowed me to add scratches and patterns in the wood, rather than a plain brown layer. It also showed patterns in the worn metal in the handles.I have learned the uses of the burn tool for the draws and blur tools for fading colours.

The typewriter textures were fine in my opinion since I also added a gloss layer to the major steel parts at the back. A way to improve I feel would be to add space for more polys to sculpt the model in some parts the problem is that when I add a subdivision layer to the body, it gets malformed.

A corner that I did have to cut though was painting all of the individual keys letters because that would take a lot of extra time with other textures taking priority.

Also I don't know if I could bake down this model because I have not added in any other sub-division layers, the poly count is only 456.

 A improvement to the lamp that I feel I could make is to make the shade more translucent to appear more like fabric rather than green plastic. Trying different layers in Mudbox for the lamp shade I have tried to add a bump map layer to the top layer to give the idea of roughness to the shade, however for some reason when I imported the object to Maya the layer seems to disappear.

If there was one complaint for the textures, it is that the edges seem to meld into each other that seems to show a more pulp look to it, and I have no idea how to fix this right now. However if I was able to get more polygons in the model I could add detail to the mesh rather than just the textures.

Something that was recommended was using a program called 'Mental Ray', this adds shaders to the model textures to not make the layers appear flat. I have tried the program 'Substance Painter' for extra detail however there is a learning curve to the program that I haven't past yet so it is out of the question for now.

Something that I am going to do first though is get the textured assets to better quality before adding in anymore objects to the scene.

One more thing that I have learned is from rendering the scenes, sometimes Maya can screw up with what software to use while rendering. If you don't take notice this can screw up the render. You can also use resolution gate in camera settings to show how much of the scene will be rendered.

So the next steps are to see if I can add new polygons to the typewriter without changing the shape of the object, try to add shaders to the textures, get to grips with Mental Ray and get a good bake for all objects in the scene.

All 3D Model Updates (Synoptic Project and Dective Desk) 18/02/2017

Over the last week I have made some progress on both models of the Detective Desk and SSCS.

Firstly, the SSCS models. I have finished the main design of the player starship, the next step is to UV all of the objects for the model. The main models I made, is made of separate objects: the main body, the left wing, the right wing, the engine, and the additional engines are made of three separate parts the reason for this is to create the locking on animation for the upgrade when it comes on screen.

I am finally happy that I have started to for a model for the enemy fighters. Considering it was an unused design for the main ship I am happy it is being used. The design for ship was based of off an offhand remark

The only objects in the main starship mesh that I need to include now would be the main and upgraded weapon systems. Once they are done and the UV's are done I will take this into Mudbox for texturing. The enemy ships can wait for now.Since the main body of the game has been finished and some of the early prototype problems have been fixed.

The detective desk has more or less been fully UV unwrapped by now and I have started to do the textures for three of the assets, the typewriter, the desk and the lamp. Since the office I think would have a bit of wear and tear some of the textures that I will paint will have faded away or have some scratches.

I do feel that I have made some progress but now that the university interviews are over, I can delicate my time to improving my projects. For now the industry task takes priority because it has a deadline sooner than the Synoptic project.