CAGD 493

Progress Week 14 Final

Micro Scene by jcastro27 on Sketchfab

Progress Week 13

      During the break I was not able to bring my work with me so that put me slightly behind but I am on the final stretch of my project and I just need to finalize my textures of my objects and bring them into Marmoset Toolbag so that I can render the scene out in the highest quality possible.  For this week I have been going back and forth between my Maya scene and Substance Painter to either change some UV's due to weird cut off lines when applying paints and textures so that has been quite time consuming but I have been enjoying it.

      I have been really trying to pull out a lot of details in the texturing part of this but I find this is where the illusion of detail  helps add that realism I want.  Since a lot of my models are low poly and high poly these can be easily transferred to a game easier.  I still need to finish just a few more objects like the headdress, the knife and the terrain but I do think I will have everything done by the end of next week. I do want to spend at least a few days in Marmoset to get the correct lighting and shadows in the scene.

     Once I do go into the rendering engine I think that this will really bring my project in full circle. I also this week presented in the modeling class and seen the ground I have covered since the beginning and I have done a lot in my eyes.  I still would like to change some things or add to this project at a later date during my free time to make this piece really worth the attention of other companies and show them what I can really do in modeling and texturing. 

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Progress Week 12

Bone Tomahawk by jcastro27 on Sketchfab

      Over this past week I have been refining the UV maps for my items and fine tuning my idea for this micro scene.  I finished modeling my high poly tomahawk that I was inspired by last weeks bone axe and I just through my own little twist on it. At first it was really difficult to get the shape I wanted for the teeth of an animal but since it was a herbivore its flat grind teeth make the tomahawk really come allow once I texture it.  I wanted to make sure that the depth was still visible when in Substance so I add masks and edge darkeners to really show the illusion of teeth. I am still have some issues with the other side of the model not showing the correct color or over saturation where it almost turns white so not sure about that.

     Also during this week I was able to model my pipe in high poly and it came out a lot nicer the second time around. I added floaters inside the pipe to show that it was in use and it give that depth that I was looking for. I went with more of a wood grain to seem like they just found a branch and carved it into something amazing.

     I still need to texture the head piece not sure if I will do a high poly model for this though I do think the headband and beads do need a little fixing but I think I can make it work in Substance.  Overall things are coming along well and texturing is one of my favorite things to do so this will be where I shine and really pull out that realism I am looking for.

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Progress Week 11

     For this week I finally learned how to use Ncloth inside of Maya so I did not have to buy Marvelous Designer though the 30 day trial is nice I find it better for characters rather than my hut full of lots of tiny ropes and wood lattice.  Now that I know how to set the points and play everything and get my object at the right time it looks rather well. I still need to bring it into Zbrush to add some more details and maybe give it more of a animal skin look that it needs to look like old dried skins patched together with light seeping through.

     The rendering or the animation for the Ncloth has taken much longer than what I expected not sure if it is my computer not being able to handle it or what but it is super slow falling down on the constraints.  I am going to try it on campus and see if the lab computers work better. During this wait time I have UVed almost all of the objects just need to touch a few spots and figure why my knife has invisible lines running through it. It seems that there is a line or vertices that has no where to merge too and I can not seem to find it.

During this weekend I want to start the texturing of these objects so that next week I can start to bring the high poly and low poly objects into marmoset and render it out. Though I still have a few other things to complete before I get there.

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Progress Week 10

        During this week I wanted to fix the issue I was having in Zbrush on how my tomahawk had holes on each of the sides near the head of tomahawk.  I had to go back to my original model in Maya and fix the geometry in between the head and the handle. I did not delete the excess from the head and it was causing an overlapping issue which is why Zbrush had holes.  By fixing this I was able to fix this and redo my model since it was rather lacking in how I wanted it to look so I needed to look more into the color and style that is in this culture.

     I was really struggling with what I wanted everything too look like and I had so many ideas and too many of it I was just mashing together. So i took a step back and started searching for how it would really look. I was starting to widen my scope and I couldn't do that due to the time left in the semester. I had to finish what I have and continue on and start working on the textures. 

________________________________________ Progress Week 9

     For this week I wanted to focus more on my high poly models and to start to add details to the plain objects that I have in the scene right now. So these include the tomahawk, smoking pipe and the animal skins so pull out the wood detail on the handles and for fur on the skins. I still need to work on lighting in this scene but I will probably work on that when I go into Marmoset Toolbag.  I still need to uv the objects and try the 30 day trail of marvelous designer which is a cloth or clothing modeling application.  I would still like to add just a few more small objects that will fill up the room like rolls of animal skins or more woven baskets.

     I do like how the scene is starting to turn out now that I have most of the objects ready to get textured and start applying the final touches to make the scene come to life.  I probably won't be adding any shadow animals or moving objects but I would like to have flames and smoke coming from the fire but I am not sure how I would do this.  Other than that I do wish I had some more time to add a character in the scene because I do feel it is lacking something but I am not sure.

     I also this week finished placing all the rope knots that are used in tying the wood lattice together, though I would like to see them in the scene I am not sure how much they will actually show up since there won't be a player walking around. Once I add the cloth to the top of the hut I think the scene will start to become more closed off and will actually become my micro native american scene.

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Progress Week 8

     For this week I took my instructors advise and took out all of my feathers that I had inside the scene and recreated them as a single plane image to reduce the amount of polys I had just within those few objects.  The biggest one was the headdress due to the amount of feathers needed to complete a real chieftain headdress.  Doing this definitely gave me room to add more polys to other objects that need it like the ceremonial pipe and the wicker baskets that I have placed around the scene.

        I also worked on the rest of the inside hut or the wooden lattice that would be holding the cloth that I will be using from Ncloth that uses the plane and construct and cover it in a fabric type object. I still need to add small openings or make a few different cloths and piece them together to show that this was created from multiply animals and not just one which is not possible.  This effect would allow light to pass through and cast rays of light on the outside. The look would really capture the night time ceremony that I am trying to recreate.

        I have started to UV some of the objects and trying to decide whether I want to make a limit to how many maps I can use in this micro scene. I think a good amount would be probably 3 - 4 large 2k maps and the rest between 512 and 1k to limit the space needed to look at these objects and their textures.  I do feel that the clothes and the headdress will need to be separate due to the amount of polys it has but I also want it to have good pixel density.  Other than that the project is coming along and I am nearly done with all modeling and just need to UV and send them into Substance Painter to get the realism I am looking for.

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Progress Week 7

          For this week I wanted to work more on the objects that will be filling up the scene. I worked on the headdress for the chieftain. I had to restart on the feathers because I had lost the original feather used else where in the scene.  I added a few bends and movements to the feathers to get the look of it moving in the wind or while the person is moving with it on.  Also added small beads and glass crystals that would be found and used a decorations for the ceremonial headdress.  I still need to add some minor details like a sting that would hold it around your head so it won't fall out, I would like to also bring it into Zbrush to get some carving onto the headband and give it animal carvings on it.  While modeling, I used a person to get the correct size and dimensions so that it looks realistic as well as capture one of the most important things during a ceremonial gathering.

           This week I also worked on some of the strings and ropes that I used before and tried the extension that is on Autodesk website Ropes.  This worked out quite well and has a lot of customization to it and can really define how you want the rope to look like and twist if need be.  Though I did like my original ropes that I used, this are more even, tight and actually look connected to the object not just something that is floating above it.

           Also during this week I started to look up textures that I want to use and start to get a feel on how the textures will look altogether. I have chosen to go with a flesh type texture on the animal skins to show that they are being worked on to get them completely dried and all meat off of the fur.  This would also include fur on the other side of the skin which I will have one of each facing the camera to see the front and back of the animal skins drying.  I would still like to add some rocks and not just textured rocks but actual models to give the ground less flat look and more of a natural rolling hill look or by a river.  I found a nice old stricken wood bark that I will being using for the posts that hold up the hut and will be using a roughed leather for the outside of the hut and not sure if I will give a fleshy texture on the inside or leave it as bit worked and darker leather texture.

         Overall, this week I felt like I got what I wanted to get done as well as start getting ideas for what they objects will actually look like inside of a rendered image.  Next week I would like to finish the outside of the hut as well as the wooden lattice on the inside which I am still struggling to come to terms with. Besides that I will start Uving these models since the semester is half over.

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Progress Week 6

              For this week I wanted to continue working on the smaller models that will be making up the scene. I started to tweak the models from last week to give them a more realistic feeling too them since they would have been made out of wood and bone or stones. I did not want to bend them to much due to the cartoonie look it receives when bent past normal limits on real objects.

               The tomahawk still needs to be worked on I do not like how the hole I have made does not stay formed when smoothed out so I would like to add so more geometry to hopefully fix that problem and I need to find the rope program that creates fine twine too look more like animal tendons that would have been used as well has roughed leather deer hides.

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Progress Week 5

            I decided to change up what I was doing and give a break on outside and inside of the tent that I was creating. I started this week with making some of the objects like the tomahawk, ceremonial pipe and a skinning knife.  I have achieved the shapes that I want and I want to bring it into Zbrush so that I may add details and some wear and tear to the objects to show that they are used quite often.  I began these with just a picture and started to pull out shapes from there. I had a square and gave it edge loops, a hole in the ax head to give it more definition and some ropes and string to give the illusion of being held together.

            I also created a feather and used the bend tool to get that swaying in the wind form on the object. I would still like to touch up the feather to give it that realism I am working towards. I needs to be split or when I add the textures I need to make sure I add a transparency layer to give it the real feather look.  I am not sure if I want to add more feathers to the tools or just wait and give the majority of them to the headdress which I want to work on next. 

            I did use a tutorial when learning how to make the feather though the tutorial was meant for an ink and quill, I was able to get what I thought was helpful and put it to practice.  I still need to work on the lattice of the interior hut and am struggling with the CV tool in Maya and have been unable to find a video to help with this.  I will probably be going back and forth between working on the hut and floor of the scene to finishing up the last of the small objects I plan to add to the scene.

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Progress Week 4

 After talking with my instructor and him expressing that I had my hands in to many different pots really hit me and I have decided to limit the scope of the micro scene but still going with the same style.  I started to realize that I had a lot of ideas of what I wanted to do for this scene but with limited time and everything needs to be modeled, uved, textured and then rendered out brought my limit of objects and scene view down.  I wanted to focus more of the scene similar to my reference image and stick to that perspective as the camera angle.

Since I was starting over practically I needed to search up some videos on how to use the CV tool in Maya. This tool creates a curve on the axis you are viewing and then once the 2 curves are done you select and extrude them but I hadn't used this in quite awhile so a refresh was needed.  I used this tool to get the wood lattice or wood structure inside the hut that would hold the animal skin or fabric of the outside while giving much needed detail within. I have also started to make the outside of the tent which I also used the CV tool to get a more fabric looking object.  I have been working on the floor which is inset because the way huts where made by Natives and I really want to capture the depth within the scene.

I need to still UV the outside of the tent and make a cutout for where the door would be placed. I want the scene to be on a turntable so when it spins there are two ways to look inside the scene.  Still need to make my tomahawk, chieftain hat and small trinkets to fill the scene but those will probably be all my objects. I really had to scale back what I wanted to do and what I can actually complete in this time frame. I am still happy about the progress and hopefully next week the high poly models will be ready and UVing can begin.

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Progress Week 3

     During this week I really wanted to start working on the fire pit and chieftain chair for this week, I wanted the chair to be more of a medieval wood chair with lots of angles and edges but still straight enough that it would still look natural. I still would like to add small details to like beads, animal skins and maybe a skull on top of the chair's point.  I did measure the chair so that it was sized evenly with a character so that if it was to be used as an assets it would be proportional.  I still need to make some minor tweaks and bring the high poly model into Zbrush so that I can refine the details and really get that realism from the scene.

     I started to work on the fire pit and make the logs and rocks located around the pit. I am still trying to figure out lighting for this part because I want the fire to be the heart of the scene and for it to give the right amount of light and to not over saturate the light which makes it look fake.  I still have to texture all of the objects but I feel that getting the models down, then UVing and then texturing makes the pipeline of work easier for me since I enjoy modeling the most.

     I still need to finish a few more objects and would like to hopefully have the next to models finished this week. I want to focus on the rattler and the pipe for the ceremonies that would take place inside the hut.   Most of these objects I try to get under 5000 polys for the low object and then I bring it into Zbrush to really pull out the detail and add small objects like ropes, beads, and flowers located inside the hut.  I did however restart on my building and still working on the shape and lines to make sure the object is even and good flow because when I went to high poly the model it was to uneven and had a lot of extra edges that I found were to hard to get rid of. So I have restarted the hut and plan on getting that completed this weekend.

     Hopefully by the next 2 or 3 weeks I will be done with modeling and focus on the textures and lighting for the scene. I also still need to determine just how I want the scene to be filled and to not have it over populated with repeated objects.  I think I will end of doing the shadow animals on the walls of the inside of the hut and add some more visual appeal and try to pull the onlooker into the world of the Native American Culture.

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Progress begins

     For this week I wanted to get the shape and beginning structure of the micro scene. I am creating a Native American chieftain hut with ceremonial tools and items that are within the culture of the Native American People. I wanted to push myself in this type of style due to the amount of realism I will need to implement into this project. I think this will be a great test for my skills and I'm rather excited to begin and work every week to completing a finished project. During the week I finally got a shape I liked and started to build on it from there. I have it separated into different parts of the hut to make texturing and Uving a bit easier on myself but I still want to keep a limit to how many polys I can use and how many maps I will have in total. This is only the first of eight items that I will be modeling, UVing and texturing but I intend to model everything in the scene first and go from there instead of switching between applications.

      I think doing this will definitely help with time and easy of doing the models. I do intend to make high poly models for these and use them to get that extra amount of detail like wood grains, smoke trails and maybe shadow animals. The light in the middle is not complete and it will be the fire that will light the room and I want that to be a key point because of the significance that is holds and that is where the idea of shadow animals may play if I have enough time to finish the main objects in the scene. For the camera position I really want to have a turntable in the top center on the inside of the hut and have it pan up and down to see the fire and parts of the ceiling. Whether I can do this I am not sure but I will definitely try my best to make it happen.

     Over the weekend I plan to finish the low poly model of the hut as well as the high poly so I can move onto my next model. For the rest of my objects I want them to be a tomahawk, smoking pipe, plant rattle, chieftain headdress, animal skins (for where they would sit next to the fire), fire starter, fire pit, woven baskets and a thrown (for where the chief would sit). So I have a lot to do but if I can get the topology good and break out those small details and colors that are used within this culture.

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Micro Scene's Ideas

Pirate Tower by benlucas59 on
https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/pirate-tower-772f28ead90d4a279faf3e3bc6fc3072

     For this semester I wanted to do character modeling but due to my lack of knowledge of the subject and the amount of detail that is required had me rethinking what I should do. I thought what better than a small scene of either a castle on top of a floating rock or hill.  I would like the castle to be more of either a magic wizard type or a medieval with catapults and ballasts.

The Wizard Portal Scene by Curlscurly on
https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/the-wizards-portal-scene-1c7b3b8cf73a41588a2e14a477976582

      I need to keep in scope of what I can do and what I can finish within this time period so deciding what I want to do is really important to choosing what objects I need to make and can do without.  This pirate castle I like the overall feel and style but would like to something different than pirates.  But I think I would like to do more of a building attached to the top of it instead of having the whole structure be the scene.

Handpainted Brewery by HendrickCoppens on
https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/handpainted-brewery-36285fe983584885b7abb86fceadff09

     Overall I want to combine all of these screen captures of other peoples work on sketchfab and want to really make a micro scene and keep the realism of the project.  I think every week I will be modeling the objects and UVing one at a time and then once I have the completed objects in the whole scene I will then paint and texture to bring the realistic capture I really want to achieve.

Native American Camp

https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/native-american-camp-8d2034f90e3b4e128f3697cfe22d7565

     Now that I have had a real chance to think about what I want to do and I believe it will be a micro scene of a Native American village. I would like to have 2 wigwams at least inside the scene with different materials being used as the cloth. I would like to do more of an animal skin color to keep it more realistic and not modern. I would also like to make a sweat lodge, a horse hitch and other miscellaneous stuff like baskets, fire pits, hides, and some weapons scattered around.  I think this would be a better fit in testing my abilities and give me something new to explore.