Week 4 (term 3)

This week i sat down with Rob and Jono and we concertrated on getting the first shot of the jungle lit nicely using maya software instead of mental ray. we went through about 12 different lighting set ups, fiddled with the intensity of lights and darkened shadows etc, but at the same time we tried to keep the render time as low as possible. we added a light fog to the background and changed some plants to blinn textures to add shine. The final result looked pretty good. After i tried out using mental ray on the jungle a week ago, we all loved the look of it but realised there wasnt enough time to render our film with this plug in. So we may decided to re render our film for the degree show using mental ray and use maya software for when we first submit the film.
Here are the main for contrasting shots out of 12;
1st Render:
Ambient light and Direction light on Sofa
Render Time: about 50sec
We tought the ground texture it was to dark.

2nd Render:
To saturated, to bright and we thought it looked to CG ish.
Render Time: 1min 48sec

3rd Render:
To dark, dull, not very exciting.
We lightened the Sofa Texture slightly.
Add Blinn to Big plants.
Render Time: 1min 42sec

4th Render:
last render out of 12
ambient light, fog, 4 spot lights scattered round the set to add depth
Render Time: 2min 3sec

I've continued to uv objects in the house and textured a few. I concerntrated on texturing the objects from the house that are also in the first shots of the jungle so that i can get this scene complete and ready for rendering. A couple of weeks back Jono mentioned that he would like a few butterflies flying around in the jungle. so three weeks ago i modelled, uvd and textured one. it looks pretty good, although for a scene that it is only going to be seen in for a few seconds, at a long distance away, it maybe to high poly. so i have made a very low poly butterfly which looks exactly a the same is the high poly from a far distance. After making the low poly butterfly i was then very excited to see the wings flap so i animated them.

Week 3 (term 3)

Ive been uving as much as i can for the house and texturing a few objects long the way.
(below are some the objects mapped so far)


ive also continued to play around with the lighting of the jungle, but this time using maya software instead of mental ray. im trying to find a way of lighting that looks good and renders faster than mental ray by using directional lights and ambient lights in Maya software.

week 2 (term 3)

Samir taught me some very cool and easy ways of lighting a exterior scene in Maya. My group saw this technique of lighting and asked me to show them how its done. Here is a renders below. Thank you Samir for all your help.

(Mental Ray)

I also had a little play around with effects and tried to create a light fog with a spotlight. It could be used for the jungle or even in parts of the temple enviroment.

Ive continued to uv furniture in the lounge enviroment but also managed to model a chair jono needed for the house. As you can see from the shot below of the chair i got a bit carried away with the lighting for it after learning so much about it this week and following a tutorial on it. lol

week 1 terrm 3

we sat down as a group and up dated the schedule for term 3. ive done a few various tests this week. i experimented with my tree textures for the jungle by putting bump maps on them. it really gives the trees more life. i also had a go at making the ruby i modeleled for the top of the artifcate look realistic by using caustics and ray tracing. during the easter holiday i also modelled some pillars for the inside temple area.

Easter Hols

Ive modelled everything in the jungle now and apart from one tree and a couch ive textured everything to but it took some time as i had to re modelled and re uv a few trees as Jono extruded the tops of my trees in the blockout to make them taller. i then handed everything over to Jono to layout and i think he has done this very nicely. As i modelled and textured each tree and plant one by one i started to see it all become better than i imagined. ive very excited to see how my jungle turns out.

week 9 (term 2)

I continued to texture the jungle. Here are a few of the maps

week 7 and 8 (term 2)

i have spent most of week 7 and 8 working on my dissertation yet again. However i found time to experiment with painting textures on one particular plant. i still need to discuss with the director exactly what he want it to be textured (whether he wants it super realistic or stylised etc). so i couldn't jump straight into painting the textures. After modeling the snake i thought id try out a quick tutorial on how to animation a snake sliver. So just for a test i used a cylinder, roughly shaped it into a snake and followed the tutorial. It was very quick, easy to do, and also looked realistic (see vid below). The last time I met up with my group, there were discussions about changes in the story again, but not major changes. That is why I'm a bit hesitant to continue with my work at the moment. The director mentioned that it mite be nice to have some butterflies fly past in the jungle so i am working on that.