Finalizing 2nd Project

The main difference between my first and second project lies in the materials used. The Balloonman scene employed mostly matte, non-reflective surface, and lambert served best for all of them. And that also made the lighting much simpler as well. Basically, I didn't have to worry about having glare or unintended reflection.

This second project; a setting from Ratatouille, is a whole different story. Being a scene in the kitchen, there are lots and lots of shiny, gleaming objects. Starting from ceramic, aluminum, iron, copper up until old bronze. Each has different characteristic, and this requires detailed adjustment. 

For most of metal objects, I use phong e.  There is a big old boiler in the corner, and this one needs even more 'shiny-ness'; so I put reflection mapping (in the channel box editor, click on the checkered box right side of 'Reflection'). This works beautifully for the whole body. Note: ideal image for reflection mapping is scenery image, for instance beach with sand and blue sky.

Note for other materilas:

Matte-aluminum : phong e, reduce reflection and diffuse.

Glass : blinn, adjust reflectivity and transparency. Increase specular color for shiny bottles.

Problem: black spots appear on reflective surfaces.

Possible cause: corrupt lights. Apparently (according to CG talk forum) this is common problem with mental ray dealing with reflective surfaces.

Possible solutions: re-do the lighting. (Which I didn't have time for)

First trial

Second trial-putting glow

Sixth trial-abandon glow, put in reflective mapping

Ninth trial - adjusting lights

Tenth trial-Final Scene

Second Project : Photo Realistic Scene

For the second project I've decided to rebuild one of the amazing set in Ratatouille. Just one corner of the old kitchen, with all the porcelain jars, bronze railing, metal boiler and other distinctive kitchen equipments.

Just a moment after start sketching the preview, the meticulous details have come up to the surface. There's so much fine features in every object, it's clear this will take so much time, not mention patience.

To get to familiar with the objects I made little drawing of them (sometime I made up the details in my own perception). This helps a lot when it comes to modeling; I found it's better to have a reasonable amount of understanding about the object and its environment before starts modeling. It will make the modeling process a lot quicker too.

Because there are a lot of roundish object, such as bowls, plates, jars, cans, etc, I used a lot of Surface/Revolve technique. This works better when we have a precise-shaped curve, with sufficient amount of dots/vertex, but not too much that it makes it hard to manipulate. Some practice with Curve tool will get us the knowing of effective use of dots.

At this stage I have the basic interior and several objects ready. Next thing would be texturand material research.

The Crow by Psychology Operation

I was directed to this video couple of weeks ago by some video enthusiasts. I read the designer's note about the making of it, and completely fell in love with the visual.

This video was made for MTV HD, and apparently the agency wasn't given a definite brief on how it should look like. The request was just 'it should looks cool and speaks of HD'. I agree with the designer that this was a nightmare-ish brief, since the visual could take any kind of shape and leads to practically anywhere.

But their idea in combining the concept of classical music and graphic in this production was interesting. The first thing I noticed in the video was the continuity of graphical elements and colors. Well, there are only 2 colors, black and white, but the way those two played out was very powerful.

Crows, as we know them, are naturally black and a bit mysterious. Put them against bleak landscape of black and white barren trees, and we'll get a nice visual tension. That's the starter. But the idea goes beyond nice visual; if we pay attention to the music, it's a re-composition of Moonlight Sonata by Beethoven. The melody of this music is very beautiful, sad and daunting. Flowing on and on, forming and re-forming, breaking and joining, and brings out the mesmerizing effect on the listener.

The visual elements perfectly captivate and reflect this concept. Sometimes 2 dimensional, sometimes beautifully 3 dimensional HD, the variety of images flowing through the sequence, joining, dividing, forming and re-forming. The artwork of the HD 3D crow was of course very impressive and life-like, but for me the actual work of art here is the ability of the designer to create a successful marriage of music, motion and graphic that re-captures the nature of a life form: Crow.

Images from www.psyop.tv/

Images from www.psyop.tv/

Images from www.psyop.tv/

See the video here.

Final Stage - The Balloonman Project

Finally, the first project is done. The end part, lighting and texturing, was very hard. Lighting is tricky, and one thing very important when we're in this stage of modeling is: ALWAYS SAVE THE FILE EVERY STEP OF THE WAY. Because you might get a very nice effect of light once, and you think you would just play around a bit more. But then you end up with something you don't quite like, and you can't remember the earlier perfect setting, and you just can't get it back. Argh!

But anyway. Here's Mr. Balloonman in all his glory, boozing and dozing his time away, in dirty corner of a dodgy kind of street.

Notes:

1. Lighting used: 4 points lighting. Main light: directional light from the right (yellow). Second light is point light from above (slightly to the right as well), also with yellow-reddish tint. The other 2 are area light at the left to brighten up the dark corner between boxes and the pipe and a low light (directional light) on the down-right corner.

2. Light effect: Foglight for the point light above, and fractal noise in the color of the keylight.

3. Texture and UV map: automatic mapping with 3 sides for Mr.Balloonman (with much, much adjustment later on). I split him into 2 sections, top and bottom to make it a bit easier to deal with. The other objects are very much straight forward.

4. Glass effect: I use Blinn material with a very dark color, almost black. Turn on the specular shading, eccentricity 0.091, Specular roll off 1, Specular color: light green, reflectivity 0.165. No other special effect.

First Fogging Try Out

Lighting Attempt-1

Lighting Attempt-9

The Almost Finished Stage

Final Texture and Lighting

Bump Map Fiasco

In the course of finalizing my Balloonman project, I was so bumped by the bump map. To me, it is so tricky to get the hang of.  Especially if we have complicated model with 'organic' shape (like Mr. Balloonman) that needs to be mapped correctly, so that I can place whatever features I want to be in his surfaces, in the right places.

Up to this day I still can't get the UV map work smoothly for my Ballonman, but that is for another post. This one is my note in my attempt of getting to know bump map and a bit of lighting effect.

1. So I worked with basic forms, polygonal spheres, to make it easy. I created a simple scene with 2 spheres, a wall and a floor.

2. I added bump map (cloth texture and leather), and rendered it without changing anything. As we can see, the result was horrible.

3. And so I began to manipulate the bump depth, bump value and 'Repeat UV' in the 'place2DTexture' tab. Cloth and leather each has different parameters, and so it took me a while to get to know what each parameter corresponds to.

4. The second render with the bump map adjusted was much better.

5. To get a better view of the objects, I added more lights. Here I put 3 lights (only 2 shows in the picture): the right one is area light, the top one is point light, and there is one on the left, a directional light.

6. Next I played around with their colors and effects. For directional light I use green, while point light is blue and area light is kind of pale purple.

7. I also put fog effect in the point light, and later a fractal noise in its color. The result is quite crazy as we can see here.

8. Up until this point I've been rendering with Maya software. Just to see the difference, I adjust the shadow and put the rendering configuration to mental ray. The shadows and edges are much better.

Toy Modelling Exercise-Chicken

I stumbled into this video tutorial when I did my research for the first project. The guy in this tutorial explained how to create a chicken toy using NURBS, in a quite simple way.

I didn't know much about NURBS modeling, so it was a good thing to try this tutorial.

Several things I learned in during the exercise:

1. NURBS has an isopharm, which actually acts like a zipper. We can open and close the object by manipulating the isopharm.

2. Because of that, pay attention about the placing of your model. By that I mean front, back and side should correspond with X, Y and Z axis correctly.

3. Also plan well where we're going to place the isopharm. If we have the kind of model where 2 sides are geometrically symmetric (like this chicken toy), we can use the isopharm to split the model exactly in half. We then create a dynamic copy of the half and flip it in opposite direction. And from that point we just need to work on the original half; the copied part will mimic whatever changes we've done exactly in the opposite direction. Pretty neat, hm?

4. Of course, there will be the business of joining those two halves together again, that was quite tricky. For some reason my chicken didn't do what the guy's chicken did in the video. It wasn't closed very properly, I guess. But I haven't figured out what went wrong.

Anyway, this is the chicken about half way. Once I finish it, I'll be back and post it here. 

See the video tutorial here .

Human Hand Exercise

This was an independent exercise I did during week 3-4 into the 2nd semester, from Maya tutorial. The point in this activity was to learn greater ability to manipulate surfaces through 'Refining Surface Component' feature.

The object to be created in the exercise was a human hand. I have always thought that hands are the most difficult parts of a human body to imitate, even in 2D illustration. There are so much subtle ridges, creases, curves and corners; and maybe that's why this was a perfect sample to demonstrate Refining Surface Component method.

The exercise began by creating a polygonal cube in a form slightly similar to the base of our left hand. Then we converted it into subdivision surface, split the faces and extrude 5 digits out of the base to form fingers. To mold this mesh into a hand form, we can switch between polygon and subdivision service tools, as we need it.

Once the basic form was done, we then continue to deal with more subtle details such as in fingernail region. This part needs more accuracy, and this was where we got into Subdiv Surfaces/Refine Selected Components. This option will present us with several levels of precision, from 0-2 (2 being the most detailed). By navigating between this options, we have greater command in manipulating small areas with a lot of details.

Unfortunately I just managed to get 1 finger done, and hadn't had the chance to continue ever since. This exercise took a long time and patience to get it right, for sure. 

 

Balloonman in the Making

Here is the development of our Mr. Balloonman.

I designed his features at first to be simple and yet still have a little bit of sophistication in his modest details. But simple as it seems, it wasn't so simple in the making.

My first attempt in forming and deforming subdivision sphere did not go well; I ended up with wrong torso-shape and un-balanced limbs proportion. To fix that mesh was quite difficult and would take too much time, so I put it away and started with new sphere.

The second try was more successful. I knew already the primary points in the sphere to be extruded, and his hands and feet were regularly shaped. The distance and height of the palm from the body was still wrong, but that can be easily fixed.

Here is the work in progress look:

Next is to put in details that would make him more 'human'; such as his foot could be tilted a bit to the side, his head drooped a little and his fingers should not be so symmetrically aligned between left and right. That should give him a natural impression.

For the surrounding, there will be a bottle of wine, boxes, pavement under him and a wall with grunge pattern. The lighting would be soft like the sun in the afternoon, with yellow tinge and dark patches in his right side.

Character Modelling

For my first 3D project I created 3 basic drafts for a cartoon-style character. And I just realized they all have this organic, curvy feeling which immediately makes me think about NURBS method.

But before going into the modeling technique, these are my initial drafts for the character:

1. Mr. Balloonman: a drunken half-blown balloon, lazying away, leaning against a slab of wall with cigars on its mouth and a bottle of wine on the side. There might be another balloon creature, his drinking buddy, sitting next to him holding a pack of cards just to strengthen the narration in the scene.

2. Miss Duck: a perky little green duck with a black hat. I'm not too happy with this, but the basic feature of her head is kinda interesting to me.

3. The Owl: an owl with foul mood. This one was actually my favorite in terms of expression, but I'm not sure about the configuration on the face area. It has quite tricky division of surfaces, and I don't know yet the best way to do it in the available time frame. So maybe I'll save him for later, for now I'm going with the balloonman.

As I've mentioned, their forms are curvy and fluid. I was thinking of modeling them with NURBS, but as I just learned today, NURBS objects are consisted of multiple faces. It's apparently not one whole single object. So maybe it's kind of unsuitable for my characters. So i'm going with subdivisions objects.


The challenge here is, as I started with a cube polygon, I need to shape and mold it into an organic shape just as Mr. Balloonman is. So I'll try and I'll return with my work in progress!

Coping with NURBS Modelling

The exercise this week is to create objects with NURBS and curves, with several methods such as Revolve, Duplicate special, Birail, Loft and Extrude following a certain-shaped path.

Revolve is in my opinion the most simple of them but could be an easy short cut to creating an inorganic symmetrical object, for instance a wine glass. The trick is to get the curve right as you want it, because in Maya we form the curve by laying down vertices around it. It took me several attempts to get the desired curve shape.

The images below, the ones of a strap sandal and salt shaker,  are the result of these operations: Duplicate special, Birail and Loft. Duplicate command, such as in other graphic software, will duplicate the selected image immediately without specific alterations or rule. By using Duplicate special, we are provided with several attributes that can be changed to meet our goal. For example we could duplicate the objects certain amounts of time while gradually getting smaller in size. Or duplicate it in the negative axis (or in other word, flipped).

I found another attribute we did not covered in class, which was duplicate Instance. Apparently, as I eventually found out, this method of duplication gives us an ‘active’ duplicate, which means that whatever adjustment we do to the original will be automatically updated to the copy. Very cool to create 2 symmetrical halves of an object.

The most complicated exercise here is the one with the pipe.

To create a convoluted pipeline, we used Extrude tool following a previously drawn path. (This path was made using Curve). Then with a series of adjustment and detail specification, we extrude a circle along the length of the path.

For me the most difficult thing here is to make sure we select the correct path to follow. Because apparently after trimming and re-attaching the curves, I ended up with A LOT of curves which are not immediately apparent in the monitor. But if we go to Dynamic Relationship Editor, there shows a bunch of curves as the results of my previous operations. So I have to choose the circle first, and then thelatest version of my curve and Extrude them. 

Week 02: and the Maya continues....

Pencil and Glass Exercise

These exercises still using Polygon as the basic modeling shape. But instead of extrusion as we learned in week 01, here we are introduced to Booleans concept. Booleans is essentially similar to path works in Illustrator, where we can subtract, merge, or intersect between 2 paths.

In this exercise we use subtract (or in Maya is 'difference') and intersection to create 2 un-organic shape: glass and pencil.

The glass is formed by creating 1 Polygon cylinder, which then manipulated to have a smaller face at the base. We duplicate this object, and re-size the second cylinder a little bit smaller than the first. The difference size between the two will create the thickness of our glass.

Place the second cylinder right on top of the first, completely align all 3 axis. Then we can use Booleans difference to subtract the second cylinder from the first one, and we will get the glass shape as shown: 

To create pencil, we use 2 different shape: cone and cylinder.  Pay attention to  width, height and depth of the objects. The roughly preferred size is as shown here:

Note: the cylinder is actually taller than the cone, that's important.

Align the two at Y axis. We can see the tip of the cone is kind of submerge within the cylinder. Then using Booleans subtract, we'll get our rough pencil shape:

Applying shader:

To apply color and shading: pick the face we'd like to color. Right click and select from drop down menu 'assign new material'. Click lambert from the pop-up window, and then change the color at the attribute editor window on the right side. The finished material will relatively looks like:

 

Introduction: Here comes MAYA!

Helicopter Exercise

First exercise, also acted as the introduction to Maya environment was the helicopter tracing exercise.

Following the provided outline guidance, I traced the form of a helicopter (or could be a dolphin really, if you wish) using basic cube form in the Polygon menu set. The technique applied here is extruding, and manipulating the extrusion into the preferred size and shape using the handles.

Since Maya is quite complicated, it's worthy to note that in the extrude tool, we are provided with:

- arrows (blue, green and red) to drag the surface along the 3 axis (X,Y and Z)

- little box just at the tip of the arrow, to manipulate the size

- a light blue circle around the arrows to rotate the surface.

Also it's possible to extrude more than 1 surface symmetrically. When we select several surfaces and extrude them, we are presented with one additional handle: a small light blue circle on the upright corner to navigate the manner of multiple extrusions.

So here's our first exercise:

1. The outline for guidance

 

2. The completed polygon extrusions

3. After adding a key ring and smooth surface

 

note:

- press G in keyboard to repeat the last tool used.

- use the side way and top view to keep the extrusion align with any of the 3 axis.