Literally Wacked On a Texture...

And there it is... done in the space of 5mins.. now I'm tired... Bah!

Telescope man... Untextured.

Hope you don't take it personally Tom... but I deleted most of your boat so that we could save on Render Time considering that it won't be seen in the shot that I'm working on.  It is a lovely boat yes... and we do need it yes - it'll b used in the first shot as you know however not the shot looking up at the 'telescope man'.  So yes anyway I've been working on the shot - just getting the finer details such as Blend Shapes - still need to do that... and playing around with lighting.  I think it'll look quite nice textured :)  As you can see from the images theres a range of lighting so the guys can pick their favourite and let me know how light to work in.  This might change once its textured but as long as we're all in the loop it'll be good.  Backgroud sky probably added in after effects but have not yet discussed it with Authentic Personel.

The Grog!!

This will be one of the shots (bell moved though) with a water plane and the silhouete of the boat in the distant background.  The Character will move along and pick up the Grog and check to see if its empty (blend shapes yet again for the Fluid) and as its not he'll take it with him on his journey!!! 

Nest

A little Taster... Don't worry I'll make it good :P

As I said...it needs work and I WILL make it better :)

Late In the Day But More Research:

Below is a sequence going from the final image composited to how they have developed the image itself.  I'm not sure exactly what Game these images are taken from as my Girl Friend found them and photocopied them for me....bless her lil cottons.  Anyway it shows the development from the simple block out to the detail in the houses and then onto the detail in the roads.  This can be looked at in another way - Rendering in Layers as you add the finer details and tweaking of roads etc to the end.  Also it suggests how we worked at the very beginning of blocking out our simple layout so we all worked to the same scale and the same style.  This I feel gave us an advantage so we did not have to resize with any major difficulties.

Below is another Image photocopied by my girlfriend Rach.  These two are useful.  Before characters are introduced and after.  You can also notice that the path has been added as they probably did some fine tuning of the image.  I could probably take a guess that there is about 4 or 5 layers of set in these images which were rendered out in different stages.

I even went to the effort to break it up for you:

Red = Forground - most detail for this shot

Yellow = Mid Distance

Green = Background - Least detail in this shot

Orange Dashes = LONG distance background eg sky and hils in the distance.

Blue = Character - added last obviously

Water Reflections

Phil (DDP Productions) and I were trying to experiement with Ocean Shaders and attempting to get reflections. I managed to get the scale set up appropriately however the reflections are still not quite correct which is a major bummer. I've been playing with specularity and the size of the waves. I attempted to move the lights and change the reflection and refraction limits. Above are those results. I'm really not happy with it just yet as I want more reflection. Considering Cheating and mapping it down once in after effects (cheat a little bit). More experimentation is needed still!

I'm getting too much light underneath the actual dock area which is where I want to get least light and more light out to 'sea' .... Hmmmm need to invert it somehow.... but HOW!? Its a thinkier...

Bell's and Bits

This image (Above) has been changed - its now less Gold... as you can see below :)

So yet again it's evident what I've been doing. I'm so close to finish texturing now... Hopefully I will have it done by the end of today and I can start Weighting my Character ... AGAIN. I found that the Gold I used as a texture didn't really work to start with as it was TOO gold for the look I was going for. I therefore went into Photoshop and played with the Levels. I didn't want to settle the original image as it just didn't fit. I'm glad I changed it as it will be essential for the opening shot.

The lights I think have got the correct texture now. I had kind of been putting them off as they had been combined together to make one model (along with the candle - even though I would like to do this better as well) and therefore was quite annoying to texture it. The Occlusion layer is just to test as Dan Edgley was having problem with his Occlusion Layer when he was rendering. Initially he thought it was because he was rendering with Mental Ray but I was as well so this ruleld it out. He copied the settings I used and still he was getting a pitch black screen. Finally I asked him to scroll out of his room and BINGO we found the problem. He had a Dome on top and therefore it was stopping all the directional light coming through and therefore NO occlusion could be created. I beleive he is now in the process of solving this problem which is good.

Telescope

The Telescope I've been developing... Its getting there but the Timing will have to be changed...and CAN be easily. Created using blend shapes Niiiiice and easy!

Ta-Da. Tom Modelled it to begin with and I alterd it with blend shapes to fit the drawings of Alec's Animatic.  Will soon investigate looking at Fish Eye Lens' to give the effect that was mentioned by the team to miss animating essentials close range.... our little way out of getting out of animating as its not essential for this project haha.

Today Today AGAIN textures? Nearly done now.

OkAyyyyyy. So today I did a wee bit of Lifedrawing with Sammy-boy Saunders which was great even if I wasn't too hot and quite out of practise.  Model seemed really 'draw-able' if you know what I mean without sounding weird or perverted... Anyway it was good even if I didn't like one drawing I did.  In the morning I managed to get a bit more texturing done.  Tomorrow I aim to finish all texturing and modeling (I can hope) and then move on to the painting weights on one of our character.  I know I need to model a bell for the stunning opening shot that Alec has set up for us.  Although I'm looking forward to the final render and completion of this project I am not looking forward to the terrifying problems which lie ahead - and I'm guessing theres going to be a few considering we are guinea pigs with the render farm - and Alec is unfortunately ill now (get well soon mate).  At least he's let us know - was good of him :)... good communication guys :D Overall the project is coming along I just wish it was moving slightly faster.  Unfortunately I keep working a lot as my contracted days seem to be this that and the other when I would much rather get cracking and stay behind for a few hours and do a bit more Medieval Maya modelling at Rave... Alas time is well spent when we are there.  I was fed up of waiting for about 2 mins for a render preview so I started using IPR renders to start with but still I couldn't really be bothered to wait around for that.  In the end I found myself looking at the Render Settings and going hmmmm what can I change - PRODUCTION QUALITY....Hmmmmm lets go 'draft'.  Considering the main image I was looking at was always in the foreground I really didn't need the amazing pixels in the backgroud looking really nice and textured so I set to draft and managed to get my Renders down by half the time.  Today I added a bit of variation in the arches (took a chunk out here and there) to make it less..... Samey (I HATED that in some older games - same texture and same model 5times in a row down one stretch of walk way you HAVE to take so you HAVE to see it.... anyway...).  I've also textured the cloth drapped over the stall with a cloth texture - how convinent.  Anyway I think it looks ok.  Had to repeat the UV's quite a few times but I think its ok.  Not sure about the Bump map just yet... might alter that a little bit.

Bored of typing now... so lets stick some images up.

After Marquette

Someone waxed that floor too much.  Those medieval kids and their floor polish! *sigh*

learning is a good thing - I learnt that if you don't adjust the bump map to the same settings as the 2D texture placement (eg repeating UV's so many times both ways) you'll end up with some FUNKY distortion in your textures.... funky this time being bad.... very bad as you can see above. I fixed it though and learnt my lesson.  I'm feeling quite confident in texturing now as it takes a long time but it is definately good practice.  For some reason I am beginning to find it slightly soothing ... I think Jared said this might happen.... unfortunately I'm nearly finished texturing now.  Nevermind hey?

What the floor was supposed to look like is above... clearly it looks like that now and I've kept it like this.  I think I changed the Bump Map down a little bit mind you just so its less Cobbley but I honestly can't remember now and I'm not in the mood to boot up Maya to find out...

This was what was happening to start with with my texture.  I believe the stripes on the floor was due to the UV editor looking a MESS and the lighting not acting correctly.  I changed all of this and as you can see above its all better now :)  Below is another example of a messy floor :p

I stayed behind a couple of hours after we did the Marquette making which was cool. This is what I got up to as you can see. Did a bit more texturing. Jared spoke to us in our group (while I was at Marquette making) but caught up with me. He seems to think it'll be a good idea to do a run through camera in Maya so we can sort out timing of camera shots - even if only with a block model. Tomorrow I hope to deform the Telescope and finish texturing.

I've Been Working OK?!?!

AND ON TO THE BOTTLES!!!

I'm quite happy with this texuture (above) its just a simple Blinn thats been tweaked to the max with refractions and reflections bouncing around left right and centre.  Note to self I still need to add a labbel to a couple of bottles for 1) variation and 2) focus bottle.

The bottle below was what I started with and it wasn't bad to be perfectly honest but I had to experiement and tweak attributes to see what else I could do.

Below is a playblast of just a tad bit of the animation in my Scene so far...  Theres also cloth happening as well elsewhere in the scene... actually it's just there *nods to the right of the screen* literaly JUST there.  You'll have to wait and see.  I have done an Occlusion render of this however it took FOREVER and now it doesn't want to upload (like quite a few of my videos) on to this silly blog. Nevermind.

And here's the reference for that :p haha