final sean and evaluation

the footage i contributed to the final goup project
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final video

Evaluation

How it went:
Not as well as I hoped. We started off well enough with me leading. I set two people to each scene. Two were assigned the outside and the other two were dealt the inside of the windmill. I would later take 1/3 of the shots inside the windmill because the inside team said it was too much work and couldn’t handle it.


Research:
The research and development was based around a simple story and plot we made up prior to the handout of the project. This was during the summer holidays where Arran, Russel and myself started early to make a good start.


Modeling
My side of modeling was simple. Early on when Joe seemed more competent in the project, he had managed to start the basic windmill shape so others can work off it. I had to take that windmill shape and construct objects, such as the gears and cogs, inside so it would match the rest of the video later on in the film.

I also made crates, wooden pillars, hanging light bulbs and canisters from the early concept work. I would have liked to add more but I was running out of time and needed to start the UV texturing I learnt earlier in Alex’s project.

But knowing what I know now in Maya, I would have done things a lot different. The gears would definitely have been replaced and I would have added different textures to parts of the wall and floors. I would have tried to do draped fabrics like Arran as well as rope and other miscellaneous objects I thought of in the concept.


Texturing
A big problem was that not everyone knew what the textures looked like. I was the only one with a clear idea of what was needed so that didn’t help.
Russell managed to get the right idea.

Lighting
Dave showed me how to make lights in Maya and different ways they can affect a scene. I found lighting and shadows easier than expected.

A few ambient lights with colour and point lights for casting shadows can change a shot dramatically.

Most lights were behind the cameras, giving the basic light and tone to the model. Other lights were used in the swinging light bulb and window to create a sense of atmosphere and realism.

Rendering
The render dident take long with my scenes. It only took half an hour to bach render and I managed to import the images to after effects and exsport it as footage with ease.
But with Arran’s scene we each had to take a camera and render by ourselves. I don’t see why the rest of my team didn’t use the render farm at college for the lager scenes, I think the rest of the team had miss trust about it even thought it would have saved a lot of time and even managed to finish shot that were not finished by the end.

Next time I think it would be best to encourage my team more to utilize the college facilities at hand.
I took camra two and started render 18 hours befor I had to go to college. It only got three seconds done. I had to exsend the footage by four in order to fit in the final video. All in all only about 4 seem to be to the right speed with 24 fames a second.

Lighting

This post is about the different lights and shadows I am using in my environment project.
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I went over lighting with Dave. He showed me a few tricks with the bulb and how light works differently with textures and plain colour.

Texturing and Bump Mapping

This is the post showing the texturing tecniques I used in the environment project.
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I used a basic wood texture to start off with and changed the tone, light, size and shape to give a more eralistic sense of depth.

shots of the bump mapping

UV Mapping

This post is about the UV mapping i made in my environment project.
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Swinging Light and ...

I've been thinking about secondary animation in the environment. I've been testing and I've got one working so far. I'm going to get help with the second but I'll update that later when I have it working
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The light swing is simple but I think adds a sense of moment to the project apart form the gears in the background. Again they are animated too :D

I would like to sort it out so it actually shines but I haven't been very successful with lighting so far.

Significant Changes

In this post I will go though my model and explain a few changes and point out why I made them.
While looking at other peoples post I noticed images that are very useful to my own work. I got permission to use these but since some of them are images form other websites I don't know how to really reference them.
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The images below are strong references to the image above.

These images were from Russell Pointers blog page

Image on the left is from Sarah's blog page. The one on the right is from the Internet.

The image below was also from Russell Pointers blog. I took a lot of interest in this, I haven't seen anything like this before and I plane to incorporate it with in the work.

update coming soon.

3d Camera Shots

This post is mostly looking at the cameras and animation that will be used in the final animation.

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I should have really had uploaded a lot more 3d by now but I've been working on trying to explain how it should look both to my group and in a way to myself.

First shot was basic. No animation or texturing.

This is saved for the 3d animatic that still waiting to be finished.

Shows the up to date version of the gears. Animation added but only keyframes.

Showing the same shot as the previous video but from just a normal perspective. I left the cameras in to show their paths.