Continued on from
Office Room Environment Project (May to August 2021) Personal Project: Part 1.
A few notes about this blog.
First:
As I didn't work on any particular part of this project in any particular order so the dates are a little all over the place. In the interest of keeping things neat and tidy I will group things together regardless of the dates when they were created. Dates will be highlighted by "***" or in "***"
Second and more importantly:
I'd like to mention is that I lost my very close friend, Sonja, on the 5th July 2021 to very aggressive blood and bone cancer. This, as you can imagine hit me very hard in the month of July and I did lose some focus and drive so the amount of work and dates reflect this.
Final Days.
31.07.21.
9 Days Before the Hand in.
2nd Picture Frame Tutorial.
From this tutorial.
This tutorial was really quick and I focused on making the two smaller frames for the mother and son and then one for the hallway to house the image of Apollo 12. I incorporated some of the ideas and practices from the previous frame tutorial to help with the glass and adding the images.
I love being introduced to new tools, especially this late in the game but, this one was worth it.
Now I don't know too much about this tool but watch this.
The images that I used were not mine. The mother was taken from a magazine that came out in the mid 1950's and the son is an image of Kurt Russell taken when he was in an episode of the Fugitive that came out in 1964.
1950's Fashion Magazine.
Kurt Russell as a child.
The Apollo 12 space shuttle.
I am not sure if these images are completely free to use. I doubt it but, as I am not taking credit for them and this is a student based assignment I will assume that I can use them till I am told otherwise.
The can be replaced at any time for some royalty free images or images that I can create from scratch if needed.
Gallery.
01.08.21 (Sunday).
8 Days Before the Hand in.
Todays work.
Plant.
Only Wall-E will do to introduce this next section.
Who can say no to a trash collecting robot with a heart of pure gold.
He's my inspiration for the beauty of nature and how it can bring life to a sterile and in-human environment.
The Tutorial.
I had planned to use this tutorial for make my plant and then I found this in my Maya 2020.
Work has been suspended to take care of the MASSIVE F****ing SPIDER that has casually wandered into the living room!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
SEVERAL HOURS LATER....
Okay back to work after recovering from that Heart Attack.
I felt like I was in a scene from Starship Troopers.
Terrifying!!
Work has resumed, after the horror of the "unmentionable" incident is over with and now that the disgusting scent of Raid is still in the air, I can't remember where I was.
Oh yes; The Plant.
Here we go. I'm all nerves now. But I am ever the professional and I can handle anything, accept massive SPIDERS. I'm not even that much of a fan of Spiderman, simply because it's you guessed it SPIDERS.
I can't even put in a gif of a spider here because I'd have to look at it every time I write in this blog and I know I'll be having nightmares tonight and every night if I do.
I need to Zen this feeling of fear away.
Thank you Yoda.
I knew I could count on you for guidance and the force.
Oh yes, I'm forgetting; The Plant.
Well I found this folder after watching another tutorial on how to make plants in Maya and I have decided, for quickness, to go with this rubber potted plant.
It fits the bill and was quick to make. Simply drag and done. Which means that I can now get to work on my camera path and lighting a day earlier.
Something else that still bothers me a little is that I haven't been able to make my wood texture visible on the render viewer.
Really quite puzzling and frustrating.
I'll message Sang and ask him for some guidance.
02.08.21 Monday.
Seven Days To Go.
The Camera.
Getting the camera work done today was interrupted by getting the turntables set up. I will have to continue tomorrow and hopefully fix all the issues that still hand in the air with the project.
The plants still need to be changed into models (Completed on 03/08.21)
The picture frames are still not visible in the render viewer (Completed on 03/08.2021)
All cameras need to be worked out (Completed on 03/08.21)
All the lighting needs to be done ( which is no easy or quick task)
and after all that
I need to figure out how to render it out or figure out how to send it to the render farm at the university and I can only hope that there is still available space. I think there should be there's only about 10 of us in the class and not everyone is doing work that requires the computers. Fingers crossed.
A few more Youtube vidoes.
I used this to set up a curves path and attach the camera. Although this was a city scape environment the principles seem to be transferable and the overall concept is that same.
First Experiment.
First Final Camera Movement.
Turntable.
Youtube References.
This is a really good way of creating a turn table. But it is a little out of date and simple for what I have in mind.
I'm looking for something that will have more motion and attention to the object that I want to shoot.
Gallery.
This one has a description of two of which I think I'll be focusing on the second one.
This puts the object or character in the centre of the frame and allows for a camera to spin up and round.
Final Proposal for my Turntable.
Gallery.
I mostly used this tutorial to help me understand the render settings and how to export a render sequence.
The side chair as of 27.07.21 contained from Part 1.
It at least renders out correctly despite the texture/fabric of the textile being way too rough and completely the wrong colour.
One of three problems fixed.
(Find the solutions to the other two on
Part 2 of this Blog)
Problem 2: Texture and Problem 3: Colour.
After doing some renders and adding some lighting to the scene I'm not sure that I need to fix the texture on the chair.
I think it might not need to be changed or altered any further. It might be that Maya it looks rough before it's rendered out. I will keep my eyes out in case I need to make changes later.
Un-rendered images of the chairs and tables.
03.08.21 (Tuesday).
Six Days To Go.
Potted Plant Fixed.
The Plant is now visible and in sight. Which is great news and now all I need is my picture frame textures to be connected and I'll be really making my way to the finish line. All I did was convert my brush affect to a polygon.
Picture Frame Texture Fixed.
This issue has been a thorn in my side for a while now and today is the day I fix it.
I originally added a wood texture from Maya onto these picture frames but, for some reason the texture didn't take in the renderer so I've decided to find one from the internet.
My UV Map on this Frame is not my best.
Finding the right texture.
Applying the right texture.
It looks good, lets see what happens next...
Tadda. It worked.
This is amazing. Things are finally moving in the right direction.
Hopefully this will not be a one time achievement.
Still 03.08.21 (Tuesday).
Camera Continued from Yesterday.
View from Hallway Camera.
View from Room Camera 1.
View from Room Camera 2.
These camera views are a little dark because I have no lights at the moment but, that will all change once I've got them in.
Another thing I have to look for is the right day and night time scene.
Lighting Ideas.
A Few Options.
Chosen Day. Chosen Night.
Renders and Lights.
04.08.21 Wednesday.
Five Days To Go.
Lighting Concept.
Most of today's work was about fixing the little things and setting up the lighting concept. The main areas that I focused on were in the hallway and office.
I tried out a few different concepts; From Dusk Till Dawn.
Not that Dusk till Dawn.
Only lighting concepts nothing more.
I've decided to have the picture in the hallway lit and visible.
There will need to be more than one since this isn't doing the image or the hallway any justice. I'll try and add some more lights in to see if we can make this a bit brighter.
It's always amazing what a few lights can do to a scene. I'm quite happy with my first attempt at lighting. There's shadow and dimension. I'm not the most confident with the upside down spots on the ceiling but they seem to be working. At lest it looks less like a storage unit from the Big Yellow Storage but, it should be more orange than yellow.
Next I'll move onto the office as time is short. This getting fun. I'm starting to figure out what I want to light and how it should look. Since I've already chosen my day and night looks I have definite ideas of where and when my lights should be on.
I want the framed posters to be lit at night and the plants too and I would also like the legs of the table to be lit up from below too. The day might have less to do with lights within the room and more to do with a directional light i.e. the Sun.
Nightime.
Office Night.
Lighting Setups.
Gallery.
05.08.21 Thursday.
Four Days To Go.
Today I rose feeling quietly confident. I had everything ready to go. My frames were ready to go for rendering. I had all my little annoying bits and pieces sorted and organised.
Today was going to be the day. I waited for my computer to start up and I clicked the button for Maya to open and what was I met with. No not my beautifully lit and coloured project but, a flashing window.How odd? I've never seen that before. What is this?
"FILE NOT SAVED."
Is all I can say.
This turned out to be something to do with a corrupt file or command or input that the "x" factor (that's me) had done the day before and oh my was there a lot of "noooooooooooooo" being screamed at my computer that sunny morning. Then came the hyperventilating and the freak out of all freak outs.
It's amazing what tea can do.
Every stressful situation needs tea!
Once I had composed myself and regrouped and had tea, of course, I set about assessing the damage. The good thing was that not all my work was gone. only up until I had put in the office lights and later I would discover those little annoying bits and pieces however, by then it would be too late.
To keep up the pace I knew I'd have to work quicker than ever before if I was even going to start rendering anything at all. So I quickly assembled my lights again and this time I added a few different ones and tweaked the settings a little bit. Even if I say so my self the second attempt has improved on the first.
Another issue that has been added to complicate things is this.
I'm not sure where or how this came about but I like it.
Very 1980's.
Another issue that has risen to the surface is this.
This happens when I turn on my lights. Well the little lightbulb switch. I'm not sure why exactly. maybe it has something do with all the renders I've been doing as tests. A bit of a mystery but, it doesn't help me understand what I want to look at. However, since the "file not saved" incident this has happened to my windows.
For me this isn't an issues as this is the kind of look I'm going for so this is only going to aid me in the last few days of the project. I can only hope that it will not happen to my other projects that I am currently working on.
LinkedIn Courses for Rendering.
06.08.21.
(Friday) Three Days To Go and
07.08.21.
(Saturday) Two Days To Go.
Lighting and Rendering: Round Two.
Ding. Ding.
I am really in-love with this look. Wish I could render this out and have it as a final image.
A Californian hard edge sunset vibe.
Not that I have seen this I think I might change my lighting concept to a sunset feel.
July 2021.
Before I begin with rendering in this project I'm going to jump back into Semester 2 for a moment and talk about Camera Tracking with NukeX and Maya. At the time I was completely confused on how to export the final output and for my own sanity and knowledge I needed to finish this project.
The final VFX Tracked.
Blog for Camera Tracking.
I finished this project for the simple reason that I wanted to learn how to export and import sequences from both Maya and NukeX and I really feel that because I was able to complete this when it came time to render my own project I was a lot more confident.
I started rendering on Thursday (5th August) afternoon and I have only finished on Saturday night. Each file was a lot larger than I should have made it which extend the render times and caused my computer to be tied up for longer than expected.
Final Renders.
1. Hallway.
2. Office Entrance.
3. Shot 1
4. Shot 2
5. Shot 3
My Blog.
Today I logged into my blog for the first time since Wednesday and discovered something really really unusual and I'll get to that in a minute.
As if I needed another technical glitch at this point in the production and found something interesting. For all last week my blog has been doing some strange unexplainable things.
The blog itself is rather long and large about the end of July I reached the limit of the post. So I had to split it into two parts. Part A was everything before the final week and Part 2 the rest. This should have kept things ticking over. But then other issues started to arise.
The first is that it keeps saying that I have no internet connection. That's fair enough the signal might drop out every so often and that's understandable. Then it kept crashing and updating and reloading. Which I can see happening. I have been doing an awful lot of work on it over the last few weeks and so I keep on rationalising. The next is that even with auto save on it keeps asking me to save the blog.
Now I'm starting to worry. What if this this thing crashes before the deadline or worse, what if this thing crashes after the deadline and I have no records. Neither concept is something I could handle. On my last tutorial with Kieran I informed him of the problems I'd been having and he reassured me that as long as it was on the site and visible then there shouldn't be too much to worry about.
Now to what happened today.
I logged in and click to enter the post for Part 1. Only to discover that it looked a lot like this one I'm writing on. The further and further I scrolled down I realised that I had been somehow changed and I now have two Part 2 blogs and no Part 1.
Cue a re-run of Thursday morning...
And one more for good measure.
I'm going to get such a headache from all this screaming (remember the spider from Sunday night) oh my GOD!
I haven't even had the pleasure of a day out in Alton Towers. What a waste.
I needed to know. So I pulled a cushion off the couch for I know how scary movies go and logged onto the actual website to see what had been published
The result...
It all looks good, for now, and I'm thankful that I keep my blogs as up to date as possible but, I can't rely on hope or luck at this point and that's why I have taken matters into my own hands and taken a recording of the first part of this blog.
First - it will be a reference for me so that if I need too I can rebuild it.
Second - I will be doing the same with this one once it is finished for a record.
Third - I will be uploading them into the Assessment folder so that the assessment panel can have a copy of it if the worst should happen.
I hope and prey to all the God I know and don't that nothing will happen. That this is just a little glitch that goes no further and everything will work out well but, I know from experience that if you "fail to prepare then you should prepare to fail".
OH MY GOD I HATE WHEN IT DOES THIS!!!!!
It literally just did this as I was writing about how crazy my blog has been over the last few weeks. Freaks me out completely every time.
08.08.21.
(SUNDAY) One Day To Go.
Conclusions.
I stared this Environmental project with a few specific goals in mind.
To gain experience in Maya.
To Build models and an environment in Maya.
To investigate materials and textures in Substance Painter.
To gain knowledge of lights and camera work in Maya (if time allowed).
I'll tackle each of these one at a time and try to be precise.
1. To learn how use Maya.
Over the last year I have learned Maya. I can remember, not even a year ago, when I had never even heard of the program or only heard about it in a random mysterious way. At the start of the year I had a rocky beginning, my computer was late delivered, leaving only a few weeks to catch up best I could, another thing I can thank Covid for, and I didn't have time to complete the first two assignments.
Looking back on that I can see what a mistake that was to make and I have paid for it in not just marks but, in practical understanding and use as well. semester two and I was using Maya to Rig not model but, at least I was using it. I had already begun building the environment for my project and hoped to complete the task by then end of May so I could finish the reset of the project that I had devised in Semester 1.
I will go into details with the project in No.2 but, lets say that I had to a very basic knowledge of the program and now I have a lot more. I wouldn't say that I'm an intermediate, yet, but, I feel like I am rising above beginner level.
I plan to continue on with model making and rigging as I have enjoyed those taks the most enjoyable over the year. I have already begun working on the Disney Castle from Disneyland Paris since next year is the 30 year anniversary and it's being completely remodelled. I will also be looking into doing some creature work, as I know the industry is heavily involved with that at the moment for both films and games.
I will continue learn about lighting and camera work as well however, I feel like that will take a little longer to get me head around.
2. To Build an environment in Maya.
My Resolved Body of work for the Masters Course is a room environment with a mid-century Morden feel.
I have invoked the isolation of Edward Hopper in the era of an Andy Burgess painting with the sharpness Cinema 4D using Maya and Substance Painter.
References.
In essence: I wanted to paint a picture in Maya.
To do this I had to:
Build, construct and model a simple room.
Added textures and colours to the models and
Lighting.
This may not seem like a lot of work but, for a very beginner who had never used Maya before, this was more than enough to challenge.
The chairs proved to be the most complicated build.
Turntables:
Models: Chairs, Tables and Picture Frames.
Desk Chair.
Modelled in Maya and Textured in Substance Painter.
Side Chair.
Modelled in Maya and Textured in Substance Painter.
Office Desk.
Modelled and Texture made and applied in Maya.
Side Table.
Modelled in Maya and Textured in Substance Painter.
Rendered Stills of Room.
Hallway.
Office Entrance.
Shot 1.
Shot 2.
Shot 3.
3. To learn about materials and textures.
During Semester 3 I have spent time learning and using Substance Painter and I will continue to learn and experience Substance Painter long after this course has been completed.
For me, the program was easy to understand. It seemed daunting and intimidating at first, much like Maya was back at the start however, after some time, only a few days, which is unbelievable and unimaginable for myself, I was able to build my own Smart Materials for this project.
What I've found is that Substance Painter is all about the; dirt, the grime, the filth and the messy. I am not any of these things. I like things very clean and streamlined and not grubby or mucky in anyway.
My first project was on LinkedIn by Wes McDermott of a Guitar Amp. I did alter the textures a little as I found it difficult to deal with the grit. For my next course I am going to really push myself into the dust.
For my project I choose materials that were a lot cleaner, shiner and very metallic. The most difficult model to do materials for was the small chair. I think because it was so badly made that it wasn't easy to make a material that sat perfectly on the model.
The arms were a wood texture that ended up resembling raw hacked up tree bark rather than a smooth varnished mahogany. The next was the material on the seat back and cushion. I choses a nice blue cloth from the existing materials in the program and for some reason when I exported it back into Maya it looked rough as wire wool and as course as a potato sack.
It does seem to resemble the look and colour I achieved in Substance Painter however, I would have liked it to be a lot softer and look less like a heath and safety hazard in the room and more luxurious.
I think I need a few more courses in Substance Painter before I will attempt another cloth or wood material.
4. To learn about lights and camera work (if time allowed).
Lights.
I managed to learn a little about the lighting effects in Maya. Though I haven't been able to dive into the area with as much depth as I wanted to. This is another area of great interest for me and one I would very much like to continue on with after the cause has concluded.
Camera.
Other than creating general cameras for the end purposes of this project I wasn't able to go into as much depth as I would have liked.
***09.08.21***
MONDAY!!!!
***Deadline Day.***
***Submit by: 9am.***
Finished.
Next Steps...
Maybe a few hours off, set up some renders that will allow for a movie or two on Netflix.
My next steps, after my moving off, will be to work on the submission for the Masters Showcase which is set to launch on the 3rd September this year.
Regarding the near future, after the showcase, I would obviously want gain a position in the industry and develop my Maya skills further. I will be looking for generalist roles at an entry level and I would also like to do some more animation and creature related/focused work as I have none of these on my showreel from the last year and I know this is a staple in the industry now.
I have already set up a few projects to continue with over the next few months in both Maya and Substance Painter and I will be looking into creature courses.
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