Reflection

This blog post is my reflection on work for AutoDesk Maya and also Photo-shop work and how I have been doing with the work in the first term.

When I first started using Maya I felt uneasy. I had knowledge of some AutoDesk programs such as 3DS Max which, in essence, is very similar to Maya in what it can do but I feel that Maya is easier to get around and better for what we are doing in class.

We were given simple things to do such as learn the interface and get familiar with the tools that we were using and there was a lot to take in. Over the course of the term we had been given work to do at home which was to watch tutorials on how to make things and what these tutorials had done was to teach us the tools and how we can use them and also how to work in method; planning things out.

It was hard at first but when I got acustomed to the work I quickly got used to it and began to work quicker and as I understood the tools, notes had soon become less and less as I just heard what the speaker on the tutorial had said and then gone and done it; knowing what I needed to do. This make me proud of myself.

From small objects to chairs, tables, gun turrets, gas pumps all the way to Temples I am very very happy on how much I have improved and during the Christmas break I will be doing some more work in Maya, making something I drew for Concept Art while I was in college.

Overall I think I have come this far in leaps and bounds and I am very excited to start the second term and carrying on with Maya! I think what I need to focus on more is my blogs! They need to be updated more often and with more text, especially with the Maya stuff.

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PHOTOSHOP

When I first came to UCA Farnham I had almost no knowledge of using photoshop and it was something I was keen to learn as I wanted to catch up with some of my friends who were good with using it. As a traditional artist, digital art was not my strongest suite so I found it hard to adapt to using a graphics tablet and any of the work I had done digitally was done with a mouse and a free program called GIMP. My only background of Photoshop was in college with our Graphic Narrative unit where we had to design a comic book and draw it out (editing in Photoshop) so it was tough at first.

When we first started here we were given simple tasks of just getting used to photoshop and how things worked and what we could do. We were given an image that we had to recreate (for educational purposes only) and with that our tutor could see where we were with photoshop (everyone in the class was at different levels) and from there we went looking at different techniques and what we need to do to achieve them. We got given the task, told how to do things and then got on with it, seeing how we work with a new technique and also under the pressure of time.

We not only learnt that but we also learnt techniques on texture mapping which is laying out a flat sheet that would be 'wrapped' around a character mesh in Maya which was very fun to do. We also learnt how to use the multiply tool and what that does and I have to say, that is one of my favourite tools.

One of the favourite things I had produced in this was either the silhouettes of creatures or the speed paint I had done one lunch and then carried on every now and then during the afternoon.

Overall I think I have really improved in photoshop and used some of the skills I have learnt to work on some personal pieces which I really like and am very proud of. One thing I need to improve on is how I work and how I do things (particularly the process (what steps I take to get to the end product)). I also need to make my blogs more packed with information and images as I like to explain what I am doing and how I got there.  I am most likely going to carry on getting used to a tablet during the christmas break and I look forward to the second term!


Below is one of my personal pieces I had done with some of what I had learnt in Photoshop:

 (I plan on going over this image again and adding more once I have done the other characters that go with her).

Model 6: The Temple (Part Two)

For this final blog post on Maya, I will be talking about the texturing of the temple and what problems I had encountered therein.

Once the model had been done, the task was to texture it. We were given tilable textures which meant that they were easier to apply to things like roofs and walls. As I am not that confident in texturing in Maya, this was a problem for me as I was not sure what I had to do with them.

The first step, like the modeling of the temple, was to work at it methodically. That means I had to think about what order to do the texturea in. This was not that much of a problem. I looked at it this way and in the order that I modeled it:

Walls
Roofs
Decal (they were the bits that went on the roofs as decoration and just extras to the temple - done with shaders).

I first assigned a Blinn to the object by holding the Right Mouse Button and then going down to the Assign New Material and then Blinn. From there I could go into the Blinn and then assign a file to use. That would have been the wall or the roof texture (depending on what I was using).

From there I chose one of these textures:

The red one is the one for the roof and the second one for the walls.

To sort out the textures I selected a face (or faces) and then added a mapping which is how the texture is applied to the object. For this I chose Planar mapping with certain options selected to let me choose what plane the material was going to be applied to. With that I went into the tool known as UV Editor and used tools to rotate and scale the texture of the object much like I would in the Maya editor. 

Now that was done, I used the same technique for every part of the temple that had an appropriate texture to get something from this:

TO THIS:

The spikes on the top of the middle building, the fences and bars were all shaded with a colour done in a very similar way to texturing but instead of adding a file I just added a colour to it.

Overall through this task, the hardest part was getting the proportions of the temple correct in relation to the rest of it, if one part felt wrong I had to change more than that part to get it right in how I saw it and the same was for the texturing. There were a lot of final touches I had to do and tweaks to try and get it done to the best that I could do. 

I enjoyed the task and it was fun for me to see how far I had gotten and how much I can push myself in Maya and knowing that there is still so much more I can do.

Model 5: The Temple (Part One)

For this specific work, we have been given the task of modelling a temple building over the course of two weeks as part of our assignment and record all of our progress on the blog so we can be seen working methodically and care. Below is the resource image that we have been given in order to make the model:

As I do not have to model the background, my focus is primarily the building. I had to break it down in my head to pieces so I can figure out what needs to go first.

And below is the start of the model. My main focus was the walls on the outside, the ground floor and then work my way up, the final part to be the structure in the middle, most likely a shrine of sorts as temples would usually have shrines in their complex.

The starts of the ground floor, the building being hollow as I only need to see the outside,

The roof has been added and some of the pillars of the room above have also been added 

I have now added the landing and the next stage is to add the pillars that support it

The shrine of the temple has been done, minus the roof which I am doing next

The roof of the shrine has been added and the other roofs of the temple have been altered to accommodate the look of the roof which is all around the rest of the temple.

been fixing the roof of the temple, adding some more detail to parts that I had made earlier. This shows that I have made the basic building blocks and then added to them.

Here I added the detailing to the building using mostly simple boxes, scaling them and then duplicating them. To make the indents in the walls for the windows, I created a box and then used the Boolean tool and then Union. I Then removed any edges I didn't need and then redid it again for the rest of the windows, repeating the process.

Here I added some of the spires to the roof of the shrine. This was done with a box on the base and then adding a sphere and extruding the top after removing the edges to just have one face and then went from there to extrude upwards and outwards several times.

Here is the decor under some of the roofs which was done with boxes and cylinders, just transformed respectively. Once this was done, I duplicated it around and put it in the required areas.

This is the finished version of the temple, all that remains is that it gets textured

In the next blog, I will be adding the textures and showing the process. This will be uploaded soon

Model 4: Rigging

For this task, I have to rig an object and start to animate it. Rigging is something I have gone over a little in class but for this task, I had to make a skeleton which is something I have never done before. To start off, I made a cylinder and there is a tool in the Animation tab called Skeleton. I choose that and then Joint tool. What this allowed me to do is to start to make 'joints' for my skeleton.

I could then 'draw' the joints for the skeleton and after that and shift selecting the bottom of the joints and the cylinder, going to Skin and then Bind Skin, Smooth Bind to get something like this:

I could then rotate them and get something like this:

I then made the skeleton of the fish by using the method before, following the tutorial I was using.
When I had to bind the skin, I had to make some changes in the options for it so the joints effect only what is the closest to them instead of anything else that is around it.
I see what gets effected by doing a test animation. I select one part of the body, set a key frame at 1 then move it, set one at 6 then copy and paste the first frame to 9. I do this for 10, 16, 19, 20, 26 and 29 for the Fin, Dorsal Fin and then the Tail so I can see the skin deformation and then get to fine tuning it.

 

 

 I can sort out the skin for the fish by using many different tools in Edit Smooth Skin (under Skin) and the one I am going to use for this is: Paint Skin Weights. What that does is allows me to select parts of my joints and see what the deformation is and change them if I need to.

Once that has been done, I can start to animate the actual fish and not have any deformation.
I finally got to finishing the animation and I got this:

Model 3: Props

This post is long over due because I forgot to add it but for this one, I was tasked to create and model different objects and then texture them using different methods. For this I have done small props, some chairs, a table and also a gas pump!

First came the small tools. These were difficult for me because it was my first time trying to model small props and keeping everything in proption and thinking ahead of how tall to make certain polygonal objects and what ones to make and in what order would be best.

It was also my first introduction into using Maya for texturing as I was using 3DS Max for the same thing at college. It was fairly similar and cannot decide which one I prefer more. Out of all the props that I had made, the prybar was the hardest because of its curves and how it had to be modelled. I made a couple of mistakes while I done it but I tried my best to stick to the tutorial and the reference I had for it. There are parts missing from these such as the notes I had taken to make them but I have them saved so I can see them at any time so if I ever get confused I can look at them for a reference.

Untextured Models

The texture sheet I had made to use for this

After the small props, I moved onto furniture and this proved to be a problem especially on the rounded chair because I was new to using some of the tools that I had to use and I made a few mistakes while doing it but in the same case as the prybar, I carried on and got the end result and I am also pleased with how it came out considering the problems I faced.

Lastly was the gas pump which on its own gave me quite some trouble but that was only the new method of texturing I was using called .psd networks which is very handy and useful for making changes to a texture and then quickly updating it in Maya and having more than one colour on a texture sheet and choosing what later the model will show.

Layer Nine: The Anatomy

For this task, we were told to work on the anatomy of the human body, ideally the skeleton so I sat down and though to myself, the head is a good place to start. I worked from there, down to the pelvis then I worked from the shoulders to the feet (the limbs being the last bit I done here).
It wasn't that troubling with the drawing but trying to name all the different bones were a definite challenge because I had to break apart the bones from the ligaments because currently, the bones and their joints were the most important parts.

Overall I am very pleased with how this came out and the biggest help that I had was the following:

Peck, S. (1951) Atlas of Human Anatomy for the Artist[online] http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=kTathH_rVI8C&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false (Accessed on 26.11.14)

http://www.innerbody.com/image/skelfov.html (Accessed on 26.11.14)