Main room

Grain

Weird, It had this odd grainy look every time I rendered in mental ray , its utter peculiar . Messed around with the settings , asked for some others advice and help with it ,but with no successes , it still came out looking grainy .
This was soon fixed though, as Ashley used the settings he used for the study . So no more grainy look !
It still needs perfecting of course,but it saves a lot of time fiddling around with the lights .

Ashley the legend

Well its true . He is , What a legend . While me and stu were working on the other rooms, he spent a Serious hellish amount of time on this room making it look really nice with lighting . So it gives me a great opportunity to show off the textures & models I made for this room


I made the following

Floor texture
Wall texture
Table + texture + books
Bookcase texture +books + book textures
Chandelier + texture
Sofa + texture
Comfy chair + texture(by the table and sofa)

EPIC

Things done this week so far
A LOT has been accomplished in these two days . We completed all aspects of texturing on the Monday, which completely shocked all of us , as we still had a lot left to do . Some minor & major problems occurred during this , but nothing we couldn’t fix .
Problems
Textures were not applied correctly
Re-assigning textures. As the existing textures didn’t react well to the environment
The environment somehow magically moved
Today went jolly good , me and stu worked on the lights on all the rooms today(apart from the study) and got some EPICLY cool lighting and atmospherics down , it looks almost to good to be true , and it was, as Stewart forgot to save one of the environments we were working on ( MUPPET) but it was cool , we remembered what to do, and the 2nd version came out even better . The other parts of the house we worked on , looked awesomely cool fantastical as well , and received nothing but praise from onlookers .

So now it’s a slight rush , but we aren’t going to make a botch job of anything . We are just little behind schedule thanks to those problems .
Well, the past two days have been eventful . Despite the issues, our group is determined on getting this finished , and we will . Sadly the render farm may still screw things up for us (its out of our control) the render farm strikes fear into me !!! As I have heard from people that it keeps missing frames while rendering , and messes up while rendering, and still takes ages to render .
Which is not good considering ours is about 2 mins long ,and everyone else’s is about 1 min .. we are bound to have issues ,a lot of them, and it wont even be our fault . I absolutely hate relying on things that isn’t in my or our control .

For Valhalla!

So now it’s a slight rush , but we aren’t going to make a botch job of anything . We are just little behind schedule thanks to those problems .

IDEA wooo..legend

Great idea .!
The house has been made into sections

Main hall
lower rooms
Study
Basement areas

Now we can render, do proper lighting and texture the place properly
Bout time!!

LOL

Holy ************, this is just dam bloody typical .. 1 week left and we kinda fixed the render problem, though it still crashes frequently and cant be rendered in mental ray for the majority of the time, it’s still a lot better than it was.. .. Which is a dam right head fuck .

humm

Maya
It was never this bad, we have had difficulties in the past with Maya, but it was never this bad! Let me explain . Everyone in the whole class was getting errors every so often, crashes etc you name it, the works. Hek, it was only to get worse for us , now our environment wont even render, so we cant even see what we have applied to anything, we cant even turn hardware texturing on without it crashing. Some of the slightest movements of the camera even causes it to crash, even with the hardware texturing off it still crashes often .

I’ve have spent a lot of time texturing the whole house within the past 2 weeks. Applying all the textures everyone has made (including myself ) to the house. Josh spent his time giving his supervision/organising textures to folders, while I applied the textures to the house.
In the last 2 weeks I have applied & re-applied textures to the following
The rim under the banisters
Bottom section of the house walls
Cellar Area + metal girders + archway + vase
Entire ceiling + the house support beams
Pattern under the stairs (visible from bottom floor)
Book case + books
Study table + books
Small study table + small painted detailed textures (coins , paper)
Scales
Fire pokers
Pillars
Added carpet texture to study
I have lost count now to how many times I have had to re apply textures, because of the textures (Shaders) being applied to someone’s private user or usb stick. I cannot stress how frustrating it was to find out the texture I thought someone had assigned to a lambert,Phong etc wasn’t assigned to a correct drive. It became a very tedious job.

(Old version pic)
I also texture the table by the chair in the background and painted some details upon the desk (coins ,paper) onto the surface .

Since this picture was taken I added a torn cracked plaster wall texture, which came with few difficulties, as one of the walls was built oddly and the texture wouldn’t apply correctly, so I got stew to remake it, while I played around with his lighting for one of the other rooms.
I’ve added more models and textured the bottom “cellar” room area (which I’m yet to get a screen shot of as I cant render)

Update of the last weeks I’ve done so much work it’s crazy , but I haven’t got nice way of showing off that work, because Maya doesn’t want to render ( I will go into this later) . I’m finding it very hard to communicate what I have done at the moment, as I have no renders because of the machines not letting me . So bare with me as I try and describe what I have done. :@ Made and textured a new table that goes into the study + added books onto the table. The original texture for the table didn’t work in Maya at Ravensbourne for some bizarre reason , so I had to change it to this version which looks better anyway.

















(Old version pic)
I also added carpet to the floor (as you can see in the picture) which was just a large rug texture .
I textured the book case and the books .The books proved to be very tedious to do but it was great fun customizing the books positions

update

Been long time since I updated .
I’ll tell you why! , I’ve been very busy, that’s why.
Anyway .. Its finally coming to together ! Absolutely fantastic! its looking brilliant at the moment .I’m still yet to take pictures and do a reflective about what I have done lately (and I’ve done a lot), but I haven’t had the chance too, and Maya is being a complete ***** . I will do it when I can. Also when I’m not so stressed out with the whole work thing ,so it’s not really on my agenda at the moment . Getting my work finished in these last weeks is though! I will write up about it when my mind is less scattered , because write now , I cant think straight .

Apologises for any bad grammar or spelling . I’ve been up for over 24 hours working ..yet again
Here’s something for meantime

I’ve worked on the ceiling.
Resized the second section of the house .
Positioned the Study area Complete with Textures
Built more models for study
I compiled everything that everyone else did into a Main MASTER file.That has all textures+models present in the file . + having to re assign a lot of the textures.
Fixing errors with the group that Maya kept throwing at us , which we overcome . Well done lads.

+ Many other things

I will go into depth soon

Don’t know why I didn’t think of it before ..*slaps head* I’m going to bring my external Hard drive into uni now(so i can work on the entire house) till this project is complete. That way I will be able to do EVERYTHING and anything I want, without being constricted by the amount of space I have on my USB stick. Unfortunately the computers are still going to be insanely slow,but thats why i have my beast of a machine at home.

Sofa + texture

These were made today when I got back from uni , after having a very uneventful time with the computer playing *lets try piss Spencer off by not working*

The tortoise

It doesn’t live to be nearly 200 years old by rushing around like a loony.


I’ve never been one to rush things , I never will be . Unless of course I have too , that’s obvious .This is providing good exercise for me to practice something everyone needs to master, being able to observe/manage work flow.It's so I can remain hardworking in all aspects, but not burst any blood vessels at the same time.

Don’t do something you know you might not be able to do ,and let yourself & the team down.
Don’t work if you’re not in the mood , it will only reflect how you feel at the time
If you have an idea, put it down.
If you want to learn a skill or a technique in something, do it as much as you can in any spare time, you’ll thank yourself later for doing so.
Be familiar with everything , but specialise in a certain field.
Don’t rush anything! Its vital you take reasonable time with work , its precious .
Don’t expect any golden A *'s.You aren’t a pro yet, so don’t pressure yourself over it , just do what you can . its all a learning process at the moment for many of us.


This is just a small list of how I function and keep a cool head .

Reflection

I feel that this is a massive kick up the arse for me , And I’m quite happy for the bruising its giving me , apart from PPD . I really do feel like I’ve improved a fair amount over the past few weeks , which is great !.My overall skills in Maya have VASTLY improved and my painting skills are slowly but surely getting better with practice, as I say with most things “its all just one big learning process“ which is very true ,especially for this project. Before I started this year, environments was my weakest subject ,unfortunately it still is, but I’m so much more comfortable with it than I was before.

Apologies for any bad grammar & spelling .. I haven’t spelt in over 24 hours …

Trying to get work done while having power cuts & doing trillion other things is well fun and jolly.

Textured table/stand

The purpose of this model is to support plant pots/vases on top of the table ,within the metal looking ring.
Not sure if we will use this model yet, but it is here for us to use if need be. It makes a good clutter item.

textures ha...

I stayed home today to get some textures done ,and voila here it is .

This is my first ever go at doing textures .It came out quite well, I really didn’t know what to expect at first ,I was expecting some massive disaster, so to my amazement I was very happy to see it come out reasonably well .Its not really finished at the moment, as it has some problems , though it could pass as being complete ,its just not perfect . I will see what the others say first , then I will choose whether or not to neaten it up , as the camera wont really be focusing on the chair at all , and you shouldn’t notice any bugs in the textures.

update of wall painting

I haven’t really had the time to work on this blasted women, its annoying me .I keep stopping and starting, and having to fit it in among other projects . Its no task either , it shouldn’t take this long to finish.. But where’s the time?

I’d like to purchase some extra time please

Where the hell is Bernard’s watch when you need it.


lots & lots of things to tidy up on this .. so I’m still not sure whether I’m going to bother using this in the final environment . If I don’t ,it would at least make good practice, but I aim to have it hanging up on the wall in the final.



Ps: Her boobs are stupid

Storyboard piccy update

I *laugh out loud* @ crappy storyboard painting haha

Looks aright though, for what its ment to be anyway. The layout of the room isn’t exact to the floor plan .I just made it up, as we are still not 100% clear on the EXACT layout of it anyway . Again, as I said before down the page(unless I haven’t , which means I’m saying it now) these storyboard pictures are mainly just for camera and lighting, not much else.

The chandeliers (see below)

Update of recent work.

Overview
It’s coming along very well, I couldn’t be happier with how its turning out .
The house is really starting to take shape now, the first room is about 99.9 % complete, with just some tweaks to be added .The back alley/corridor type room is done, and just needs some tweaking as well, and the study area that leads to the *secret* room is also modelled out, and is ready to be detailed and imported into the file containing the rest of the house.
The group had a group discussion with Jarred last week, and it turned about to be very beneficial for us. He went over what we can expect with texturing our models . The pros and cons that come with it, and some handy little tricks that will/are providing useful in our project.
As well as fixing the house together for the last week with the group. I’ve been making some extra models to be put into the house, added some new features to the building & continued with the storyboard and paintings.
List of things I’ve done over the week
Created another window above the front door
Created two chandeliers .One large, one small.
Created very large roof beams for the main room
Added major & minor details to the alley/corridor + objects
Updated the storyboard

Screen shots are yet to follow

Small reflective......
I feel more could have been done , especially at the weekend, but due to file corruption problems and space on my USB stick, it has been VERY limiting to the amount of files I can bring home with me .Even though this has been a problem , I haven’t let it hinder me as much as it could do. I shall not be beaten ! .

I had an issue with chains on the chandelier . It was quite difficult to try and make it look like the chains were being pulled correctly and at the right angle to convey the correct use of weight. The weight didn’t come out entirely how I wanted it ,but it works.

Apologies for any grammar mistakes or spelling , I’m bloody tired .

Update of the storyboard

Two more additions to the storyboard .

A current painting I’m working on, possibly for the main hall area, at the top of the stairs. if it isn’t put at the top of the stairs, it can be put into the study area. The women is based of a musician named Emilie autumn ( www.emilieautumn.com ) as her style fits quite with the environment we are making.
Note : I’ve already changed the painting since this picture .The update will be shown later.

Made 3 general tables for slightly different areas around the house but for nothing specific, I still kept them in a *worldly* perspective so they can be used anywhere in the house without making anything look a bit odd and out of place. The table that is shown on its own is set to a certain design(which you can see in the reference photo) this table is really only fit for the Main room.

Update of the first room.
Added the banisters that Stewart made, around the landing + stair area , which I pieced together on the environment(Stewart doing the stairs as the banisters had to be remodelled). I also had the wonderful task of making the windows .I might make the middle two small windows slightly bit longer (suggested by Stewart) depends though, they look ok as they are for now, I shall see.

Started building the house with the team and its turning out great.

Put the very basic stuff together and now going to focus on getting this room finished very soon.
As you can see the foyer main principles are down , and it really wont take that long to pad it out and fill it up with detail. The outside body (walls and dome ) were created by me and josh , the main pillars under the arches created by me and josh.
When we first received the stairs section and upper floor area from Stewart it was out of scale , but that was no problem really . Both me and Stewart got back onto the computers and altered what he already made & did our own versions, and then we chose which one we proffered, which was mine. I then gave him back what I had altered so he could neaten up the gaps and bits and pieces , while I made some tables.

Feedback and such

I had a formative,it went quite well , and I can gladly say our team works perfectly together . All happy too do our parts, with no complaints what so ever which is brilliant .
I was given some great feedback regarding my work and the overall way I work which is cool. Of course though, the point of the formative was too identify the weaknesses in my work . My main focus after the feedback is that I’ve got to add a lot more reflective work to my page , which of course I will do so !


Here are some things that I’m currently focused on

finalizing off these more detailed storyboards ( haven’t uploaded the rough drawn ones yet) . we can finally use these to show where the cameras are going.
Finishing off a possible painting that can be used for the walls or on top of a desk or table
Getting the first room completed
Possibly more models for rooms .Add clutter etc , plants as well , they are vital.
Get some lighting sorted.

References

Reference material for me

A Test for ourselves, nothing more.

Myself and josh made the pillar and environment, while we used an old version of the stairs to give ourselves a rough idea of the area. This was nothing more than a test , to see how everything will eventually piece together. Wont be as many pillars , probably maxing out about 5 or 4 pillars each side instead of 10 (which you cant see in the picture) .

Now haha, bit later than I hopped, It’s time to finish this storyboard get more models done & most importantly start some experiments with the guys and writing lots & lots , fun fun.

As they say in Call Of Duty 4

“Lets do this”

Wow holy ****, what luck.
This picture from Thief Deadly Shadows is similar to the lighting atmosphere that could really work well for the study .

Built the stair banisters , but not going to post a picture till the stairs have been re done + also may do the banisters again anyway.

Floor plan for now ,I will be updating this as we build further.

So far

This is going to be interesting for sure . I’m not overly confident with painting environments, let alone making them in Maya, it’s a total first for me! (though I must say, everything so far has come out reasonably well).
Even though my strongest points are in pre production work , I’m still doing as much as I can, to model as much as the rest of the team (quicken up the building process + taking weight off of shoulders), and eventually animate certain aspects of the environment + camera, As well as helping create textures if needed.


I’m making the storyboard on Photoshop , and unlike most storyboards I’m going for a more unconventional style , making it more detailed as this project is based around environments more than anything else , so I thought it would be appropriate. Its not amazingly detailed though in comparison to a proper environment digital painting, its mainly just to capture the essences and atmosphere of the area, like the Dead Space comic http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=HD1paM_Vq9I (also a Console and Pc game).May also put these storyboard pictures into a small animatic, to show rough camera angels as well as the environment .



Lighting is going to be a major aspect in this project, we’re still yet to pull off any information about it though, as myself and the others are still working on models and preproduction work, and just haven’t got around to it. I will do some information about lighting relatively soon that relates to my work etc .

These are some current storyboard pictures I’ve done. I’ve tried to capture a similar style as the Dead Space comic ( http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=X3eeMdHO2ZA ) .Added note , photo manipulation has been used in the picture containing the stairs.

Themed painting of mine .The necklace and lighting is off, but I will eventually fix this and possibly use this inside the mansion as a fixed wall painting somewhere in the house(only if I can fix the current errors) .I’m currently working on other paintings for the mansion that will be more fitting to the theme and atmosphere .

Fancy/study chair example.

The model was inspired by this Victorian styled chair. Mainly for the overall shape .I may also use the picture for future reference for textures.

Frame of a mirror