Week 37: IBLs

This task's been a good one...

The IBLs for the library/Beach:

The Library Door (as seen before).

Desk/Window





Walkway 01

Walkway 02

Beach

From taking the images and creating the panoramas, I've really enjoyed this task. Now to take these chaps into Maya and start putting the scenes and render layers together.

Week 37: The Texture

The Texture:

                               

Deciding the colour of the pattern. I originally made them orange to begin with.
It was felt that a deeper colour, more or a red may look better.

It took a while to decide; running through every colour of the rainbow, but eventually, we settled on red for the time being.


It seems that, in the scene, some of the colours and details are washed out under the maya lights. This is something we will have to look at as we go.

 The next step is to take the character into a lit scene to see how it holds up. It's likely that the character will still undergo some changes once it's lit and in the environment. Nevertheless, the hard bit's done. Nearly there now.

Week 36: Filming at the Beach :)

We filmed some shots at the beach today! It was hard work, but totally worth it. We lucked out with the weather (perhaps not so much for the IBL with those blasted clouds) but it was a lovely day nonetheless and we got some really great shots.

                          

Above photos taken by Rebecca Paul (2014)

Photo taken by Kieran Duncan  (2014)
 My main focus throughout was getting the IBLs needed. The windy weather changed the lighting significantly throughout which made the entire process a great deal trickier. But the mighty Mastronauts can handle a little wind and clouds!

Week 36: Texturing Design Ideas

 As the guys and I discussed the creature's texture, we thought it was would be good to give him a pattern (as discussed last semester) to emphasise his fictional/magical nature.


Throughout the process of creating the texture, I whipped up a few designs in mudbox to mull over with the guys:

We additionally discussed stripes, so I decided to try this out firstly. Neither of our hearts rested on this design, however.

In this, I was looking at simplicity in the design. I wanted tit to be striking but not so much as to take away from the character's design. The symbol on the back appealed to me and I felt something similar to this could be a possible winner.


In the early character designs, we looked at a more complicated design on the character.

In this case, I feel the use of more softer colours will be necessary. I did try to maintain a touch of the minimal approach as I had in the previous example. However, this design naturally required a little more detail. The team and I felt that the simpler the design the better.









With this one I was going for something a little different from the others. A little more futuristic, still simple, but somewhat more suggestive of another world. We did however, still feel that the triangle design, in its simple but edgy style made more of a statement, without taking too much from the character. So this is the route I decided to go down for the final design.








For the final design, I stuck with simple, but tried softer, more organic shapes. It was unanimously agreed this was the design to take on to the next stage.

Week 36: IBL for Doorway

To get the door scene started, I put texturing on hold for a few hours and got the IBL for the doorway created:




This is the scene where the magic happens and this is the image we'll be using to light the scene.


I have genuinely enjoyed this process and I'm quite eager to get the others done asap.
Watch this space; more IBLs coming soon.

Week 36: More Texturing

Further progress:

After getting the skin/fur somewhat sorted, it was just a case of editing final details.

Week 35: Once For A Whole Day - Stars Test

Eventually! A little bit of Once For A Whole Day work. It's been too long.
I did a super quick test of stars moving in After-effects:

The quality and size of this test is very low and small as the effect is SUPER heavy. The colours look rather pale and washed out also, but I think the low quality of the render does not help.

Sheng and I decided that the movement of the stars should be slowed even more. So hopefully, we can get the effect we want by slowing the movement; as long as I can actually get a high quality render done... It's going to be a long one, but it'll be worth the wait.

Week 35: Texturing Continues...

Texturing progress:

Throughout the process I found myself moving between Mudbox and Photoshop to alter the layers as necessary.

Building up layers to create subtleties of the skin/fur.

Creating the base for a more suggestive change in texture and colour of the skin/fur to add more depth.

Week 34: Character Texturing begins....

I began to texture the character today. I began by discussing with the guys what we were going for and taking the character into mudbox to try out some things.

We discussed his skin colour being blue (but that this will be easily changeable if necessary). 

We mentioned breaking up his skin tone with whites and paler colours almost as a ramp/gradient to make his appearance a little more interesting.