First 2nd Year University Project

With my first lecture complete I am immediately back into a good university mind set and am feeling very confident about my first brief.

Brief:
 'Design, build and animate a Chess Robot and its environment in the steam punk visual style that can apparently think, decide, pick and place objects. Your piece should focus on a limited "set" as quality and relevance is more important than volume, think elegant still life that moves.'

Being a big fan of the steam punk and general industrial visual style I am looking forward to replicating it for this project as well as beginning to learn character animation, which with my first lecture based on it done, believe I will be able to experiment a lot with expressing emotion of a mechanical character through minor visual cues.

My initial ideas so far have mainly focused on the general look and structure of the robot character, producing some sketches planning out the general shape.

Currently I am considering producing a large, cumbersome robot character that will have difficulty with the precise movement of playing chess, thus allowing me to experiment with showing different emotions such as frustration and anger from the robots ham-fisted attempts at moving each piece, knocking others over in the process.

Whilst this is an idea i'm currently leaning towards, I still intend to experiment with different shapes and sizes of robot e.g. a smaller one, similar in size to a chess piece, that walks across the table straining to pull each piece to the desired space.

As well as the robot I also intend to design a means for it to move around, rather than it be on a static 'plinth' where it reaches over the table. This 'plinth' idea might be suitable for the heavy robot design as it would act as a counterweight to be attached directly to the table so it would not fall over.

All in all I am glad to be back at university and feel infinitely more productive then I have been over the summer.

Over the Summer

Whilst I haven't been as productive over the summer as I had intended to be, I have still been able to get a lot done. Although most of what I have done is brainstorming and idea generating for future projects, I did make some simple 3D models that I will continue to build upon as long term projects, hopefully becoming more diverse and detailed as I become more adept in the software.

One project I did complete which will be beneficial for my return to university is learning the basics of Autodesk Maya. Rather than follow a simple guide of the basics of the software I looked for an interesting tutorial that would be suitably informative to teach me the UI and hotkeys of it. The tutorial I chose was one by Sansar Tripathi titled - Modelling and Rendering a Simple Robot in Maya using V-Ray.

Tutorial Link: http://lesterbanks.com/2012/02/modeling-and-rendering-a-simple-robot-in-maya-using-v-ray/

I found this tutorial to be very useful for a beginner to Maya and the pacing allowed to follow what he was doing whilst getting an understanding of the different tools. It also followed a different approach to modelling that I haven't used before, which would have made a lot of previous projects I have worked on simpler and quicker.

I am very pleased with the final result from the tutorial as I was able to apply some of my own ideas to the final product to make it separate from the example model and learnt a bit about texturing with V-Ray.

I did have some issues during this project however they were mainly related to being new to the software, the first being the fact I was only able to render my work in 600x450 resolution due to only having a demo version of V-Ray for Maya. This was disappointing as the quality of the final image was particularly low and I feel didn't do the model justice.
The other issue is something that I hope to remedy over time, that being the lack of stock textures to utilize when I was adding the reflection effect to the model. Instead I used some free online HDRI maps that I thought were very impressive and did the role they were needed to, although I intend to produce my own in future, so they are made to fit the task.

Abstract HDRI Maps Link: http://smashmethod.deviantart.com/art/High-Res-HDRI-Map-Pack-2-ab-10036562

My intention from now is to continue with what I have been doing over the summer and generate more ideas for little projects, but also attempt different things in the software as well, including both tutorials and personal projects. 

Google Sketchup

Google Sketchup is something I have heard about a lot as being an effective tool for game concept work but have never inquired to try it out for myself. Having glanced at an article for it in a magazine the other day I decided to take the time to investigate and I am very pleased that I did.

Immediately as I started it up I was able to get to grips with it within 5 minutes, baring similarities to most other software with basic shape drawing tools and movement controls. With the entire thing being snap controlled it is very easily to make a simple shape quickly and then using the variety of other controls to edit it future and turn a box into a house or other shape. I really enjoyed using the software as I found it simple to achieve something and with just time and a plan can see it being a much preferable alternative for me to produce basic models, rather than 3Ds Max, which at sometimes I find to be fiddly to produce some things.

The only gripe I currently have with Sketchup and I assume, one that can be easily solved through further exploration, is the lack of precision. I find myself undoing something repeatedly to get a line in just the perfect position as it will never quite want to go where I want it to.

A quick 10-20 minute session with it allowed me to produce what I would hope resembled a barn house, something that would take me an hour in 3Ds Max from simply, second guessing myself on every aspect of it as I went along.

In essence the main reason I really enjoyed using Sketchup and will most definitely use it again, is its basic. Whilst with 3Ds Max and other software I try to make each part perfectly modeled and shaped, Sketchup removes this necessity and just allows me to make the basic shape of a structure and build on it as I go.

The final point about Sketchup is its community sharing feature that allows you to quickly search for a particular model and find hundreds of examples made by other users that can then be downloaded for your personal use, or just as reference if you are working on a similar model.

Overall though I will certainly use Sketchup again and see what is possible with the models once one is completed, e.g. importing it into Photoshop to add a backdrop and produce my own concept art piece.

Ghosttown 3Ds Max Plugin

Having a large amount of spare time now until October when I start my second year of university I intended to get stuck in with 3D work and learn the software inside and out to have a good head start when I went back. Whilst not being as motivated as I had hoped I have had time to look into a few things and brainstorm some possible future projects for when the time is right.

In particular I was interested in looking into plugins and extras for 3Ds Max that would help me produce things in a much more efficient manner, for instance, procedural generation addons.

Ghosttown is one of these. With a few button clicks you are able to produce a very nice city block complete with high poly facades and textures. All inbuilt into the program there is also a lot of room for editing where you can add your own textures as well as completely edit the generated model, as with any other in Max.

I only had a brief look at this, but I could see the potential for using it to make a simple backdrop for a scene in a shorter period of time or a fully detailed cityscape usable in a multitude of situations.

It is currently a work and progress with it being updated regularly and shows a great amount of promise. The latest test video shown by the creator displays the amount of flexibility and detail achievable from small amounts of fine-tuning along with the future inclusion of road generation.

I will hopefully be able to look at this more and gain a much better understanding of it over the next couple of months.

You can download Ghosttown 0.317 Lite Beta here to try out for yourself : http://www.kilad.net/GTForum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2

Visual Essay Complete!

At the start of this project I was rather skeptical regarding the necessity of doing it and wondering how it would benefit me, other than taking up a large chunk of my time, however with it now behind me I look back and can see how it has been helpful in improving my understanding of what I want to do.

Making me focus my attention on the specifics of my interest in 3D and animation I have gained a clearer idea of the area that appeals to me most as well as finding a large quantity of inspirational and high quality professional work in my attempts to find practitioners to discuss.

As well as gaining a better concept for a future goal on this project, I also took it upon myself to use the opportunity to advance my 3D and animation abilities and produce a piece of work I can honestly say I am proud of. I feel as though I have achieved this as, although my great schemes were foiled by the curse of extensively long rendering times, I still am happy with the result and was content with leaving it how it was, resisting the urge to reproduce the entire 3D section, incorporating steam, puddles and generally making the scene look much gloomier and dank as well as fixing those niggling things that only I notice.

Here it is, my complete visual essay

And now I hope with this project finished and my summer technically started I will be able to relax and work on some of my own ideas I have been brewing for a while.

Further Visual Essay Progress

With the deadline looming for this project I have made a lot of progress with my animation. Having been faced with dauntingly long rendering times for the 3D portion of the project, reaching close to 450 hours at its max, that section is now behind me, having produced a scene I am happy with to use at the backdrop for my animation.

Below are some screenshots showing the development of the 3D scene from modeling, to finished with textures.

One thing I am disappointed about is the noticeable difference between the above and below image in terms of having much stronger shadows in the above one. This is down to having to use lower settings for the shadow mapping to avoid extremely long rendering times, which I feel makes the scene lower quality, but still suitable for what is intended.

As well as the finishing of the 3D section I have begun work on the editing and compiling of video clips and voice-over that will make up the essay part of the project, explaining my decision for choosing virtual environments.

Last but not least I have also improved my intro scene, making it higher quality and smoothing out the timing issues to be added to the beginning of my animation once it is complete.

Visual Essay - Progress!

Over the past couple of weeks I have had minor developments on my visual essay project with a number of ideas being considered, reconsidered and then scrapped due to unimpressive results or the inability to achieve them at my skill level.

Even with this I have made some progress in refining my concept of how I want my animation to look. Firstly I know that I want to take the opportunity whilst working on this essay to improve my ability with 3Ds Max and gain a better understanding of the areas I haven't had much contact with.

I know for my animation I will have a single background scene following a steampunk theme as this will be very mobile and active, allowing me to experiment with animation and particle effects such as smoke/steam in 3Ds Max.
To implement a way of showing video and images in my animation that fits in with the whole theme and doesn't appear out of place I have designed and started modelling a small, flying robot that shall be attached to a TV monitor floating around the scene. This monitor shall take focus when necessary to display video footage and have also considered other mechanisms that can enter the scene to show images rather than overlaying them directly onto the screen.

                                                      Robot Untextured

                                                         Robot Textured

For my introduction I have looked at a couple of different possibilities involving animating the text in someway. My original intention was to have the text be formed from separate shapes, using the 'Morpher' tool, in a similar fashion to the Transformers title sequence, however I wasn't pleased with the finished result so, looking at other methods I could use, I followed a tutorial to produce an effective exploding text animation utilizing a number of different tools including particle effects and forces such as gravity. I am much happier with the end result and believe that this will be perfect for the introduction to my essay.

The only points I am still considering are musical accompaniments for the intro and other parts of my animation, as well as the level of texture detail I am going to attempt, as I want it to be a high quality scene with a number of animated parts.