Review

Now that I have finished this project and can think back about what I have done this term with this project the only thing I would change is when I got the software. Yes i am unhappy with my Final Piece's but the reason I didn't have the high standard i was hoping for was because of the software being delayed by the postal strike and time it took for me to get past the initial learning curve. I know for a fact had I had maybe even just 2 more weeks or had the software in time I would of had a higher standard of work and in 2 weeks time (bearing in mind I'm working full time) I intend to upload some more renders just to prove to my self that i have the skill to make a more lived looking environment.

Renders

Deadline - Week 4

Extra modeling

Luckily at this stage i had finished pretty much every thing I had started and so decided to make the interior look more like a garage then just an empty room but i also had to keep in mind that i needed to add lighting render.to improve upon the interior I created some tool storage and tools. For the tool storage and found this fairly simple but with the tools it was a lot harder as I had to model at a high level because of the detail and shapes plus the tools were what would make the garage remotely lived in. I built and texture a spanner and screwdriver so that I was left with 2 days to light and render.

Lighting And Rendering

luckily with lighting I remembered some of what was briefly covered in the 1st year so that i could add some lighting put a hint of yellow in it and bring down the intensity to give my renders a moody dank kind of feel. I then started rendering still and a fly through of the interior, i also rendered out a shift of focus on the 2 tools in attempt to make my environment lived in. I then put these videos together in final cut pro  for submission along with some outside renders.

Texturing - Week 3

At this point I only had 2 more weeks left until the deadline and I still had to learn how to texture luckily I like to think I have some level of skill in Photoshop so I decided to create all my texture from scratch only using brushes that I had downloaded from the internet. This worked to my advantage as i could create each texture in a few hours the problem I had at this stage was Bump Mapping and I struggled finding a relevant tutorial. Luckily i am currently living with a past graduate of the animation course who gave me some advice but she also tried to take over  at which point I accidentally offended her by saying I want the work to be mine not hers although some of the advise she gave me helped me very much.

Below you can see one of my favorite Textures, Bump Maps and renders with bump maps applied

UV Mapping - Week 2

I really struggle with UV mapping at first, I couldn't get the hang of it at all and I think the best way to describe it is by quoting my Tutor "its like those annoying sock glove things , you put one toe in wrong and you spend half an hour trying to sort it out" Jared Taylor 26th Nov 2009. I say this because i spent hours at a time trying to layout UV maps where I had used the UV Projection Tool which does half the job and leaves the rest for you to arrange as neatly and coherently as possible. Towards the end UV mapping became easier but was still taking half a day to sort out. One of the things the video tutorials mentioned a lot was that the neater the UV map the easier it was to texture so I spent a lot of time just arranging the UV's. I also found he Mapping was really easy up until you extrude a face, move a vertex or just make 2 faces at right angles with each other.


Here you can see some of the UV Maps I made for my models

This is one of my simplest UV Maps of my back wall of my building.

This is one of my most complicated UV Maps took me about 6 Hours to neaten up and sort out although no i could do it in an hour maybe even 30mins.

Modelling - Week 1

Practically when it came down to time spent doing Modeling, UV Mapping and Texturing I only had a week for each area and then a week at the end for finishing and Rendering.

At first with the modeling I struggled to make the model Hi-Res because I gained the shape or form I wanted with a Low-Res model the was mainly visible the the outside models as them first. Where as when started modeling the inside I was a bit more confident so I started experimenting with the models more and ended up with a better looking mesh inside. All that was i this mesh though was the basic empty building not much to look at but i really needed to start UV Mapping as it was the end of the week.


Here are some Screen shots of my models 

 Here you can see my favorite model I made of a car lift which started as a single plane

Here you can see some of the environment that i modeled i found getting the scaling correct one of the hardest aspects of Modeling.

Learning Curve

One of the problems with the project was that my i didn't really know anything about modelling, UV Mapping and Texturing. This created a problem with the whole project as i had to pass the learning curve before i had the skill to make the models. 


I looked at the escape videos which i brought in the summer holiday as we have had no instructional Tutorials this term on Maya. As i went through the tutorials i did one subject area at a time but had to limit the amount of time spent on each as Maya arrived late though the term. This limited the a the time i could pend perfecting different areas and experimenting with to improve my overall end piece.