Rendering

After setting up textures, lights and renders, I made a quick animation of my scene including my tumbleweed. Unfortunately, due to really low processing power of my machine, Maya couldn't handle animating the tumbleweed itself! I created a sphere of a similar size, knocked up a ramp texture for it, and used that instead.

I used Dynamics for the animation itself, making the tumbleweed nCloth and making changes to mass, wind velocity, friction, etc. I'm happy with the result but would like to try it on a more powerful machine to see what it looks like with my original model.

Maya also couldn't handle playblasting. It could only do one frame before crashing, so I ended up filming the animation on a camera. The textures slowed the animation down to such an extent that I was filming for 11 minutes!

Here are two final images from my scene - the bottom one took 1h20mins to render!

This link shows previs through to the final images:

Digital Environment from Elly Hazael on Vimeo.

Sculpting the Scene

I made some basic objects in Maya to recreate my concept art as closely as possible, then took them all into ZBrush to begin the sculpting.

I'm pleased at how the sculpting turned out, but given extra time I would have loved to have worked on some more large, imposing rock features. I then did some texturing...

In contrast to my model lizard in which I made a number of alphas and painted them onto the body, I just used standard brushes for these textures, as I was no longer going for a photo-realistic effect.

I brought the scene into Maya where I started lighting tests and began the long, arduous task of rendering. Credit to William Arterton for the grass textures!

Getting the Ball Rolling

With the drawbacks of my laptop, as previously mentioned in earlier blog posts, and the limitations of time, I had to make a few changes to my desert environment. I intended for it to be as photo-realistic as possible, but aside from the time it would take to model and texture to that standard, it would take far too long to render on my fragile, broken system. I had to settle to aim for a video game style, and gave up on the idea of including my model lizard.

A still taken from World of Warcraft

So, with two weeks to go, I began modelling the assets for my environment. I began with my tumbleweed - unsurprisingly, I couldn't find any resources online on how to model one, so I had to create my own way of doing so. This involved extruding long, thin cubes, lots of duplicating, and eventually taking it into ZBrush to gain more control over how the branches curled around into themselves.

Once I was happy with the results, I started rendering and testing different light sources:

I then started on the large piece of driftwood - like always, starting out the rough 'sketch' in Maya, then taking it into ZBrush for a more precise sculpt.

 

I took my texture maps into Photoshop for a quick edit - the maps looked almost like silk! I made a number of different versions so I could experiment to see what I liked most.

Edit: I've since added some wood grain to the textures for a subtle add of realism.

Tests & Problems

Before I got into any modelling, I thought it would be a good idea to do some lighting tests where I'd play around with different types of terrain.

As I was doing a desert, I began by doing sand. I added a fluid bump map to the surface and played around with frequency, amplitude and direction of the waves. I quickly modelled some rocks to play around with shadows. This is the final result, after taking it through Photoshop.

I added in a ripple effect in the background to create a haze and used a simple gradient for the sun.

I then experimented with a more mud/soil based terrain.

Using paint effects in Maya, I built up some patches of grass. It was originally meant to be a hilly area, but I liked how it was developing into a close-up of a patch of soil - a very bumpy patch of soil! I then used some depth of field on the Maya camera to enhance the Macro feel of it. I like how the light catches the blades of grass and the kind of shadow they create.

Unfortunately, from here onwards I've had to cope with some extreme setbacks. As I've written previously, my Maya has encountered many, many bugs which results in a very slow workflow. I've uninstalled and re-download all the different versions a number of times each, all to no avail, so I decided to go down the route of re-installing my operating system.

After an entire day of backing up (6+ hours for a bootable back up, and almost the same for the manual backup) I wiped my hard drive. Unfortunately, this caused many more problems as an error occurred and there was no operating system to reinstall. This meant that I had no working laptop - possibly the worst case scenario for a 3D animation student. As apple are incredibly unhelpful to anyone whose machinery is more than a year old, I couldn't purchase the operating system through them so I had to contact a mac specialist. 

Eventually, I was able to buy the OS and get it sent to me. The new install seemed to go well at first, and I had tonnes of extra space on my laptop now only my essentials were transferred on to it. However, most of my software wouldn't work on it anymore as it recognised the OS as too old, therefore I'd have to buy all of my software again if I wanted it to be compatible - but of course, Apple doesn't sell any of it anymore because it's over a year old. Then the real problems arose - occasionally my laptop blacks out and stops working with no warning. And most importantly, I can only use Maya for all of 3 minutes before it freezes my laptop, meaning I have to restart the laptop.

These problems have spanned over 2 weeks now which means I'm severely behind on work for my two projects. I will be visiting the mac specialist during this week to have a look at my hardware, but for now I will have to ask around for a spare laptop!

Conclusion: I'm saving up to buy a PC.

Final Concepts

After having a look at the concepts that Rod drew for me, I took them into photoshop. I took elements from each sketch and played around with them, trying to create different environments to bring me closer to exactly what I want to achieve with this piece.

Although I will be using his drawings as primary reference for my modelling, I thought I'd do some rough layouts myself to get a better idea of perspective and space.

Not my best drawings! But it was helpful to visualise what I wanted.

Above is the same, but with a larger middle passage. I also put together a quick storyboard:

Once I have modelled, textured and lit my environment I will be able to create stories and produce some proper animation within it. However, considering the amount of work that needs to be done to make this environment realistic and atmospheric, and the Industry Exercises project where I'm modelling and rigging, I doubt I will be able to achieve a good narrative within the time frame. My overall goal is to get a great looking animation with my lizard model, but unfortunately, I don't think it's achievable for this project.

Environmental Research Part 2

As I wanted to go for a semi-realistic approach for my digital environment, I thought I'd start looking at real images of deserts, as opposed to pure concept work. I saved a file full of visual resources to use as inspiration, including different kinds of terrain and the specific colour palette I was aiming to use.

I compiled these images into a moodboard, selecting a few favourites as my main source of inspiring imagery.

As one of my friends, Rod, is wanting to specialise in concept art, he offered to do some concept artwork for me to use on my project.

I'm extremely happy with the work that he's produced, and I love the style he applies to his sketchwork which is very fitting with the rocky, other-worldly landscape. It works perfectly with what I plan to model, and the rock shapes will certainly prove useful when it comes to texturing.

Environment Research Part 1

For this term's project we're having to focus on creating a digital environment - with or without the characters we had designed and modelled last term. Over the break I had refined my lizard model so I wanted to keep in mind an environment that could involve him. Before I wanted to settle on a specific idea, however, I wanted to look at some different options.

I looked at backgrounds used in Disney films such as 'Princess and the Frog', 'Tangled', 'Aladdin' and 'Mulan', looking closely at their use of colour and light.

I also went to The London Sea Life Centre to see the kind of environments that fish and other underwater life live in. Aside from the physical stone backdrop the aquarium provides, there is an abundance of life that creates the environments, such as anemones and sea weed. The way the water makes them move creates an other worldly feel, which adds to the environment in its own right.

As a group we visited Dennis Severs' house in London - a house in Shoreditch that has been entirely kept as a Victorian household. No electricity, nothing modern, it was a snapshot into life 150 years ago. As an environment, it was fascinating - it was nothing I'd ever experienced before other than behind glass at a museum. But aside from the ancient objects and furniture, it was the atmosphere that hit me the most; the smells, the lighting, the sounds. I realised that creating an environment is not just about creating a look, but creating a mood.

I think a film that incorporated mood as well as scenery was 'Rango' - it's also closer to what I have in mind for my environment. The barren desert scenes and ransacked towns worked well with the narrative and feel of the film, as did the heavily muted colours. 

The 'Home on the Range' concept backgrounds also proved to be a valuable resource to me. Although the film was relatively unsuccessful, I enjoy the stylised approach to the concepts. The exaggerated, blocky colours are reminiscent of Looney Tunes 'Road Runner' backdrops. The visual approach and content is exactly what I'm looking for, but I need to be careful not to make things too complicated for myself.