Week 9: Conclusion

All in all this project I feel was very successful in following the brief. The level of teamwork and support within my group was immense. The outcome reflects the level of group effort and strive to produce a very ambitious piece.

There are always problems along the way but the continuous positive attitudes from all members of the group meant that we could overcome most of them.

At times we did fall of our production schedule based on a poor estimate of modelling and texturing times. However we were able to get back some of the time which meant that towards the end of the project we were right on schedule.

We were also able to incorporate sound, which was made by Jeff playing his guitar. It really added the finishing touches on the piece, and strongly highlighted the type of theme we were going for.

The scene that I most enjoy about our piece would have to be the last scene. I understand the lengths in which Sam went to make sure we had that end scene, and it has turned out really well.

Week 9: Rendering

The final rendered view of the first shot. There were alot of problems with this shot mainly concerning the old woman ERGH. It so annoying when maya decides to play tricks on you. The main problem we were having was with the texturing of the woman's feet. Firstly when we started rendering the first shot which is 1000 frames; we realised three quarters of the way through that the animation for the cat was floating in mid air, and there where no textures on the feet. So Matt sorted out the animation and I sorted out the textures on the feet. However I was later informed that the foot textures still didn't come up and we had run out of time to try and fix it again. So we just had to leave it, but if there was more time we definitely would have fixed that problem.
Apart from that annoying little glitch everything else has seemed to turn out fine......I hope!!!!!

Week 8: Jeff's enviroment my props

The shots below are the final shots of the first scene which is Jeff's environment and my props. I am quite happy with the way it has come out. I believe that the props work well within the environment.

If I was to do this project again and there was more focus on the props within the room I would probably add more detail to each prop.

Week 8: Posada frames

Because we didn't use the second skull, all of us were quite disheartened that we didn't have a Posada influence incorporated into our theme. So we decided that we would put some of the pictures from my Posada research and put them in as picture frames.



I got the pictures that I had used for my research, went on to Photoshop and made the pictures look burnt. Then I modelled some frames in Maya to put the pictures in.

Week 8: Ball of wool

Originally I thought the ball of wool was not going to be hard at all to model, but when it came down to it the ball of wool proved to be one of the hardest things to do. My first attempt was to start of with a sphere and then apply a texture to the sphere, but the texture I had chosen to use was not mapping to the sphere in the way that I wanted it to. So I tried changing the attributes to the texture in Photoshop, but the result that I got made this butterfly effect pattern and that made the ball of wool look worse.

I then tried to build up a ball of wool by using small cylindrical shapes. That didn't work either because when I was overlapping the shapes some of them were cutting through others. It had got to the point where we had said that if nothing works then we would just use a sphere.

I then went back to the first idea and searched the Internet to find a good enough wool texture for our ball. After looking for a while I was able to find one which worked really well with the cylindrical mapping tool, the only thing now was the fact that the texture colour was white and I had always imagined the ball of wool to be red to add some colour contrast to our environment. So I took the texture and manipulated it through Photoshop, saved it and applied it again to the sphere.

I also thought it would be cool to make the ball of wool glow slightly so that the audience can identify that this is what is intriguing the cat; and to enhance the fact that the cat is supposed to be oblivious of the current destruction that has gone on around him.

I made a bump map for the ball of wool to also make it look more noticeable as a ball of wool. I also had to check what the model looked like close up, because our first shot is an extreme close up and the model needed to be detailed enough to make that first shot look good enough.

Week 7: Final Skeleton

This is a screenshot of the old woman. Right now I have made the rocking chair and most of the old woman. Matt showed me a technique which you could use to make authentic clothing, by using nurbs cirlcles and then lofting them to make it look quite effective. What I found out though is that when you try and combine the shapes together, it will not work because the rest of the shapes are polygons. So you have to convert the Nurbs loft shape into a polygon shape.

This is a shot of the old woman and how I am trying to reposition the imported hand into the right position. The textures I had chosen for the old lady was supposed to reflect the spanish environment.

Week 6 and 7: Skeleton development (Grim Fandango and Posada Research)

GRIM FANDANGO

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I have been trying to look for inspiration to make a good skeleton model. Matt had suggested to me that I should look at some images from the Grim Fandango game, so I went on the good old world wide web to look at some concept.

The images that I found on the Internet showed that the actual designs of the characters in the game are very simple but also effective. I have never actually played this game but I can tell from the screenshots that i have taken that the character defiantly fit in well with the environment. The characters however look very comical and I don't really know if a comical looking skeleton would look good in the environment that we are creating.

Here is a screen shot of a test model I did of the skull using reference from the Grim Fandango pictures I took from the Internet. I personally liked the simplicity of the skull, and the fact that you can clearly see that it resembles a skull but it has its own character to it.

Well anyway I had to have approval from the guys about what they thought of it and if they thought it could connect with our environment. In the end the vote came down to 3 to 2 against the fandango skull. Myself and Matt seemed keen on it and thought it could remain within the environment, however Harvey, Sam and Jeff thought it would be more effective if a more realistic skeleton was used. So to try and incorporate some fandango esc design into a more realistic skull was my next challenge, to try and persuade the other party poopers this was the way to go!

POSADA
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Before I started to model another skull, Jared suggested that we looked at an artist called Posada who did art relating to the day of the dead Mexican festival. I found this art really extraordinary almost surreal in a sense. It also seemed comical like the fandango images but to a lower degree. The style is also more of a realistic style than the fandango art. Out of the two styles I would have to say that I like the Posada art more, I feel it symbolises more what we are looking for and has this traditional feel about it.

So....... skull number 2, I took the top half from skull number 1 and started to work on it using my second inspiration Posada. What I like about how it has come out is the fact that it looks a bit deformed but not in a bad way, like it's supposed to look like that it defiantly looks more realistic than the last one! However it still looks quite comical, which could very well go against me when I'm trying to persuade the others.

I showed the guys my second attempt at trying to incorporate both mine and Matt's vision and Harvey, Jeff and Sam's vision. It still didn't work, the other three still wanted a more realistic looking skull. They didn't feel that this particular skull would work in the environment as it had more of a toon like aspect to it.

aaahhh well....back to the drawing board!

FINAL SKULL

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I had decided to give in and accept the fact that the majority has ruled, so I got to work on modelling a realistic skull.

I started by getting the basic shape of the skull by using yes.........A POLYGON CUBE!

Once I got the basic shape of the skull I started putting in the detail. I originally thought of doing the teeth by extruding it out from this model. It wasn't really working in the way that I had wanted it to, so I am now thinking on whether to model the teeth separately it might be easier. The most difficult part of this model surprisingly is the eye, because when I smooth it to test out how it is going to look, I am getting this cartoon look; which we are defiantly not going for.

Here is a screen shot of a more worked on skull from the previous shot, I have been trying to get more definition in the eyes and the nose and just to fill out the face a bit more so that it doesn't look flat.

Here is a side view of my model so far, I'm having a few minor problems with some of the verticies and how it looks when it is smoothed. But Louis introduced me to a flood tool in maya that has helped with this. It has become another one of my favourite tools to use in this program along side the split edge loop tool!

Here I have mirrored the model so that it has made the other half (also love that tool!). I am really happy with the way it has turned out. I believe I have meet the need of the other three group members and hopefully they will like it to.

This is the final skull, it has now been smoothed and finalised. I showed my group this skull and it was happy faces all around!! So skull number 3 will be the final skull used for our environment.

HAND

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The easiest way I could think of doing an authentic skeleton hand was to model each bone. So thats exactly what I did, I got reference from anatomy pictures and i started to model each bone at a time. It was quite time consuming but as I got into it, and I started to like what I was producing the process began to speed up.

This is the finished hand model in wire frame mode, I am very pleased with the outcome. Now all i have to do is texture it and move the bones into the actual position we need them.

FOOT
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After I modelled the hand modelling the foot seemed alot easier. So just like the hand I modelled each bone to build up the foot.

This is a screenshot of the final modelled foot its finished yay!!!!!!