Overall I’m happy with it , I’ve obviously learnt more and shall take what I have learnt and develop my skills further and identify my strongest and weakest assists. Looking back at my work I can identify that my lighting needs more practice , (I know what I want , I just don’t know how to get it …yet) & in general keep practicing everything that has relevance to what I want to do in the future . At the moment though, it’s in my best interest to practice everything & have a comfortable background knowledge on the majority of tasks/skills & then of course specialise . Hard times ahead .

Technical issues and problems .

Technical issues and problems .


I’d love to write about problems I’ve had with this to make it look like some amazing self evaluation, but in all honesty I’ve barely had any . The only problems I’ve had are already written down the page. Apart from those problems I’ve already mentioned, its been rather problem free.

testing

This image is nothing more than a guideline, that I rendered and edited so I could see what would work best .. I eventually got this , which is works to a degree . The lens on the camera was eventually change , as I felt this was far to confined & restricting . The exterior environment has been influenced by fith element , star wars (films and games) , predator 2, the running man , left 4 dead , half life , sin city, hellboy , Underworld's , Blade , Queen of the damned . & general messy city streets that you see on films & games.
So many other films i can remember watching that have had an influence , but i cant remember the names. grrrr
I really do wish i could of put a more personal touch on this environment, its a bit cliché & naff for my liking . Some more expression within the environment is needed

Details

A breakdown of the enviroments,With everything in one layer to show you (OOoohhh noo dangerous! :P )

I was extremely shocked at how low the polygon was on my environment . If I knew the final thing was going to be so low poly, I would of perhaps started the brief a little bit sooner to try and fit more objects into the scenery . (mainly for the outside) .




*the screenshots of the poly counts can be found on the DVD & up the page*

The exterior part of my environment proved to be annoying (not to make) but to structuralise the L.O.D so that it would work effetely & compliment itself and everything around it ,without looking ridiculous and ugly . This was only an issue because of the camera/animation , which unfortunately due to the way I was constructing the *film* and doing it in stills, as it couldn’t capture the real true essence of the landscape behind the initial part of the environment . This is not a problem though , live and learn .
While editing the footage I did think about putting some moving clouds , flickering lights & general moving ambient objects within the image . Almost like a semi animated still (like the ones you see on some web pages ,especially for films - games funnily enough) But I didn’t have the time , as unfortunately(sarcasm) I have other things to do outside uni other than work.


That idea is still something I’m thinking of practicing over the holidays coming though , as its something I know I will be very comfortable practicing .

Complete

Ok its now complete. Time to evaluate the current situation.
As it stands the video shows stills from my environment starting from the outside working inwards towards the interior environment . It’s very basic very simple , but that’s how I want it . I’m not trying to show anything else in the video other than what I set out to do in the first place for this brief (if it was anything else, I would elaborate more on the video and my work , but it will achieve nothing) . The video shows my texturing (note: that some stock textures HAVE been used) rendering and modelling.

notice

Update coming 14th march

Objects, how they work in space

Here are some references I gathered while on some free naff zombie game . Its pretty obvious here that looking at those pictures its shows *us* especially me, that one or two or several decently placed objects in a room can make a room look like its full of junk .Combined with good textures, it could make a room seem very full of *life* and *story* when in fact its just a couple of well placed objects within the environment .
Of course these also helped provide useful texture references as to what i was looking for.

the bkground

This is the image i painted for the background of my environment exterior
If I can find the picture I based this off of (can be found on LEFT 4 DEAD ) I will upload it into this section
Within my environment you barely see all of it , As a whole it just carries a very nice atmosphere .


(see update below for a more detailed picture description)

Update

The interior environment is pretty much complete and is good to go , I’m fairly happy with is out come (you’ll see the finished out come when its all rendered out, and post edited etc later on) . The whole thing has been extremely time consuming , but very enjoyable . I haven’t had too many difficulties in this project , The biggest issue was technical know how with render options , as at one point the occlusion layer wouldn’t render out correctly , and I had to play around with its options to basically get it working again, that was extremely annoying . I did have another issue with some *nodes* not connecting and screwing up the layers in my environment on some later saved versions of my file (I found what the problem was )It was a really stupid error and quite annoying, considering how petty it was that maya would pull a huge fit over it . Either way I reloaded a previous saved file , retextured what was missing and carried on .
I have been able to focus a lot of my attention on textures , which of course = photoshop or anything similar, which again means -- painting or editing photos , which I’ve been doing for years already. That’s proved to be a huge help . The environments both consist of textures from sites , stock images and painted .

The most obvious painting in my environment is the landscape for the exterior part of my brief In which you can see a large landscape of a city . The concept/layout/design of the city alas it is not my idea , the basis of it is directly from Left 4 Dead (buy it) as it fitted PERFECTLY with the theme I had going already , but it sure was fun to paint ! (the picture will be posted in a future post)

The polygon count has remained amazingly low throughout the whole entire project. I did think at the very beginning that I would be vastly restricted by the polycount , but I have found myself very flexible/comfortable within the polycount limit .

What I haven’t been able to do
Is complete the textures properly, I would of liked to of had enough time to complete all specular maps / normal’s etc for the environment, but i just don’t have the time and I’m having to sacrifice so much detail because of time constraints . What if I went for something smaller and really detailed ? Pff no fun in that, I can do that anytime ! I thought I’d really try push my productivity boundaries on this brief and see what I could do. I never planned out to make as much work as I have done . To me , what I have at the moment is less than I actually want . I’m perfectly capable of doing more but like I said before it’s time constraints , which is a true shame . None the less, it’s proving to be a excellent experience & I have picked up so much more *technical know how* working on my own . I still have so much more to learn , I cant wait.

Things that I must address later in the week
Well as the environment is near completion ( as it’s near the end of the brief) , its safe to say all I have to worry about is how long the renders take haha! . The post production in Photoshop should be ok , as that’s my strongest ability .Then I have to make it into a film and put sound on it . Should be fun as I fortunately like doing sound as well ( www.myspace.com/svsnband ) my band ;) .



.more updates and progress reports to come.


Apologies for any bad grammar or spelling mistakes .

update of outside environment

going very well , getting absolutely no exercise, but hey ho … quite literally waking up and going straight to work and staying up all day/night and then going to sleep & repeating the same thing over and over till it is done . Which is fine with me as it gets results . Progress so far is going normal , should be finished with the outside environment by end of the week , which gives me several days to render and post edit .With the time that I have left I’m having to sacrifice some details that I would usually apply to my work , but it doesn’t bother me that much .Always got the holidays to make improvements & create even bigger and better work (plus learn more *tricks of the trade* )
Anyways back to work I go .
Updates and progress reports yet to come


.......
ps




a good lil tune that helps me concentrate
John Williams is a legend