Creating my landscape

Tutorials on how to create a rock

Throughout this project I keep stumbling into things that seem to either stump or frustrate me, leaving me a little lost and confused how to move on. One of these hurdles is how I am going to create my landscape that my underwater castle will be located in. I sketched out an idea of what I wanted it look like and it is basically it is a large rock face with the castle placed on top. I have never tried to create organic objects in Maya before so this already seems like a challenge to me. I wanted to look into what programme was the easiest for creating a object like this so, again I did some video research to see how difficult it looked and I have to admit, I didn't look easy.

rockGen Script

After a few attempts of trying to sculpt a rock and struggling a little, one of my class mates suggested a quick and easy way to create small or large rocks using a script you can import into Maya. The script is called 'rockGen' which was created by Lucas Morgan to enable him to be able to create rocks, organic crystals and stalagmites in a few short and easy steps. I decided to download the script and give it a go and, after having used it, found that it was extremely simple and did exactly what I needed to be able to create my rock face which my castle is placed on top of. Below is a screen shot of a test I did using the rockGen script.

Choosing A Game Engine

Will UDK work for what I want to produce?


Knowing that after the Easter break I will have to start working with a game engine, I wanted to have a look into the one that was suggested to me to see what sort of things it was able to produce. My tutor and a few of my fellow students suggested UDK to me as they said it was capable of creating a underwater environment which is exactly what I need to complete my scene and make my model come to life. I decided to take there advice and I had a little look into what this game engine could do. From watching several tutorial videos I realised that the underwater effect was achievable but it looks extremely complex to me. One of the students in my class said they will be able to guide me through the process of creating this effect which will be perfect as I always find someone sitting down with me and taking me step by step is helpful. I have posted the videos I looked at bellow.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Extra Design Work

Character concept

During my 3D modelling stage of the creative process I found myself getting a bit stuck and losing inspiration for my piece. I wanted to take a break from it for a while and do a little drawing. I thought it would be a nice idea to help enhance my creative thinking and design work to draw out a concept of what the 'people' would look like who live in this underwater castle. I found myself getting very absorbed in this self set mini project as I do possibly want to be a concept artist in the future and it is what I am comfortable with. Also I found that my design was blossoming and I wanted to keep it going and it is still a work in progress at the moment.

This is a concept for the Queen who lives in the underwater castle located in warm coral waters off of Florida. Her colours are bright and flamboyant to match her environment.

 

 

 

Life Drawing

Creating a hybrid

In my most recent life drawing session we were asked to meet at Norwich Castle as we would be looking around the exhibitions inside and using them for reference when drawing. I was looking forward to this as I have enjoyed our previous visits there as there is always something new to look at. This time we were asked to look around the taxidermy exhibition as we would be drawing a few of the animals but with a twist to them. We were asked to pick two creatures, draw each of them and then combine them to create a hybrid, a new kind of animal.

I decided to choose two different species and genus to get a more creative result so I decided to choose a mammal, which was a desert kangaroo and a bird, which was a peacock to get a good creative result. Overall I think it worked really nicely and I was able to create the beginnings of a interesting looking creature that I could see either in a fantasy environment or the tertiary period of evolution. This was a great exercise and process for creating a creature and I would definitely use it again.

Outside Drawing

For our outside drawing trip with Will, we visited Norwich Cathedral which is always something I enjoy doing as the scenery and the architecture is so beautiful there. We were all told that we would be practicing perspective in our drawings and were asked to start of with the basic lines and shapes before adding in any detail to out pieces, which is a important for quick drawing work and was a skill we have to practice. I managed to find a spot which had varied buildings in it and started working from there and I did find this a little tricky as I hate timed drawing or drawing under pressure, I like to take my time with things if I can afford to so speeding up my art work is something I need to work on as I didn't' come anywhere near finishing my piece this time.

After doing a little bit of drawing and building up my scene very slowly, we were asked by Will to add a fantasy element to our scene to change it into something eye catching and different. This is an exercise I really enjoyed doing as I loved thinking up scenes like this. As we were near a lot of plant and tree's I thought it would be a cool idea to adapt them into flesh munching plants, the Norwich Falcon better watch out!

Finding references

Textures for my 3D model


After working out my design ideas and doing a little concepting in Maya, I started to have thoughts of the textures I wanted to use on my model. I started having a look through some images on Google to find textures that would fit my ideas. I made sure to search for seamless textures to help with my UV mapping and to try to make my model the best it could be. Unfortunately this wasn't the case for all of the images but seams aside I did find some ones I really liked and that fitted perfectly. These bellow are a few of them.

 

Research into textures

Even though I had found perfect textures for what I needed, I wanted to have a look at how you would create a tillable texture just in case I found another one that I liked but it wasn't seamless. I had a little browse round YouTube and it seems that the best methods are using Photoshop to edit the image until it is in a state where it can be patterned over and over again without any trouble. I am not brilliant with Photoshop so sometime I find doing large task in there difficult but these methods seemed pretty easy to handle. These videos are really handy to refer too as for my model I think I have barely basic textures but for my next model I could have something for more complex where I will have to use this technique.

Beginning my 3D modelling

Having to start over

I first started modelling the main part of my castle a few days before breaking up for the Easter break. I was getting to grips with the different techniques we had been taught during our group lectures and i was finding the process fairly simple once I had practiced it a few times. Once I was pleased with how my 3D model looked I decided to go in a start UV mapping it. This is were I ran into problems.

The first issue that I faced was that I had created the main structure of the castle building as a whole, making the UV map very complex due to the support beam or 'legs' at the bottom and at this stage of the process I was confused about UV mapping and didn't even know how to approach this problem which left me feeling quite anxious about my work and worried that I wouldn't be able to complete anything due to my lack of experience in this field. I had also made a similar mistake with the 'bubble' windows on the castle, as I had created them as sphere and I wasn't sure how to map these either I had come to a bit of a stand still.

 

Solving the Issue

After a few days of feeling very anxious about my work and how It was going to progress with such a small knowledge and understanding of what we were supposed to do, I decided it was time to take action. I sent a email to my tutor Lothar, explaining my situation and how I felt, asking whether he would be able to give my some advice and help with my project. He was very understanding and we soon scheduled a meeting where we could go through the areas I was finding difficult.

This was a huge help to me as before I went in I didn't know how to even begin my UV mapping but as soon as I had someone who was sitting with me, one on one and explaining everything slowly and in detail It all finally started to sink in. I made sure to take plenty of notes, as I have been doing in all my lessons as I think they are extremely important to help me progress or if I ever get stuck in the future I can refer back to them. With this session under my belt and my confidence in 3D modelling partially restored I set about practicing some UV mapping to help keep all the information Lothar had told me so it was fresh in my brain.

After this I had a second meeting, this time with a fellow student of mine. We sat down and went through my castle design and how I would be able to create it without making the UV Mapping very complex. This was extremely helpful as I am now able to create my castle with ease and without having to worry about how I will approach the UV maps. Also another student showed me this video which was very useful as a step by step guide.