Friday, 14 January 2011

Conclusion

Conclusion

This project was to create a digital environment in 3d with a group. In my group was Sam, Russell, Jerome and Joe, at first i thought that we had a strong group. We started off really well but then as a group we started to have problems and finding it hard to work with each other. I got on with my work by myself and let the others do theres, but still kept in contacted to see how everything was going. I thought everything was alright and everyone had there work finished to come together and render it out. Then in the last week i found out that some people didn't finish their work because they had problems with the model. So in the last week other team members helped to work on the model to get it finished because it was the main building in our scene. The model got finished with two days or so till the deadline and it was time to render. We then discovered it was going to take a lot long to render then i had thought because i was the dealing with rendering everything out and getting the rendering settings right. We were able to get most of it rendered but some was abandoned. I feel that if we had worked better in a group our final film would have looked really good, but things don't always plan out how you want them to. I would work with this group again because we all have different skills and would produce some really nice work together but this time it just went wrong.

Wednesday, 12 January 2011

lighting

When it came to the lighting the outside of my scene wit the grass, water and windmill. I was looking for a way to make it look realistic. I remembered when i was back in college and i had to do an environment and had to find way to render an outside scene. To do this i used mental rays physical sun and sky system what gives you a really good outside lighting effect and if very easy to use as well. The only downside to this was the render time. We had Maya fur to create the grass and using the mental ray renderer and its physical sun and sky it put some of our render times up to like 2o minutes a frame and some were only 5 or minutes. I think that using mental ray and its lighting system it has giving us a really nice piece of work and i am happy that i used it to render out our project even though the time was quite insane.

Friday, 7 January 2011

Museum Trip


Pictures taken from trip to museum's

These are some of the photos i took while visiting the V & A and British museum. I took pictures of cogs and how things work and link together to get an idea on how to construct our windmill.





Monday, 22 November 2010

3D WORK






This video shows a test render of grass that i have been working on inside of Maya using its Fur system.





This video shows a test of Maya's ncloth system that i have been trying to get use to.





This video shows one of our final renders




This video shows a final render of our scene.




This is a video of a test render of my scene.
This is a screenshot of the basic cliff model that i created in maya with polygons. Once i had the basic model i then used the sculpt Geometry tool to make the detail and shape the cliff to how i wanted it to look.

This screenshot shows the ocean that i have added to the scene to finish the look of a cliff side. To do this i used Maya's own ocean system to get the look we were looking for.



This is a rendered view of the ocean shader that i created in Maya. It is also animated as well so you can see the waves moving.


This is another view of the ocean that i have created in Maya.


This is a screenshot of the rendered view of the Maya Fur grass that i created. When working with the Maya Fur system i had quite a few problems with getting the right look. It took me a while to get use to the Fur attribute settings and knowing what one did what. Once i had the right settings i then did a test render which took a long time, It took around 15 minutes per frame to render out.



This screenshot shows a different camera angle of the grass, ocean and the cliffside with textures. The render time for this scene was about 10 minutes per frame but i am working on getting the time down.



This screenshot shows a front view of the cliffside with grass, ocean and textures as well. This scene took less time to render because the camera is further away.


This is a screenshot of the cliffside facing towards the ocean, which took around 10 minutes to render out. I am using mental ray to render out and using mental ray's physical sun and sky system. This is not the first time i have used it and i am very familiar with its attributes and being able to get the look i am looking for.


Here are some more screenshots of different angles.






This is a screenshot of the rendered scene with the windmill and grass. This scene took only 5 minutes to render out what isn't to bad considering using mental ray and Maya's Fur system. The windmill doesn't have any textures yet but will look much better when they have been applied.


This is a screenshot from a different angle in Maya this is to give you an idea of what it looks like from off shore.


Textures

These are the textures that i used to texture my cliffside model to give it the final look.


This texture was used for the cliffside on land.

This texture was used for the cliffside leading into the ocean.

This texture was used for the tree.


Digital Environment Research



Windmill research

Our group’s idea is to do an environment on a windmill, which will be located on top of a hill. The difference between our windmill and an ordinary windmill is that ours can transformer in to a flying machine.

Windmills

The earliest attempt at building a windmill was back in Ancient Greece around the twenty-first century. Around 400 years later the Persians developed their own version, coming up with the windmill, which were seen by Europeans during the Crusades. The Crusading knights then brought the technology back to Europe, and then Europeans started building windmills around the 12th century, making slight changes to the design.

Windmills haven’t changed that much since the first century. A windmill has a set of blades or slats that are mounted on a central axis that is designed to rotate as they are pushed by the wind. The axis is connected to a system of gears to turn machinery that can do things like turn a millstone to grind grain, or pump water.

In the 14th Century, people started to construct tower mills, windmills with a fixed tower base and a rotating top. The development of the tower mill allowed for the construction of facilities directly beneath the windmill. Maximizing energy.

This picture shows a windmill and how the sweep aka blades are slanted and the shaft can be adjusted so the blades go be put in the direction of the wind.





These two pictures show the inside of how a windmill parts work and also gives you the names of each part. This will be very helpful when it comes to modelling and getting a good understanding of how the parts all fit together.









































Different windmill types

Flour Windmill

Flour windmills also know as Gristmills have been around for centuries, since people have been using flour for quite a long time. Livestock, water, slaves, or windmills powered the early gristmill. The wind would turn the sails, which was attached to loads of cogs that turned a huge millstone.

















Water Pump

A wind pump is a windmill that pumps water from a variety of water sources. This method is used to help provide people with clean drinking water, irrigate farmland or feed livestock. They can also be used to alleviate flooded areas and produce salt from salt water.














Wind Turbines

Wind turbines are used to make electricity by using the kinetic energy in the wind. The blades on the top of the turbines spin which then turns a generator, which generates electricity. The electricity is then delivered to peoples home or business and the advantage of wind power is its clean power.


















Steam-punk

Steampunk is a sub-genre of science fiction, which is set in the days when steam was still highly used; this was during the 19th century and Victorian era Britain. Steampunk often feature anachronistic technology, which the Victorians called futuristic technology. Steampunk is also associated with cyberpunk. They both have considerable influence on each other and also share a very similar fan base. The difference between steampunk apart from the time period and level of technology, steampunk settings tend to be less dystopian.


These are some steampunk images.



















































Grass

To help bring our scene to life i attempted to add grass to our cliffside to give it more of a realistic effect. So i thought that i would research into grass to get a better understanding to help me to create a good grass effect.

Pictures of different grasses.