Final Exhibition

Here is hopw I pplan to show my work at the final exhibition, the space we will have will be an A1 sheet of paper and I will be showing 3 different shots of my work from different perspectives.

Other artists mostly display their work on websites such as ArtStation where it is possible to upload a 3D model and have a viewer able to look at it properly and spin it around etc. other than this, they would present simply on screen or even using VR (if the equipment was available).

If I had the resources needed, I would either use large screens to show my work or VR as I feel this would be very helpful to show my 3D model.

My ideal audience would be primarily be people from the video game industry, mainly 3D artists so that they can see the kind of work that I do and be critical and helpful about it for me, but also people from any 3D design line of work would be good too.

I will be inviting my family to see my final piece and maybe some friends.

I could use Facebook or Twitter to advertise the final exhibition.

Evaluation

Evaluation

The theme of my project was “Light The Way”, in which, I wanted to create a 3D model of a fully textured lighthouse using Maya. When thinking of my initial designs, I started to research firstly into the background and history of lighthouses, this included various structures from ancient times e.g. the Pharos of Alexandria, and the first ever tower in the world to be fully exposed to the open sea: the Eddystone Lighthouse. I also looked into some video games that had these structures within them, mainly the BioShock series, as the lighthouses within these games play a significant role within each of the games. Alongside this, I researched into various different environment artists, I found 4 in total, all of which had created buildings that I found very appealing, but one really stuck out to me and that was Scott Sinclair, Sinclair was the lead artist for Irrational Games, who created the Bioshock series, therefore he designed the main inspiration for my own model. Further inspiration for me also goes into tattoos, as I am very interested in traditional nautical tattoos, which would include lighthouses, and I myself do also have a traditional lighthouse tattoo on my leg.

This research was incredibly helpful to me as it helped me to decide the basic design that I wanted to use for my own structure, as well as what different colours and textures to use.

With all of this in mind, I started to put together a mood board for the kind of lighthouse that I myself wanted to create using images that I found on google for inspiration as well as my own tattoo to decide how I wanted it to look. After creating  a mood board I created 5 initial designs based around the various images I found and I then developed these by using what I liked the most about each design and putting them into one which I wanted to create myself.

My time keeping throughout this project hasn’t been exact, and I have missed a few dates that I had proposed on my weekly plan. I have managed to catch up though and have been able to keep on top of all of my work and keep it to what I believe to be a good standard.
As I have a job outside of college I don’t find much time to do work in my own time as I am there working most days, so it has been fairly stressful for me. Next year I will keep this in mind more and plan my time better around these things so that I manage to stay on track better.

Throughout the FMP, I have encountered multiple problems, for research I found various websites to be blocked (Including Scott Sinclair’s website) so I have had to access these in my own time when I have managed to find it. I had a few problems within Photoshop when I was creating my textures, as one of them I just simply didn’t know how to actually do it. To get past this I just used google to find a simple tutorial and then used this as a basis to create mine, I also had problems with creating a normal map for texturing the metal parts of my tower, but my tutor Chris showed me how to make one and then I made my own. Within Maya I encountered a few problems with modelling such as one of the wooden beams at the bottom of my tower being too long and I didn’t know how to make it so that the one side would be flat without altering the entire shape. I found out how to use the bevel tool, which would do exactly what I needed if I used it on the correct edge, so this was very helpful, another problem within Maya was creating the stairs, as I found it hard to create each step at the same size. I did get past this quite easily though by using the extrude tool. The worst of my problems with Maya was with mapping out my UV’s for texture, mainly the stairs, as this was a very odd shape. I needed to use the cut UV tool to make the net completely flat and this helped greatly.

This project has helped me to develop my knowledge of the various tools within Maya and Photoshop, mainly being that I have learnt how to create my own wood texture from scratch, and also how to create a normal map for worn metal textures. I have also found that group critiques are very helpful for me to help me evaluate my work, as I received both good and constructive feedback so that I could build on my designs for the better.

The main thing that I would have done differently throughout this project would be to keep up to date with my weekly plan. I have explained the reasoning behind why I didn’t stay well on time in a previous paragraph, but I will definitely be using this to help myself in further projects. I also will make sure that I constantly save my work when using Maya, as it has a tendency to crash every so often. But that’s about it.

I feel that I have definitely met my project brief and have created a good final piece of work, as I have put very much hard work and effort into this and at the best of my ability, so I am very proud of the outcome. 

Final Renders

After finishing my model and applying all of the textures, I have taken renders from different angles within maya, firstly so that they are high quality and show the different textures well, but also to show what the lighthouse looks like from different perspectives and to show how I have created the model to scale alongside a 6 foot man.

As you can see, I have kept to a certain scale throughout the modelling process. I did this by using this 6 foot man as a basis, and scaled my lighthouse around him. By this measurement, it meant that I was able to keep to the original scale that I wanted, as when I began developing my initial sketches I decided that I wanted my model to be around 20 metres (65 foot) tall.

Bibiography

Here is my bibliography outlining all of the various research sources I used for my project.

Software Research

As I was working through my project I used mostly just Photoshop and Maya, and therefore I did some research into these softwares, firstly essentially what they are, and then what I would be using them for. I did encounter some problems when using both of these throughout, and here I have documented what they were and how I got past them.

Modelling: Applying Textures

As I have finished my model, it's time for me to find or create textures for each part and apply them to my structure. I started with the wooden crossbeams around the bottom of the lighthouse. I couldn't actually find a texture which I liked the look of, so I decided to create my own in photoshop. After some research, I managed to find a tutorial on how to do this.
So, to create my wood texture, I opened a new photoshop file at 800x800 pixels and selected my foreground and background colours as a light and dark brown. Next, I used the fibres tool under Filter>Render and set the strength and variance to where I thought looked best, this was around variance - 16 and strength - 4. After this I decided to stretch out the texture through image>image size and made the height 2x the width. I created two different wood textures, one lighter than the other, so that I could use one for the wooden beams and window/door frames, and the other for the door.
Below shows the process I used to create the texture and 4 that I created to try different colours and strengths.

For the majority of the other parts to my structure, I had already found various textures on the internet and edited them slightly so that they were the way I wanted them to be, this includes three different brick textures and one for concrete. I have also already created the glass within Maya itself.

As I hadn't modified most of the shapes that I used when modelling much, most of the textures were simple and easy to apply and were seamless without me needing to alter any of the UV maps, but, the stairs were very different, as they were initially a cube, and I also wanted to apply two different textures to them. I began by cutting up the UV's within the editor by selecting each of the edges holding the sides of the object to the middle part (As I wanted the sides to be a different texture to the middle, and then, within the UV editor, I used shift+right click and selected cut UV's. Next, I created a planar map for each of the separate parts, and unfolded them within the UV Editor. I then saved a UV snapshot so that I could form the textures around the UV's in the correct places in Photoshop.

The last two textures I needed were metal, for the hand rails, and a glass sort of texture for the light.
For the metal texture, I wanted to have it shown that the handrails were old and worn. To do this, I created a normal map in Photoshop.





To create a normal map, I firstly made a fully grey layer in a new file, then used filter>noise>add noise and then used filter>3D>generate bump map and adjusted the sliders to create the initial bumpy look for how I wanted the railings to look, lastly, I used filter>3D>generate normal map to create the final image that I would be using. To assign this texture to my object in maya, I created a new blinn material and simply selected the file under the bump mapping option.





Finally, to create the texture for the light at the top of my lighthouse, I unfolded the UV's and took the snapshot into Photoshop and painted over it to show what it would become. When applying this texture I created a new blinn material using the glass preset available using mentalray, so that it would become shiny and slightly transparent like a bulb.





Below is what my model looks like in Maya with all of the textures added in.

Modelling: Final Model Finished

 Now apart from doing the UV's, texturing and lighting on the lighthouse, the base 3D model is finished, and here it is from the front and side.
Next I just need to adjust the UV's (which won't  be too hard, as I didn't change much of the base shapes) create the textures in photoshop and bring them into maya, then create the lightsource at the top and get a final render of my lighthouse. After doing this, I will then try to move the model into Unreal Engine, so that I can create a better lighting rig for it and get a better render, and maybe create some small environment around the lighthouse itself (cliff face, water etc.)

Modelling: Detail

The details that I need to add to my lighthouse are windows and a door. To create these, I initially made a cube, and then used the multicut tool to make extra edges inside the initial cube and equal distance apart, I then extruded the face created by this and moved it inwards so that it was no longer visible. I did the same for the door frame but just extended it further so that it would be the correct size.


Next I wanted to make the cube on the top of the lighthouse glass as this would be the room housing the light therefore it would need to be. To do this, I needed to first make sure that "mentalray" was active, allowing me access to some extra material textures that I could apply to the object, I then used Hypershade to change the material that was assigned to this object. As mentalray was active, there was already a glass material available for me to use, so I simply needed to assign this to my object and decide how transparent I wanted it to be, all of which I did within Hypershade.

After adding the glass texture to the light room, I also created some actual windows using the same material on some cubes which I just stretched to fit within the frames. I also created the actual light to go in the room using a cube and a sphere stretched into what lighthouse lights tend to look like just for a basic shape.

Next and finally for the small details, I created the door. Same as the windows, I used a cube just stretched to fit within the frame, and the handle is two cylinders. I even made it so that the door opens and swings open at the position where the hinges would be by moving the pivot point.

Modelling: Railings and Tower

In creating the railings I simply made a cylinder and extended it to the right size and width that I needed and kept copying and pasting the same one so I could keep the right width. It was quite hard to get them all into the right spots along the image plane as it wouldn't always show up on the different camera views, but eventually I did manage to get them all placed the right distances apart and in the right places.

To sculpt the tower I created a pipe and extended it upwards until I had the right height, but I also had to make the top of the tower slightly thinner than the bottom as my lighthouse does slope inwards closer to the top. To do this I just selected all of the vertexes along the top and scaled them inwards slightly to fit my outlines.

Once the tower was completed I moved onto making the top part of the lighthouse which consisted of another platform with more railings on, the room which would house the actual light, and the roof. The platform itself was simply just another cube stretched to the correct size and so was the room on top, the railings I just used the same as from the bottom platform so that they were the same width. The roof was also very simple to create as it is just a pyramid stretched to the right size.

Now I have essentially finished my base structure, minus extra details and the textures, which I will move onto creating next.

Modelling: Stairs

 To build my stairs, I moved one of the edges of a cube inwards to create a slope that was the right size and fitted into the outlines on the image planes.

 After I had this shape, I used the multicut tool at equal distances apart to create edges within the shape which would become the banister/wall and the stairs themselves.

To create the walls on the sides of the stairs, I used the extrude tool which allowed me to pull these parts out without adjusting the base shape.

And to create the stairs I simply just moved every other edge inwards, keeping the lines straight by holding the V key.

Image Planes, Scaling and Starting Modelling

To start off the modelling process, I first imported the side and front view pictures from photoshop into Maya as image planes and lined them up alongside each other.

And then before actually starting off modelling, I needed to make sure that my lighthouse would be to scale, to ensure this, my tutor had sent out a 6 foot man that we could then import into Maya to scale things around.

Initially, the image planes were not even past the 6 foot mans foot. So I had to scale them up very very much before I could start modelling around the image planes.

 To start off the modelling process, I first created the bottom platform that would serve as the base for my lighthouse. This was initially just a cube which i increased the size of and then stretched out to match the size of the guides and then moved the different edges out so they matched up too.

 I then moved on to creating what would be the wooden beams holding the lighthouse up off of the ground.

I encountered a problem when creating the crossbeams in which you could see the edges of the polygon and I was unsure as to how I would flatten this out without altering the shape of the beam. I used the bevel tool on the ends of each crossed beam to flatten the right part of them so as to make the edges not visible.

Environment Artist Research

I also have done some research into different environment artists to find some inspiration towards the way I would like my building to be structured and the way I want the environment around it to look etc.I found 4 different artists which I liked the work of, a few of them had rather realistic looking work whereas some were different and were much more of a cartoon art style.
The biggest influence from the artists I looked into is Scott Sinclair, he was the Art Director at Irrational Games and therefore created lots of the concept artwork for the Bioshock series which itself was a big influence to my decision to create a Lighthouse.

With each of the artists, I looked into the composition of each of the art pieces that I had found to see if they followed the rule of thirds and the golden spiral, I have also highlighted the dominant, subdominant and subordinate forms within all of these.

As you can see, all of the different pieces are shown to follow the rule of thirds, with the majority actually focusing on a main part of the artwork being in the centre portion of the piece, but you can also see that one of the pieces doesn't follow the golden spiral whereas the rest near enough do. they are all aesthetically pleasing in that the colours all work well together, they have leading lines to make your eyes follow to certain parts of the art, and some have multiple subdominant and subordinate forms within them to keep you fixated on the artwork.

Communication and Presentation survey