Blog Link

http://3djb.blogspot.co.uk/

My Hedgehog

This was a last addition to help gain a lived in and used feel to the table. i added this idea along with a few pencil crayons so that they could be scattered around the scene serving their purpose well.


this one I didn't have a blueprint for however still used references where possible.

I had one problem with it's normals, but that was soon adjusted so that it looked fine.

It has 3 maps and looks great long side the other crayons.
each crayon has its on no. colour and is in the line of Rainbow Classics.

Show reel

For my show reel I wanted to include only my last years work.
This is because I already have my 2nd years work show reel, and also I feel it is the best work I have done so far.

I knew I wanted it to be simple, playing with lights and pink themes.
I also knew that I wanted closeups of the best models in this dressing table scene and then the whole scene together rendered out in Maya.

This has taken too long to render. Over 5 days, and 2 extra days to clean up problems that I had when people were on my file whilst it was rendering.
I then rendered individual objects, which each took enough time. To put together in after effects along with music from:

Incompetech.com
which is a site that allows anyone to download royalty free music.
I found help from tutorials on effects i wanted. Like the shine effect and a glittery effect.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXI7MYCjSgk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWAN8mgspOM

I cannot upload my video as the file is too big but it can be found at:


 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OGtBK8VxDc

My Scene

I decided to place all my object together so I could better see what it was going to look like after.

My maps seem to have a rough intense texture which I make sure to dull down.

This is a quick look at what I have achieved so far.

This is a close up of my jewellery.

Here I modelled my nail varnish and included in the scene. It has all 3 maps that I find important for now, which helps exaggerate drips and shine.

I now have a rough scene of what I've created. And I can tell what I need, like more objects to fill it out, better lighting and backgrounds.

I've decided to try different lighting to see whats better. This is a global setting that has the sun and sky effect.
I also tried the global lighting with a projection of a image which didn't work for me.

But I had a lot of problems with this.

Here I placed it in a quick scene I went for the 3 way lighting set up style.

I the added more texture to the scene background to give me more of an idea of how the light should be placed.

This scene has 7 lights.
2 spot lights in the lamp shining up and down
3 point ambient lights aimed at the table
1 more spot light shining down from above
and a last light glowing outwards from the lampshade object.

I found it was the easiest way to create a soft yellow bouncing light, with realistic lamp effects.

As I know these took ages to render, I also then can predict that so will my short video.

 

UDK

I am having a great deal of trouble with UDK.

When ever I open a file it can't seem to locate the objects within it. I don't move it around, nor mess with the objects in folders so I've lost a good 5 days of work as I keep trying again and again.

I know that I must export FBX and import into UDK, and add the texture this way on the menu.

I also had issues with smoothing objects

I also have a problem with create the mirror surface to reflect.

i had a big problem with trying to put two textures on an object especially when this nail varnish was meant to have one transparent layer.

I tested the play through... and noticed I needed collisions and a start point in the room for the player to spawn.

I am using the same technique as described in the previous blog...
Importing FBX files.
Importing TARGA files.
Creating materials
Assigning them to the objects
Saving my package and file.

SOLUTIONS

Because the tutors are spending the last week of my course assessing 1st and 2nd year work, I haven't been able to take them away from the office and therefore have spent more time trying to search exactly what my problems are and how to fix them.

I came across this video on the Polycount forum
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=82082
which basically explains that all i have to do is assign the different material under a different drop down section. Pretty simple.

For my opacity I had help from this video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPb6lDV9Ljc

I then had to do this for all 3 nail varnishes.

This helped with double faces :
http://forums.epicgames.com/threads/802702-How-to-see-double-sides-texture-faces-in-UDK

This has helped me with collisions on some objects. I can't do it like this for my walls however as it creates a collision against the  the whole room and the player can not move inside it.

For my UDK scene I can't seem to work out how to make the .exe file. I've followed many tutorials:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRraO1dRtoA

http://forums.epicgames.com/threads/752618-UDK-quot-Fast-Start-quot-Guide-To-Making-UDK-Games

And no matter what, my file fails because it can't delete temporary files.

So instead I'm following this tutorial to create a video in the scene.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWMqXqJaKow

This also helped me:
http://ubudave.weebly.com/udk-creating-a-video-sequence.html

I had problems with my video.. I had issues with light, and the textures being blanked and then coming in.

Here is a good example of what I'm talking about.

But I did however get final renders of my objects in UDK:

This one shows the light being reflected off the specular mirror, it's not perfect but it still shows some sort of movement.

Here I took a screen shot of the cameras I had set up with the lights to show that I have actually done this.

Nail Varnish

These were meant to be a few, in different colours and branded to help fit my style.

First I knew I wanted a couple stood up and on split, to seem like they've been recently used.

I started off with an idea of the simple bottle I wished it to have. This is the Maya model I created.
There is a box within a box to create the opacity in the glass.

Here I was playing with colour, as black for the glass didn't seem to work.

I then went on to create a specular and normal map for this using reference from my real collection of nail varnish.

 Here is the one fallen onto the floor. The brush is also dripping varnish.

All these 3 colours of varnishes come from the same 'company' which I created called 'Princess Nails' just to keep in theme with the table.

Each bottle has a different colour, no. on the bottom and name on the front, keeping it as realistic as I deem worth it.

Brush

My girls brush again is modelled in Maya:

 

The front and back having different topology to allow me to sculpt my horse on the back of it.

 

I decided to make it like a babies brush with soft hairs.

 

And I learnt a very simple technique from this tutorial:

3d_molier (2011) maya paint brush v1 Turbosquid Available at <http://www.turbosquid.com/3d-models/maya-paint-brush-v1/601212> Accessed 12th November 2012

 This is my version of the brush:

with the Uv's

This is my high poly sculpt.

Here i is my high poly baked onto the low poly model without the tangent space normals settings.

my bristles:

I also managed to get a specular map on the handle for finger prints and such.