Sunday 29 November 2009

Colour Swatches

I have currently started making swatch patterns for texture and possible colourisation for the Temple Thurch.

Stone Floor swatch


Bath Stone Swatch


Rag Stone Swatch





Marble Swatch

So far the Rag stone swatch is not working for me. The texture itself is working fine for all my test bump mats however the colours themselves do not fit with the pastel flow I am looking. However these opinions are only my initial opinions as I have not yet moved them into the scene for colour.

Friday 27 November 2009

Laying out the UVs

Outside UV layouts.

Lighting Tests

Working with a larger area of the model has help to pick out the shadows and highlights of the building while testing lighting. With the shadows turned on the definitions are looking better, however I think the bump map may need to be more prominent.


Bump depth: 0.5



Bump depth: 1


I think I could still possibly afford to go a little more deeper with the bump map as it is only rarely that the camera will get this close. On actual buildings the depth within the brick work can be seen for a far distance.

Light and bump test

The shadows in these test dont feel strong enough yet the lighting looks better than the previous. This lack of shadows is due to huiman error, I forgot to turn the raytrace shadows on for my directional light





Tuesday 24 November 2009

Lighting Test

After a weekly meeting with Alan I have decided that the lighting style should come before the texture/colours as the lighting style can affect the out come of the colours intended. I have tried to use an ambient occlusion to light my scene and gain shadows. Using tutorials from the 2nd year and multiple render passes, I have been able to create better looking and more realistic shadows for my CG building.
Diffuse:
The diffuse layer softens and spreads out the light within the scene.





+ Occlusion (as photoshop overlay):
The occlusion layer ( when rendered with mantle ray) renders block areas of indirect light, which is then used in the over lay to darken areas to mimic some shadows within the image.


Outcome: some nice subtle shading on the building.
I shall try adding a bump map of brick work and apply the same render passes to test the effect for both Kentish Rag Stone and the smoother Bath Stone found within the building.

Overview to Date

An overview from the brief to my current position within my project.

This project is about the history of the Knights Templar through their English headquarters, the Temple Church in London found on Fleet Street. For this project I have attempted to model the interior and exterior of the Church in order to show the changes to the architecture and tell a brief history of its original creators. My insparation for this piece came from architectual programmes such as Cities of the Underworld, Mega Structures and Grand Designs. My idea for this piece is designed be a CG part of an archietual or historical programme.

Within the first few weeks of the project I researched the history of the building and the Templar order to find out what influences they had over the design. I discovered that the design of London's Church was modeled on the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, a church which was built on the death, burial and resurrection site of Jesus Christ. The Round within any church built by Templar order became sacred as it was a representation of original Round Church, the Holy Sepulchre. A burial within the Round of any church was greatly desired as, to the Templar's, it represented a burial in the Holy Lands, the Closest point they could be to their God. As part of my research I visted the Temple Church in London to try to get a good understanding of the building itself and try to understand how it was built.




















After understanding the architectual design and I had good knowledge of the history of the Templar order I could write my script and design my storyboard. Both of which I intended to oversize in order to give myself enough material to work with in later, the editing process, where I plan to rip everthing apart and keep only the best of the best for my final piece. I sent the script to a porfessional recording artist, Mike Cooper, (Mike@MikeCooperVoiceover.com) to narrate my scrpit.



























While creating the storyboards and script I built some test models of the building to try to gain a better understanding of how the pillars held up the roof within the Nave and Chancle. From some of the test models I also created a time based previse of part of the script to get a sense of camera angles and timeing from narration.

I have spent all my time since modeling the Church in Maya.






Now that I have fully built my church, interior and exterior, I am considering and experimenting with colour pallets and lighting. I have thought about how the colours should work form the beginging but have left it to now to fully consider because, as I have realised from previous projects, the lighting can change the colour. The colour pallets I am currently trying follow ideas from and styles from Cities of the Underworld, using pastle colours to show the 3D enviroment. Another colour pallet I will try would be to use the pastel colours to indicate the areas the narrators is talking about.
To do list:
- Texture Mapping
- Texturing and lighting
- Camera Animation
- Building Animation
- Test Renders
- Final Renders
- Post Production Editing, Sound

Monday 23 November 2009

Colour Pallet and Texturing

From models to textures. The effigies of the Knights from the Templar order are created from a sandy coloured marble. As a colour pallet option I am currently attempting is useing colour to indicate the areas the narrator describes with everything else in the scene is white. The colours i'll use are pastel colours to represent the style of CG used in architectural history in programmes like Cities of the Underworld.








Sunday 22 November 2009

Modeling

I am very close to completing the modeling process of the church and it feels good to see the building really come together. I have had an idea for the colour palett from the start which i feel ready to fully explore. with having my models close to there completed stage i can also carry out a variety of tests to find the perfect appearence.









Friday 20 November 2009

Modeling Update

The Naive is fully modeled ready for textures :). Time to finish the Chancle




Modeling Update - finished heads and effergies

The modeling of the nave is finaly drawing to a close. The heads around the walls are complete as are the effigies. The pillars tops are all thats left to complete this section of the build.










Thursday 19 November 2009

Modeling Update - heads

now thats 5 heads, with a few left

Sunday 15 November 2009

Modeling Update - heads

head take a while to model! 2 down, more to come

Saturday 14 November 2009

Modeling Update

details within the nave





Wednesday 11 November 2009

time base pre-vise part 1

Finally some time based pre-visualsion! No that I have my sound track and the problems with my modeling have been fixed I have had time to get back on track with camera timings. So this is my first attempt of camera timings and movements for the actual sound. As I mentioned before, I have not just been putting this piece of work off, it was near impossible to work out timings without the actual sound track for two reasons 1- I sound really bad recorded 2- theres know way to tell it would work if I dont talk as fluently and at the same speed as my vioce artist.



Any way, there are a few glitches with the camera popping behind a wall for a frame or two, but they are easliy cleaned up in checks before renders, so im not to worried about them at this point. The transtion between the two parts of the church, i plan to use the same principles as used in second year tutorials of dissolving the baked bean can, with a sight change. A part of the nave dissovles the chancle will build. a few tests will need to carried out first so see if it is worth doing.


Sunday 8 November 2009

Modeling Update - mistakes

Mistakes have been made when building the Nave. From all of my reference images, photos and mu own vist to the church the upper windows look to be in line with the lower windows, however comeing to build the insides of the Nave the inner pillars cover the windows. a few modifications are needed to rectify this problem, unfortunatly it means a rebuild of the upper floor window layout is needed.

Friday 6 November 2009

Modeling Update

Over the last few days i have spent my time pulling apart or rebuilding parts of the church to siplify geometry where possible. After my meeting with Alan on tuesday i released that i was getting my modeling techniques confused between organic and non-orgainic forms. There is less than i intially thought that needs to be smoothed for the final renders.


Heres the difference:


Before














After

Tuesday 3 November 2009

Scripting

Scripting and Narration are now 100% complete, i can continue with the much needed screen test for camera moves and shot angles. The script is was recoreded by Mike Cooper, Voice artist found at http://www.mikecoopervoiceovers.com/.