Category: Virtual principles

In the end, I don’t feel like this is the best ability that I can show with this project, because I kind of pushed the date of working a lot, I feel a bit hurried in the end and the accident with the computer is even worse with the time that I have got. During the time that I’m creating the objects, my maya has craushed a lot, I think it’s because there are too much pieces in it.

However, I do like the tree trunk that I made the first time because it has much more tension than the second one, eg the branches are much larger and the whole tree is much higher quality. The proudest object is my leaves, I spend a lot of time on it, but it went wrong many times, I tried to start with a cube, adding edge loops on it, but I can’t use every vertex, there’s always a lot of useless vertexes.

Near the end, I rushed for making low poly trees and bushes to put into the scene, I think that doesn’t suit together at all, their number of faces differs too much, and the colours are also very simple. I think I made my life hard when I realised that my files are gone, I should just go for a low poly world, in this case, at least I will have time to make other buildings and they will match together, rather than the environment I have now.

During this project, I feel I’m much more confident with maya and can proficiently save and export UV maps, not like this time, I always have to go back and check which file type do I need to export from Photoshop in order for MAYA to accept it in the right form.

At the moment, I don’t feel like I’m in the working zone, but hopefully the working flow will come back to me. I think I’m still not familiar enough with MAYA, I still have to go on YouTube a lot to look for roughly how to make something and this is really taking time, but I believe in time I will get very used to it.

The first modelling project I made when I first come across MAYA is a treasure chest that we started during our first MAYA lesson. I find it very interesting and fun to play around with 3D shapes and objects, as I have used other adobe software such as Photoshop, I think MAYA is not too hard too get start.

There’s also a challenge modelling we can do in our free time which involves some side cuts and smooth faces. I find the smooth faces hard to build because I didn’t know how to make a certain part of the object smooth, I know there is a way but not sure which key I should click or which technique I can use to do it.

Now I’m starting to build my environment. I decide to start with the tree in the middle as it is the main object in the environment. At first, I had no idea about where to start, so I went onto YouTube to see how other people is building it, some of them started with a cylinder, adding more and more slices to make the tree looks realistic, but most of them started with a cube, what we were told was to start with a cube as well, therefore after the “research” of where to start the tree, I decide to start with a cube.

I pulled up the height of the tree trunk, added branches and some roots. I extrude the faces from the cube, pressing 2 on keyboard to make it smooth.

I wish I changed the way that I’m building it, it’s taking so long, and when I turn back to the cube, the shape is twistes, I’m not sure how I can cut out the UV map with this strange shape…

I decide to keep going with it, it will figure out when I’m doing it.

After the tree trunk and roots and branches are finished, I started to look at the ground, but it’s kind of just a plane adding on textures and shades.

Leaf

Leaves are so hard, I tried to draw on a UV map of a plane, the front is ok, but the back is black, the coloured side is front, the black bits is the back of another plane.

Then I tried anouther way:

I created a cube and made it very thin, did another UV map, this time I didn’t draw, I just used an image online, cut it out from photoshop. I left the empty part clear, but it didn’t work as well, I added the image of the leaves to both side of the UV map and make them stay on top of eachother si that they are not black on the other side. But the surface of the cube is shiny in certain angle.

I decide to make the shape of the leaves and branches.

I can’t remember what I did exactly with the shape, because I was fellowing a video, it told me a way of marking out the outline of the shape, then the mash object will appear the shape I marked out, after that I edited a bit with the thickness.

I’m very happy with this outcome, however it’s been separated into many parts.

Ground

In hypershade, I turned transparent up, to make the plane see through, change the colour to make it look like water.

Single leaf

I also decide to make a single leaf, for animation, the leaf will be fulling down and flow on water.

I stared with a cube, by doing extruding and selecting vertex to make the leaf more realistic. I used the leaf that I was using for branches because it was already cut out.

Accident

My kitten accidently nocked over a cup and poured water over my computer, some of the files I didn’t upload to google drive or having another backup, so I started making modles again.

This time I decide to just make the tree with a six sided shape to quickly pull it up and get the branches on it, this time I did something different from last time, when I extrude shapes, I reduce the surface first then extrude out the shape.

I tried to make it more realistic so it can match the leaves I made before, I still have the file of leaves because I had some problems when making it, so I send it to my friend to have a look at what was wrong. I used the texture of a tree.

I separated the UV map into 6 parts, I was trying to cut more pieces because some of them are too small to paint with UV map, but it won’t cut off I’m not sure why that was.

I added the leaves onto the tree trunk, half way through it, maya remind me that it is out of coch playback memory, but I’m not sure what that is, and it’s stopping me from keep working, it’s also so much slower than earlier, so I was stuck with puting leaves on for a while. In the end I made the leaves largerso there won’t be that many pieces in the scene, I also found out a way to turn off coch playback.

I then started to build some low poly trees and bushes lying around the scene.

For this project, I kind of have an exact image in my mind, because I did a photography project about ”Classic of Mountains and Rivers“, it’s a book that’s recorded with different creatures, for example the most famous monster in China: Nian, when I was young, I was told when new year come, people blow fireworks is to scare away monster Nian. So for my photography projectthen, I was thinking about creating one or more creatures of my own by photoshopping, give them a story, and show the story in the image.

This is one of my favorite image from that serie, because I really like foxes especaily fennec fox, their huge ears are so cute. This is my original idea of how my environment look like.

Then I went to search for more inspiration images that might give me an idea of more exact looking of the environment, so I created a padlet (moodborad?)

This is a part of the board with some explainations on, talking about why I have collected these images, why they insspire me with the project.

At this point, I’m quit clear with what I want to make in the world. I think most of the world is just in the woods, the only difference is the ground is water like the image on the bottom right, the city on water, people and creatures can walk on top of it, but also are able to dive into the water.