Primary Research Photos

Theses are the primary research photo's I have taken as a point of reference for my 3D model of the Bandstand. Behold my awesome photography skills!

3D Environment Sound Examples!

For the ambiance in my environment I could use heavy breathing and footsteps. Birds and other creatures can also be used. I would want the music used to be creepy and unnatural but only for my personal animation. The team animation could include acoustic guitar and maybe a simple drum beat.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7Qy_4sWs3I

The link above includes some sounds and noises I would like to take inspiration from; heavy breathing, narration, footsteps ect. The music also builds up as the trailer progresses to give the sense of a frantic struggle but this isn't the sort of thing I'm wanting to go for. Suspense is everything to a creepy atmosphere!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnea5q2LTds

The link above is more suited to what I need, it contains creepy music and sound effects throughout giving it a spooky and creepy atmosphere. When a battle is started the music changes as well but soon reverts back to the original atmospheric music.

Equipment I plan to use:

I would like to record some Foley effects for breathing and footsteps using microphones. The software I want to use is Cubase and the Keyboard plugin, the music shall be Ocarina of Time inspired or even remixed versions of music from the game. Ambiance sounds can usually be achieved through recording wind and general sounds outside but it would be easier to download open source effects from certain websites and use some of them for ambiance sounds.

Different music I can use as inspiration:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8H5DFyv4s4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmsZyC0UXUU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0SrR4jL6ns

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZp-uECYd24

Some of these don't really fit but I can still use them as inspiration to create my own original piece of music. I just need to learn Cubase a bit better and then it shouldn't be that hard to create a small piece.

Sketches and Planning

 This is a quick storyboard I've drawn up drafting out the events in my animation of my environment. Film grain will be continuous except for the opening pan shot and the ending shattering screen.

 The completed digital concept sketch for Roberts Park Bandstand. Front and Top elevations

 Uncompleted Digital Sketch

One point perspective of my planned environment. The statue will probably be destroyed in my environment.

3D Environment Progress Post

I'm currently making good progress with this model. The basic shapes are easy enough to model from standard primitives. Right now, I need to work on the detail of the Bandstand such as the pillar supports and railings. Texturing will most likely present a challenge because I am not very confident with mapping. Creating the textures themselves shouldn't present much of a problem as I am fairly confident with my photoshopping skills. My style of choice is inspired by the hit video game "the Walking Dead" which has quite an easy to replicate visual appeal.

The Bandstand is mostly completed, all that is left to do on this model is the railings. I'm going to be modeling separate models to be exported into this environment.

Now that the bandstand itself is mostly completed, I've begun to model little extra things such as this unfinished stereo. I plan to add a few more objects such as violins or guitars. The texture for this particular model is presenting quite the interesting challenge. I'm mostly grabbing bits of images and putting them onto the UVW map in photoshop. Some of the texture is being drawn by me personally. So far I'm not really sticking with the comic style and steering towards photo-realism which will be very hard to do correctly.

The stereo is finished!

Just a quick render. I've been continuing making small objects such as bins to be put into this environment. It shouldn't be to long before I'll start to create the rest of the main environment, the half-moon cafe and statue platform included. It should present quite an interesting challenge and I look forward to trying to model it... or so I say

This session, I have begun to model a mirror that shall be used in the final animation. This is the first stand in the model. The mirror shall be used to transition my environment into another team members most likely Rory as he is modeling the Half-Moon cafe... yes, he stole a part of my planned environment...

With the mirror completed, I can now try to focus on the rest of the model. I tried a displacement map on a plane for the ground but it made my poly count sky-rocket. A limitation with using this kind of software is you can't have a model to high poly or it will destroy the computer. 3DS Max has a habit of crashing when a model becomes ultra high in poly count... I've learnt this the hard way

I have now started on the surrounding environment for the bandstand. This render has no Skydome but I have now created one. Skydomes are simple to make once you know what to do. They are made from standard spheres and then cut in half, the remaining polygons are then flipped. A sky texture is then applied giving the affect of a sky!

Lighting and atmospherics have been completed and I am now animating my environment. The fog was created by editing the environment parameters to include fog. Two types of fog can be added in the environment editor, a volumetric fog and standard fog. The setting used in this environment render is a standard fog. Volumetric fog just looks a little fake to me and looks like it's just slapped on at the last minute. Here's some more epic panning shots:

Professional Example!

I would like my model to be inspired by the style used in this video. It's a 3D representation of a western comic-book style so it should be reletively easy to replicate. Luckyly my model won't require this much detail and I won't need human models!

My hopes for this project is to get something similar to what is shown in the video... but obviously at my current skill level, that isn't really going to happen.

House Model Practice

We have begun to learn to model interiors of buildings. We've started by replicating simple floor plans from the ground up. We were taught to use the Standard Primitive "Box" to make the walls but I found it much easier to make the walls out of AEC Extended "Wall". The door was a prebuilt one within 3Ds Max. I have yet to texture this model because I don't really know how to Map my models to Apply Textures.

3D Environment! First attempts

We were tasked with creating a photorealistic environment using a displacement map. First we created a JPEG file in photoshop as seen here. As you can see, Lighter areas are the parts that'll be higher up, it's sort of like a gradient map. To get this effect, we created a plane in 3Ds Max and added the modifier "Displace" which moulds the plane into the shape created by the JPEG in Photoshop.







Next up was starting to model a building. We were tasked with modeling Salts Mill/Shipley College. We modeled it from Planes and used Photos as temlplates. We started with a polygon count of 4 and built out from those 4 polygons. It was very challenging to get started but once I got going it was reletively easy until it came to individual parts of the building such as the windows and the arch on the roof!