Week 11 Part 2 - An Brief Evaluation of the Finished Imagery

This is bascially my last post, and is a summery and brief evaluation of each of the three calender images, including the aspects that worked and the ones that didn't so well - definately a fitting end to a well-rounded project that tested many of us to improve markedly over the weeks (Im sure we're all pleased with what we have achieved!)

OCTOBER: Halloween - Graveyard Scene

> Aspects that worked well

~ The actual construction of the stone itself wasn't too strenuios for me to create. I was also quicte lucky with the textures as they wrapped in just the right manner for them to appear natural. Also, the lighting that highlights areas such as the headstone , but still includes heavy lowlights on the vertical pillars make the 'stone look as 3-dimensional as possible
~ The ground itself was another aspect that turned out just as I wanted. The elevations and humps that I created to improve its realsm and naturally-occuring alterations, combined with my custom-map (mostly due the fact that 3DS Max had no decent ground textures) , meant that I could feel confident it actually turned out better than I was expecting
~ The successful positioning of the moon in relation to the light source throwing the shadow over the bush and 'stone itself again was not deliberate, however I planned the environment initially

> Aspects that didn't work so well

~ For the central section of the stone, I orignally managed to created a stressed and cracked version of what i tturned ot like, but, for reason unknown to both myself and my Lecturer, 3DS Max couldnt fin my original materials Map I created, and so I lost that one...
~ Even though I used that correct texutre for the effect I was trying to re-create, the 'dead/dying bushes' look ended up looking slightly like they had a swarm of orange caterpillars on them..although, Im sure thats just my imagination talking..

MARCH: St Patricks Day - Irish Pub Scene


> Aspects that worked well

~Throughg all the time and effort they took to re-create, I finally managed to get the Guinness glasses to look nigh-on exactly how I enviseged. As is described over the weeks, I tried many ideas of how to get the right textures on the correct areas, but many ideas were either not effective enough or just made the glass look far too false!
~The inclusion of the two beer mats, although seemingly insignificant, I feel really add to the scenes genuine celebration to the Irish Holiday of St Patricks, specially with the flag and four leaf clover motifs
~As with the previous image, I still feel my lighting has brought the image closer to reality, taking into the account the environments present lighting, which is why I included the "ceiling lights" throwing shadows that could easily occur naturally in a real-rendition of this scene

> Aspects that didn't work so well

~ I suppose, as a case in point regarding research into finding suitable enviroment maps to have as background imagery, the only real let-down was perhaps a lack of high resolution public-house images to use. Many portrayed pubs that weren't exactly ideal for inclusion in the scene, and some even ruined by bad lighting (even so, I still feel my image is the most suitable that I found, but I couldn't help thinking that using an image with St Patricks paraphenalia on-scene would have been alot less time consuming for me to include artificially!)

FEBRUARY: Valentines Day - Bunch of Roses


> Aspects that worked well

~ The lighting, although only a single lighting source and indirectly deflected away from the camera, I feel adds a sense of realism - possibly candelight or mood lighting in the room...
~ Perhaps less significant than the main throw of the bunched roses, nevertheless the little gift tag/ribbon combo really sets off the gift that could be given by any self-respecting gentleman to his love(!)
~ The textures for the roses thorns and stem, even though not shown here, as well as the leaves which are clearly present, worked effectively to convey the 3-dimensional feel and shiny surfaces of the materials, just as they are in real life

> Aspects that didn't work so well

~ There were indeed problems with the construction of the initial rose, especially with the petals and central stamen (if thats what its called with roses!) which had about three incarnations in their development, ranging from basic splines and UVW Maps, to an attempt an extruding NURBS, from which ideas such as the petal layering and the central stamen(?) came about
~ Although I tried my best to make the surface appear more intergrated in the scene, the wood material, I would say, isn't as heavily defined as the other textures, especially since the strong lighting (perhaps could have been improved by increasing the bump mapping?)


Well, its offically complete - I know, its been full of trials and tribulations, but it's all been worth the occasional stress-sessions and program glitches.
Besides, if I hadn't been metaphorically thrown in the deep end, as it were, I can bet my life that I wouldn't have been so keen to really prove what I can learn in a few short months after first using as complex and mind-bendingly frustrating as 3DS Max...!

Week 11 - A Gift Of Roses

Well, the second from final week and I'm sure glad its here (well, in terms of finishing off this modeling doohickey) because, as has been demonstrated over the past few weeks, there has been times where it seemed like the program almost glitched in a couple of ways :- especially of note was the amount of occurrences when I was applying textures to completely separate objects with completely different object names/ID's and the texture appeared on another object not touched by my mouse click..but, hey, we got there in the end...

I hereby discovered how difficult it is to just apply one texture. The trouble is that I have had to achieve a sense of realism and true-form from the most irregular sources - but, for this instance, to get the leaf texture, I had to find a top-down leaf view and crop the image, as the image shows
Having saved this as a BMP, I then carried on into materials editor and imported the image into the 'diffuse colour' channel
The image below-right shows the settings that were applied



When the material appeared as it has in this example, I was very pleased to see that at least the leaves were not needing to have the UVW map - unlike the stem and thorns (more on that story later!)
All I needed to do to make it was by increasing the specular level and a medium grade of glossiness




I then moved onto adding textures to the stem.
With this again, I grabbed a full-size rose image from the web, and basically carried on the method as I have done all through this project - get an image, crop it, save as a BMP
I needed to use the anisotropic map, however, to get the anisotropy and orientation values that allowed me to achieve the material values I wanted.
It wasn't working first of all, until I upped the diffuse level value to 250, then it became very detailed, with plenty of shadow and highlight detailing

I then needed to UVW map the stem, because the material wasn't adhering itself to the cylindrical form correctly. Therefore, I decided to use the 'shrink-wrap' mapping parameter, with a U tile value of 7.5, a V tile of 3.5 and a W tile of 1.0
By doing this step, the stem then gained a slim reflective layer as you rotated it - a definite bonus when rendering for the final image!




And so, I began on the petals and adjusting their vertices's so that they took the form of a raggedy, uneven rose petal, each one unique.
I attempted to use a 'complete stack selection', but the program would not batch adjust the objects, even though I had named them as a single instance label
*The blue pointers give you the handles to pull and deform the sections you select*


^The image above gives you some idea of how this 'vertex-manipulation' process affected the petals^

^Above image shows the settings with which I created the texture for the thorns which, yes its true, they are actually blood red^


Once I had completed the rose to a standard I was happy with, I then, as the image shows, cloned the object as 'copy', firstly a group of two, then four to get all eight on screen.




Now that there were eight separate instances of the original rose object, I was initially having trouble with moving each of them without altering the form of another. So I decided it was in my best interests to 'Group' each one - being that I don't have the need to alter the original design any more, I can fully mobilize each one, with no fear of accidentally moving a thorn or petal, for example
What I was going to need to do, in order to order them in the correct positioning for further adjustment, shown in the image is an example of almost regimental alignment and this then gives me a almost neutral basis on which I can then decide the final presentation of them on the surface I have chosen.



^ The first step was to position each rose as a single 'Group' instance as if it were resting on a solid surface, and so, after drawing out a simple 'plane', I could get an idea of what could be plausible on this surface (so I began to position the roses as such...)^

^ Due to the even number of roses I had on-screen, I thought upon setting down a two rows of four, with the eighth rose nestling somewhere on top (this image shows this method at the early stages with a mixture of the 'Rotate' tool and 'Move' tool to get each one to appear as though its stem is resting on t'other one^


Once I had the roses in position (e.g. laying on top of each other, with the leaves and stems all settled in a realistic manner, with nothing looking too "obviously- manipulated"!), I began to put the finishing touches to the image, as it were
I decided to add a piece of ribbon (oddly, the program chose pink as I drew the line out which was ideally thought out!) and extrude in to the value of 0.35, with only a single segment, with capping at both start and end
I knew that I could then add on a little trinket or another item associated with a Valentines gift, but I decided that I could throw in one more technique that, even though small, was well worth adding in to increase realism for this scene.



The idea came to me once the 'Boolean' option was displayed on their screen - if I could make a hole onto which the piece of ribbon could fall into, I could almost make a little gift tag or small card that usually comes with these delivery of roses on Valentines Day
And, so I lined up the end of the ribbon just as it began to curve over itself with the top centre of the tag, drew out a sphere (the equivalent size of a standard ball-bearing) which I then moved into the position you see in the image
I selected the tag with the 'Move' tool and then the 'Boolean' setting under the 'Compound Objects' option, and where it asked to "Pick Operand B", I selected the sphere, which then removed material away from the tag exactly in the place where the sphere was previous.


^Shown above is the lighting source that was chosen to give the image and very atmospheric ambiance to it - I was thinking in terms of a candlelit dinner when choosing the 'Spotlight' option, with a 'Target Directional Light' as the modifier, and I also chose to turn 'Shadows' on as an option, with the rose heads and gift tag very much the centerpiece of the image^

^This image demonstrates one of the last Photoshopped images I created. I found the heart-and-arrow as a basic image on the Internet through an image search and I decided it needed a more personal touch, so off it went to Photoshop as I created two extra layers of text in the symbolised red tonal palette. The settings for the Map in the Material Library are also shown^


Well, I will be posting my last one tomorrow, as I convinced myself that there wasn't much I could do with any of the images now, given the tight timescale that this project has used throughout. To give fair notice, the post will include the three final images and a brief evaluation that covers all the positives and negatives of each, y'know, just so i can assure myself that this project was carried out to the best of my abilities - and that is all can be asked of us...

NOTE: No, I do not know why Blogger has insisted on applying the Italics for the complete post, not just for the opening and closing paragraphs, specially since I cannot deselect it...whatever next!!