Reflection..................|..................noitcelfeR

My main regret over the whole of this project is not starting sooner and moving things along faster. I feel that if we had agreed on the concept idea allot earlier we could have been more creative with aspects of the environment but as time degraded we were forced to do things to save time especially Render time. If i were to start again i would spend more time early on agreeing and finalizing an idea then experimenting with different textures and design ideas. I am happy with my contribution to the overall project although I definitely feel i could have done more and pushed myself to learn more new skills. I have learned some new modeling techniques and how to texture and uv a model. The one thing i am most pleased about learning is uving because i have never attempted it before.

Rendering Scenes

Scene ONE. I rendered this scene out after adjusting the lights and fixing textures etc. 

This image shows some of the smaller buildings with textures applied and some with not textures (Black) i applied a water shader to the river to give it a realistic water look.

One of the main problems I encountered when importing other peoples scenes was not all the textures set properly so i had to manually go through the attribute editor and change the directory so that the texture was linked again. For rendering the scenes i had to render i had to set the up lighting and shadows import the animation and check all the textures etc rendered out properly once i was happy i cleaned up the attribute editor and rendered out to tiff image sequences so they could be composed together.

Scenes Texturing

Here are a few of the main buildings we will use in our city. I have uved and applied textures to all of them  mainly using planar and cylindrical mapping. i had never tried uv mapping before this project and found the thought of it quite daunting but after a few tutorials i got my head around it and find it quite simple now. Although i haven't attempted to texture anything to complex yet i can see how it can become a headache on a larger complex model.

This is the bridge Moses modeled and asked me to texture, this gave me a few problems when trying to texture the main one was it kept crashing my machine which i think was due to the complexity of the model i got past this by separating some of the components and uving and texturing them separately then combining them back together.

I was asked to texture and combine scene 11 from Abs and animation for the scene from Loanne then render it out. This scene needed texturing, the sky dome placed in because some of the shots showed the sky and also lighting. The scene featured lampposts in it which i decided to add a glowing red light to to give them a better look, i am pleased how this turned out.

Buildings

For this building i wanted to create a waved elongated s shape. To achieve this i researched into different ways of extruding in maya to find the best way of efficiently creating this shape. i found that if i created a nurbs curve i could use it as a reference for the poly extrude, after a bit of playing around i came up with something i liked. One thing i should have done is gave this building a bit more depth looking at it now it seems too narrow, but the time of building  i was more focused on the s shape although being narrow excentuates the shape of the model. 

This building is the finished version from above. as you can see i decided to not cut the windows out of the model and instead texture map them on. The textured on windows is more in keeping with the style of our paper city and also cutting out the windows will only create more problems with texturing when you can see inside the model. I reali like the texture of the roof in this model it again could b improved with using a bump map ect but for tht purpose of the model i think it will be fine.

This building was designed by Loanne for me to build and texture. i decided to cut the windows out of this build because i thought it would look too plain without them. they give it more depth. for the texture i used a simple white paper, i then uved it so i could draw on some cut lines and windows.

For this building i used the model from above and simply duplicated parts and linked them together to give a larger linked building. I applied the same texture seen in the previous image to keep continuity. I thought i could improve this model by changing the textures which i have done below. 

For this building i played around with bump mapping. I didn't like the effect it created because it made the texture look too photorealistic i could have changed the setting to soften it down but found that it looked more accustom to what we wanted to achieve without the bump.

This is another building designed by Loanne for me to model and texture. This is one of my favorite building i built and textured. I especially like the texture of this buildings wall although i could have textured the roof better i wanted to leave it plain white so you can see the geometry like origami.

Textures

 Here are some textures i have collected to use to texture my models in maya. as you can see they are all paper and cardboard textures i have tried to find a variety of different styles to add interest to my models. I like the effect of the corrugated cardboard this would make a nice roof texture and could be used to create weatered effects on some of the buildings.

Playing around with some paper textures of a basic building still a lot of work needed before it looks realistic....
I like how the texture on the roof turned out on this building i changed the uv's so that it look like it had been folded into place, AAlthough it is a very basic build it would suite our paper theme well. I could improve this by changeing the texture on the walls to a more realistic paper texture and possibly add a bump map to give it more of a 3d feel. Although the building looks 3d the walls look flat and if they were to represent being built from crumpled paper they would need to look rougher, i think adding these textures would acheve this without having to alter the actual faces of the building.

Paper cities

NETS.. I like the idea of creating our buildings from a net to give a realistic look of a paper built house. Im not sure how this will work so i will have to have a go and see how it turns out. i think it could look good with ill fitting geometry giving a realistic effect.

Origami is a major aspect in building models from paper, it makes so many interesting shapes and patterns would look awesome being animated?? i will try and create some buildings featuring geometry looking like this. 

Although not CGI this image shows some amazing lighting which could be applied in a cg enviroment. The lighting gives a calm neutral effect on the image 

I really like this image i think the lighting plays a big part in making it look aesthetically pleasing. Ignoring the car in the mid ground the buildings are fairly simple applied with a nice realistic paper texture. i will be happy if our city looks as nice as this although it will take a different style.

As our project has taken a different theme (Paper cities) i have done some research into existing paper themed buildings.... i will be designing some of the building to be featured in our enviroment. i like this theme because it will allow every ones work to all fit together well without too much guidance and stringency.