Long time no update, I've started with some initial texturing tests for my trainstation, going with the 3d paint approach.

Render 1

I feel bad for not updating this in a while, truth is not much has happened in a while, the team is wrapping up on the modeling side of things and I and the other environmental modeler in our team will get together monday to start laying out our buildings into our city.

We also had a greenscreen shoot today, where everyone got to do their thing, and we also took a few shots we hope to be able to integrate into our 3d scenery. It's a particularly tricky scene animation-wise, so hopefully it'll help :) Future will tell if it'll help us or not though.

About time for another update, still working on the models, things are starting to come to an end now however, as far as modeling goes; will begin texturing in about a week according to schedule. Check the thread link posted below for images.

Fourth progress meeting tomorrow, looking forward to it, I'm quite pleased with the progress so far.

I'll also try to get some stuff up here asap, story board etc.

A couple of nice maya related links:

Maya Wiki
How to find stuff using mel

Not much else to update, continuing modeling, updates will be posted in the thread linked in previous posts.

Started brainstorming the statue, one of the key buildings I'm doing for the environment.
I'll keep posting wip updates in the thread

Monday again. I've continued modeling on the trainstation, after a weekend of relaxation :)

I've posted some renders in this thread.

Ok, so now we've passed the first milestone, feels nice, we managed to pull off a decent presentation, I think. Spent the rest of the day looking at the sophmores' presentations of their child rooms (modeling/animation project). So now I'm gonna kick back for the rest of the day and maybe do some digital painting :)

First milestone today! Really exciting, everything's ready for presentation. I'll post some updates later today.

Another day, another week. First milestone deadline tomorrow, currently working on how to present current work.

A good link, includes GI Joe script and CPS:
http://bwshowcase.com/

Meeting went fine yesterday, mostly good critique. We need to make some adjustments to our design document so that's done by first milestone, which takes place next tuesday. Looking forward to it :)

I've come up with a new design for the trainstation, and started modeling it this afternoon, here's a current wip render.

As far as modeling goes, I'm not really into the way my trainstation is shaping up. I need to rework the "overhang", as I call it. I have some ideas, I'll see what I can come up with.

On other related things, I've been working abit with MEL lately. Started a greeble-like script, which I hope will aid in the modeling. Other scripts I've been working on lately is a select by name script, which is just what I need for big scenes, and a material script for creating and applying materials with predefined attributes.

Time for another progress meeting. The team will spend some time later this evening writing a progress report, and polish up other related documents. First milestone is coming up, we need to finish our concept presentation until then, we'll be presenting current work as a slide presentation consisting of images and text. I hope for some "live" presentation as well, directly in maya, and perhaps we'll show our current mockup.

A little update for today, started texturing the trainstation, with 3d paint tools in maya. First serious try at it.

"Beauty" render
Screen cap

Spent some time yesterday trying to model something of a trainstation, not too happy with the outcome so far. I'll continue today and see if I'll start over, most of it is modeled in nurbs, alot of lofting :)

Some more project related renders
Tower & Generator
Generator

Some tests with the fluid clouds examples in maya, looks nice imo, but takes too long to render
Fluid clouds 1
Fluid clouds 2

And a doodle in nurbs, trying to get into the flow of creating pipes and techy looking stuff
Render 1
Render 2

Our group had a meeting this morning, updated the time schedule and divided the architectural work. Time to start some concepting and modeling.

Well, time for another update, I'm not updating daily because we have classes and assignments every other week. Next week will be focused solely on the project. I have been messing around with some displacement mapping for ground modeling, converting to polys however is a big bottleneck, having ~2mil polys as a single mesh to work with is quite challenging, so I've dropped that idéa. Still pondering on wether to use displacement mapping at all, it probably slows down rendertime significantly. I think a sculpted nurbs surface with some bumping and layered textures will work fine for some extra detail.

I've also begun modeling some various backdrop/fill structures. As a little warmup for future highpoly work. I've given myself the freedom to mix in some nurbs, especially for pipe/wire work, since this is cinematic-oriented work anyway and not realtime.

Very nice script:
Local Tools

First progress meeting took place today.
We've so far achieved during our first period of research:

• A collection of research material for style and design reference.
• Rough storyboard mock-up.
• 3D pre-viz mock-up of first half of our storyboard.
• Preliminary design sketches.

Also did a digital conversion of the storyboard (temp link: storyboard) and added more details to the time plan, which still needs to be color coded. I also need to adjust the project plan accordingly.

And one team member started her blog today as a diary of this project as well, check it out:
Alex Viksten, proggress diary of a 3d movie

Not much has happened since last update, I found a plugin for Maya which makes it possible to map a normal map to objects, which gives some interesting results. It's also software rendered, which takes me another step away from Mental Ray and HDRI. Which I think is good, if I can get good results with fake GI and normal mapping to speed up rendering time.

NormalBump2D for Maya7.0 1.0.0

I've also looked into greeble possibilities for Maya, haven't found anyhing good enough though, which is a shame. I might attempt making a script for it myself. Though I've found a good workflow in creating "greeble" textures in Photoshop and converting them into paths for Maya.

Spent some time looking into HDRI and mental ray, I pretty much knew how to set it up since before, got a little refresher and learned some new techniques I we're not aware of.

Good links on the topic:

http://www.debevec.org/
http://www.learning-maya.com/ HDRI search
http://www.digitaltutors.com/digital_tutors/index.php

Another good resource:
http://www.neilblevins.com/cg_education/cg_education.htm

I've begun scouting some research material, for inspiration and style guides. Mainly been looking at screenshots from games and 3d renders. Some of the sites I've searched through includes:

3D Artists
Mmorpg.com
Game Screenshots

The overall style and look we're attempting to achieve and use as a look-and-feel guide is similar to the post-apocalyptic, tech styled universe of Unreal, specifically from Unreal Engine 3.

That's for style reference, other things I need to look into some more includes:

Shading techniques - Mental ray, HDRI, possibly normal mapping to reduce render time?
Shadow techniques - Depth map shadows or raytraced. Leaning towards DMS right now since it greatly improves rendering time, however needs some more research and adjusting to get just right.

Q to self: Best trade-off between shading/shadowing/lighting et.c. for a pretty good result for realistic rendering?

Note to self: Setup a research schedule. Also some kind of todo list. Todo list now available.

This marks the start of a senior project, involving myself and three others in my class. Focusing on creating an animated short.

My individual proposal:

Subject:
Environmental modelling.

Title:
High poly environment.

Student:
Kjell Iwarson, DG03.

Description of project contents:
A realistic, detailed environment which includes:
• Concept design.
• High polygonal architecture models.
• Models of trees, rocks and other nature models.
• Detailed texturing.
• Realistic shading.

We've set out individual responsibilities within the group, mine are as follows, approximately, since I currently have no access to the project plan:

• Documentation
• Environmental concepts, modeling, texturing
• Shading
• Storyboard pre-viz mockup
  

Notes from yesterday:
We went over the story and sketched out a rough storyboard, which needs to be refined.

I also started a pre-viz mockup of the first half of the storyboard.