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.