Monday 31 October 2011

Nouvic Clock Journey Part 1

1. Fist I started with the x and z drawings crossed in the middle. The drawing is only a guideline and I may change a few things on the way. I started modelling a box with the width of the x and z drawings (so while I build on the x axis the z axis will follow)
 2. I went into the x perspective camera to get the basic shape of the object that I am creating. Extruding layer by layer and highlighting the side vertex’s and scaling them to make a curve.

3. I continued the process but deleting one side because later on I will special duplicate this side to the other. I made a leg and thought on how to construct the round bottom to the leg.

4. I switched to the z perceptive and cut it in half again, leaving a ¼ of the object left. Then I shaped the object to the characteristic of the drawing. I started to realise how to construct the leg whilst allowing like the drawing to still flow. I went back in to normal perspective to view what I had accomplished so far. The z archway wasn’t exactly inline with the drawing so I had to carefully improvise a solution.  


5. I extruded both sides at the same time to keep it symmetrical but this did conflict slightly with the z axis but as I started earlier there are only guidelines.

6. It was made by grabbing the centre in cave and pulling it out like an inside out pants leg. Then I just carefully shaped it to the curve and shape I wanted. There are many ways of constructing or building shapes, I could append to polygon or make it into a cube and shape it that way but I just went with the flow. (Trial and error)  

7. Bevel……. It gives a really nice edge to the object but later on it can turn out wrong. I bevelled the object not thinking that I could put the bevel in the normal map and texture instead. This maybe corrected earlier on in the process.

8. I began to append a polygon, the archway to reconstruct the leg.

9. I was in a bevel mood, so bevelled the archway. (later on this will bite me in the ass because bevel should be used as a last resort or for huge building structures)

10. Fixed the foot of the clock and tried to make the mesh smoother.

 11. I began to plan out where the clock face would go, lining it up with the X axis drawing but I am not attaching it yet.

12. Before I attach the clock I used the special duplicate function to increase the ¼ to a ½, then merged the two.
13. This is the part where I attach the clock face to the base. But before that I had to make sure the clock face is in half as well and combined to the main mesh.

14.  Just for my own reassurance I used the duplicate special function to the other side to inspect if it’s right. Then I put it in another layer and set it to Trace and made it not clickable. I then decided to do the hands on the clock and made them a simple plane, so I can change them to alphas and add a normal map/bump map to add more definition.


15. I started to reduce the polys by deleting unneeded edges and faces.

16. I continued to reduce the poly count. Made tris and worked out the least polygon construction but I had to be careful because if I deleted the wrong edge it could effect the other arch or cause other problems.

17. I continued to reduce the poly count by looking very carefully everywhere to see were it could be reduced.

 18. Clean up. This is one important helper because it finds all the mistakes such as 4+ sided shapes, bad geometry and other problems. The options are to fix the problem by using the automatic function or just highlight the faces that are wrong. I always select the highlight face, because I can take note what mistakes I made and fix them myself. I don’t usually trust the auto because sometimes it fixes the geometry badly.


 19. After the clean up I started to duplicate the other side, then select all the centre vertex’s by using the scale tool to tighten the distance between vertex. This will allow the centre vertex’s to line up with each other in order to merge the sides together.

20. After gluing them together I deleted the part of the line that joins them. This was for reducing the poly count again.  (The reason I didn’t UV map the clock at this stage was because I didn’t want the wood grain to be symmetrical with each other and with the clock face.)
21. Just to recap on all this reducing of polygons. It used to be 1168 faces and 1064 tris but now it’s 485 faces and 832 tris.


22. Time to make the glass for the clock face. This will be an alpha and there will be a slight engraved pattern to the sides and middle. I made a cylinder then deleted all but one side and then I extruded the edges around the circumference of the circle so it became a template to rearrange the polys.
23. I finished block mapping or have I?

(My project has changed because of Distance of object? Paragon Trickery! MipMapping and depth-of-field?)

Thursday 27 October 2011

Back on Track! for now...

I went back to my clock designs and decided which one I should create in Maya. I formed 2 different perspective views so they can be my x and z axis. Basically it will be a guideline for my 3D construction. 

Colour Phobia! D=

I have gone off my path of research into to architecture for the moment just to practice using colour. I was afraid to add colour to my creations because I really loved shade and toning with black and white. So this is a colour practice I started to do and these will eventually lead to colourful environment concept art. 

 My first colour practice of an imaginary character I did to try get over my colour phobia.

 UNFINISHED!
 I got advice from a talented artist (Stu) to do myself portrait and gave me an example of how to apply colour.  

 With the helpful portrait practice I set my sights on an imaginary character and apply the same technique to this character. This looks promising and I might come back to it at a later date.

Adventure inspiration

After my expedition, I started to carry out new practice designs and add nice gothic arches and pattern brickworks to my designs to give an overall good look. These were my ideas.

This is what I came up with, simple and not too complicated to make.

A Small Journey Around Preston

Event. I needed more reference materiel so I started to travel around Preston for gothic or similar architecture. These are the few examples.

During my travels around Preston I started to get influenced by things I saw to add to my clock designs.


By the way my small trip around Preston got me 95 images and 25 textures.

Combination of Two Arts Clocks

Due to the knowledge I now have the two arts and their combinations, I have produced these practice designs of the clock I am going to create in Maya.

Combination of Two Arts practice

I got a lot of inspiration and started to combine the two arts. I began sketching in finer details of the combination of the two arts. This is some of the example drawings I did.

Wednesday 12 October 2011

Gothic, Nature and Nouveau inspiration!

From my research into nature I began to get inspiration for different designs and decided to designing an architectural clock with elements of gothic and nouveau style. But first I had to practice and research both styles.

This is the gothic clock design sketches

This is the art nouveau design