My first quick glass exercise!

Using maya software...

Maya crashed after this =(

Nouvic Clock Journey Part 8

Render scene and final touches.

1.

2. Same lighting from before and I forgot to turn off the “cast shadow” function on the wall box.

3.

 4.  The shadows look noisy because I haven’t increased the shadows and shadow depth in the Raytrace option because this enabled me to cut down on render time (I will increase it when I think its just right).

 5. Started playing with the light colour. Blue left, Yellow middle (cast shadow) and Red right. I learnt that the light to the left and right affects the middle shadow.

 6.  Yuk! So I used blue left, green middle and red right.

 7. Now Light Blue (innocence), Middle Pink (passion) and Red (love). I went with colour emotions. One colour can mean different things like Red for instance love, blood, gore, stop and more.

 8. Red(love) , Green (nature) and Orange (warmth). Hmmm… time to really play with the colours to get it just right for the theme.

 9. I think I might have a winner. Green (natural), Orange (warmth) and Red (passionate)

10. Hmm… It looks slightly different from the other side because of the position of the light (this image has also been enhanced in quality).

 11. Time to increase shadows, shadow depths, resolution and viewed from different camera angles.

This one is my favourite because of the flowing wood carvings has a gradient of green and red that complements the wood texture. The yellow just gives it that extra shine. The knowledge I have gained from this project has got me excited for my next project.

218 tri clock and 4 tri clock hands.

Nouvic Clock Journey Part 7

I found a really interesting Normal Mapping tool called Ndo

1. But first I need to change the clock hand material to a Lambert because the transparent areas were reflecting light. I then positioned the hands on the clocks face.

2. First stage (optional) was to change it into black and white by using the black and white tool or Hue/Saturation.

 3. I then tampered with the exposure tool (this maybe a mistake but it’s all experimental). I had already installed it into Photoshop so it should show up in the macro section. I then press play and bam! It was turned into a normal map and a menu popped up.

 4. This is what it looked like. I’m extremely new at this software so bare with me. The menu is there to change the normal map to whatever normal map you like (It’s just a matter of learning by trial and error).

 5. I clicked “Save” and experimented but chose not to close down the window, just in case I was not happy with the results.

 6. I then went to Maya to try on the normal map to see what’s it like and continued by going into the bump mapping option in the material menu and pressed “File” to search for the normal map.

Ahhh! Not happy with results. It seems to have picked up a large amount of the wood grain in my texture and where I had pen marked in the textures it picked up every stroke of the brush. (trial and error)

7. When in doubt look online! I found a handy website that tells me the function of the Ndo menu. I found the function “Make sculpt layer” I was impressed. I could fully customise the normal map to my liking and learnt to smooth out the normals so it didn’t get that nasty sketch look. I felt at home using the Photoshop brushes and tools to just hand paint what I want to stand out. It’s slowly coming along but unfortunately time is a major factor for hand drawn art. But it gets results in a render.

 8. This is what it looks like coming out of “Make sculpt layer” and teaching me on how the normal map is formed.

Out of sculpt mode into the Ndo menu, save and then render it in Maya for the result.

9. The clock face was a big challenge and after all this hard work I’m still not totally happy with it. I might tackle this later because I am having trouble mastering the Ndo techniques. Taking a personal note* I should have gone for a simpler clock face design…

 10. I changed the martial of the clock back into Blin and kept on rendering it to get a good polished look.

Image size mess up!

11. Went back to normal Mapping and applied the same technique of hand drawing with the pressure brush and smoothing it with the blur tool after. In the screen shot it shows the clock in sculpt mode and then back into normal menu.

12. I found that I could copy my colour texture above the sculpt layer and then overlay and turn down opacity to be a guideline for normal mapping.

 13. It was then time to move on to the feet and side arches and try and get them just right. I applied a 100 opacity brush on the arch bricks and then erased it so it didn’t stick out too much.

 Render scene and final touches were going to be carried out next but time was of the essence and I might not be able to do it as I really don’t think I have the time to do the other two for my project of self discovery.

Nouvic Clock Journey Part 6

Alpha texturing clock hands and normal maps the traditional process.

1. I measured the right length of the hands of the clock face. I then got started on creating a block map followed by me creating a box, extruding it to make a semi circle and then shrinking the faces on top to form a bevelled look.

2. I continued the process and sized the vertexes in order for it to be a sharp point.

 3. I then used the “Insert edge loop” function and started to size the edge loops to a symmetrical curve. I continued the process down the hand.

 4. After getting the outer shape I wanted I then extruded the inside of the face to shape the holes and make sure it looked bevelled.

5. To make a similar small hand I duplicated the big hand and selected specific vertexes to shrink the hand.

6. I quickly made a bolt to resemble the pivot that the hands rotate on by making a cylinder and extruding the top.

 7.UV Map both hands using the y axis and put them to the side. I then positioned the UV maps over the single faced UV’s, so later when I projected the normal map it was correctly positioned on the single faced panels.

 8. The time then came to normal map the clock hands by going into the “Rendering” category, selecting Lighting/Shading” and clicked “Transfer Maps…”

 9. This took me to a menu, the first thing to do was to press the normal map icon to bring up options. Select a file location, Targa file and change the “Match Using” to surface normals. I then got into the Maya Common Output options to set up the resolution size and quality of baking.

10. The next step was to set up the backing process. First I selected the single panels and then clicked on “Add Selected” in the target mesh. I then highlighted the high poly meshes and clicked on “Add Selected” to the source mesh. I would then change the display to both and then the distance of the red envelope (Making sure it is as close as possible to the high poly mesh.). 

11. This is the end result and it can be seen in the ‘high quality mode’. Whilst rotating around the single panels the light changes to give it a 3D effect. Wherever I saved the normal map to (usually in the project source images) it would look like the colours of heat vision.

12. Then using the normal map as a template I used it as a guideline for the texture.

 13. I then close to use the magic wand tool to highlight were it will be see through. I changed the channel and created a new layer (default name will be alpha). With the areas still selected I filled right clicked and reversed selection in order for me to highlight the clock hand. I filled the hands with 100% opacity white in order for it to be transparent (Using a lower opacity will make it visible but slightly transparent depending on opacity.).

14.

I overlaid the grey normal map and then drew in slight highlights. After that I had an idea to add a slight different design to it using yellow and dark yellow to define shape.

 15. This will have to do for now but I am thinking of turning it to black so it doesn’t blend in with the clock face.