Nouvic Clock Journey Part 5

Texturing

1. UV Screenshot, the UV map. This will bring up options of what resolution size I want to save the file as.

2. This is what it will look like and so for the other UV maps I repeated the process twice.

 3. I wanted to find the right photo texture by using my own camera to get the right texture for my wooden clock. I encountered problems because all the furniture I found had a bad shine on the surface because of the polish. So I asked a friend to sand down an old piece of oak in order for me to take a picture of it. I chose old oak because it was a hardwood similar to walnut. I also learnt that softwood has larger spaces between the age rings than hardwood.    

4. I then chose a Lambert made clock to begin with and to see what it’s like when shown in Maya with the default lighting.

5. Just for a quick reference I quickly made a rendering scene. It contains two directional lights and an ambient light. First directional light will be the main light that will cast the shadow and the Second will lighten the other side slightly. The ambient light will be placed slightly behind in order to have some light from behind. I would then after the shadow setting for the main light in order to lighten the shadow to my satisfaction.

 6. I then carried out an extra rendering setting by turning off the default lighting and changing the resolution of render. I would then set the lights, the main clock, scene, experimental clocks, bits and bobs and other clocks on separate layers (I could assign a colour to them so the wireframe will change the colour).

For reinsurance I turned down the resolution temporarily whilst testing the render to produce quicker results.

 7. I changed the material to Blin for experimental reasons and started to experiment with the reflectivity and how shiny I needed it (I don’t need much).

 8. Trial and error. Over a few minutes I quickly sorted out a temporary rendering set up. I added a shadow, changed the shadow to become lighter and added a slight tint of yellow and get the shadow just about acceptable. 

9. More trial and error took place to get the lighting just right. At this point I went back into Photoshop and changed the wood texture to be a little lighter.

10. The temporary final Render in Maya software.

11. I put the wireframe lines on a separate layer and use them as guidelines (guidelines that you have to follow unless it’s an alpha then you don’t have to.)

 12. After making a sketch of the wood grain texture I went back into Maya to see what it would look like. I will be doing this a lot because its gives me instant feedback of what it will be like and how the light effects it.

13. At this time I managed to sketch out the main parts of the clock and using these sketches as references. As that moment in time I felt like I was really drawing on a piece of wood this reminded me of woodwork class.

 14. I started to roughly sketch the main clock face, using the duplicate tool to make the design symmetrical.

 15. I used the sketch as a guideline and made a yellow circle for the clock, as I always remind myself at this stage to put on colour before going straight into detail because its important getting the base colour down. The reason while I’m not using a photo image of a clock face its that it adds unwanted shine to it and it would not be my own design.

16. My next step was to use the Bevel and Emboss tool to get the right shadow and a little shine and then merge it with an empty layer. Naturally I would see what’s it like in Maya.

17. Next was to paint the feet gold. I quickly painted it and then shaped it by using the wireframe as a guide.

 18. I made separate layers for the golden face and when I was happy with the colour I merged the layers.

19. I then went into a little detail adding sharpness to the clock. I did this by adding a very light yellow and a very dark yellow to define distance of light and dark (light close to and dark a distance away to back up the light sections.).

 20. Inspiration! During a trip to a sculpture park I found an interesting tree that looked like it was made up of warped branches this reminded me of an art nouveau clock design. I felt like I have done too much gothic design and so I decide to change the design to more of a whiplash design. First I change the properties of my brushes to be more pen pressure sensitive to give a good appreciation of depth.

As you can see I rubbed it all out and followed my vision. I had an extra idea to add a symbol that resembles gothic in the centre and to be perfectly honest I’m beginning to slowly like this design.

 21. After the big design change I had a looked in Maya and liked what I saw. So I applied the design to the front keeping in mind the gothic symbol.

22. Then I designed the back of the clock and thought about the main mechanics of the clock, it being a working object that would need maintenance to keep it running. I therefore put in a back panel and a gold coloured hole to give the impression that it could be wound up.

23. I returned to drawing out the clock face by duplicating one of the detailed pattern and rotating it by way of a pivot in order to get the same amount of detail.

24. I always take the zoom back to see what’s it like from a distance and to check if I have gone out of the wireframe, I made some quick finishing touches to get the clock number panels forward.

 25. Continued to detail the gold, it was a challenge to get the gold just right but I still feel the gold doesn’t look right. I have used gold reference, so I guess it’s a learning curve which I haven’t fully grasped yet.

26. Whoops! forgot to do the inside leg of the clock. This was a pain because I had to line it up with the archways.

27. I figured that I would bear in mind the wireframe and use the edges on the mesh as the bevel of the tile work. To save time I added a bevelled brown line at the edge so it didn’t matter if it did not line up exactly.

 28. Just to add more of a definition I added a slight gradient onto the bevel edges.

29. A little tint of orange, it looks better but hmm…

 30. Final touches. I started to add the numbers on the clock face. I decided to go down the gothic route of using roman numerals. I looked carefully at a roman numeral clock I had in my hand and found that the numbers were more stream lined. I thinned the numbers and rotated them around the clock as they were traditionally donw on an gothic clocks.

 I just had to look at what it looked like in Maya.

Unwind with sketching

During the trip I managed to take a few pictures of fantastically twisted tree that inspired me to draw during the return bus journey with my sketch book, pencil (no rubber), camera and my legs tucked up to support my book I began to draw. This was drawn in 30 minutes on the bus, so it was a little shaky.

Whilst the knowledge was still fresh in my head I continued on to imagine up a creature that had the influence of the tree. I released during the drawing that the tree did look like muscles and so I formed the way the bark was detailed into looking like the muscle of a human (the humanoid tree took me 35 min on the bus). The other sketches I did at home. 

After the humanoid tree sketches I told myself off and returned to drawing environments. I applied the skills I learnt and tried out bits and pieces of scenery.

Sculpture Park

The Sculpture Park bared unexpected fruit, as it helped me see past my original expectations.

These two pictures were taken, with a flash and without. This taught me a valuable lesson, when in Maya, take note that during the texturing process I shouldn’t add too much shading to the texture because the rendering object will add shape and shadows to it.

While I was walking around I stumbled on fantastic research and inspirational image material. For an example these stone beams are covered in ivy that provides information on colour and the perspective of how the ivy plant is curling around the beams.  

As I continued taking photos I started to realise that there is hidden instance in my imagery. In this image I can see a parrot (dinosaur) head that is near the top left of the tree. The head is slightly browner than the tree, the specific shadows gives the shape and distinguishing facial features.

This photo shows the inside of a rotten log but from another perspective it’s a valley that’s sloped up into some caves. Also I can see a face on the right but more man lizard like.

These types of sculptures were scattered around the park. I can see a giant chicken head, a Cyclops head and my favourite, a ditto (Pokemon).

Nouvic Clock Journey Part 4

Uv Mapping The Jumbled Up Mess

1. I looked at the UV map for the first time by clicking the button at the top right. The uvs / faces of the object is all jumbled up.

To get through the morale crushing first step I used the automatic mapping function. After using it I had to make sure to delete the history because if you move the object the uv’s will jumble. The auto mapping helped a little because it gave me an idea of the uv groups I am going to make. The down side was that, it can’t do cylinder mapping. It only uses the x, y and z axis and that’s it.

 2. I moved the uv maps into groups and from there I decided which ones will flow nicely together. I had to bear in mind that the construction of the clock is important, It wont be realist without detailing the crevices and how the legs are attached. I could even put in a windup key hole in the back.

 3. ahhh!... reduce function problem…I have just noticed that the reduce tool also moves the vertex’s around a bit, so it’s not parallel  to each other. Therefore the UV mapping is a slightly out and the texturing will be slightly be crooked. (This wouldn’t matter if it was a weird warped shaped but clocks, furniture and architecture are built with the most accurate precession.) 

 

4. I therefore ended up with one quarter of the clock. I started to fix some of the bad geometry and by doing so reduced some tris.

 

5. When I got the leg to the designed shape what I wanted I started to use the duplicate special and then merged it together as I had done previously with the 112 tri.

6. The clock went to 218 tri and my UV map was in pieces because I interfered with the mesh. It was a good thing that I started the problem sooner rather than later, no one can be perfect! I used the automatic mapping again and sorted them into groups.

 7. I decided to combine the archway with the legs UV which will help my texturing flow.

 8. I did the same to the other archways around the clock. In the UV window I grouped them to the side.

9. At the side I selected one of the UV maps. I then selected the polygon menu in the texture window and used the function Unfold. Unfold will layout each face the same shape and size to the 3d models faces. After I unfolded all the archways I sort them out into a very tight formation.

10. Moving on to the next UV’s and just to make sure which UV faces were which I selected on faces’ and clicked on the UV face on the texture window. This didn’t highlighted on the 3D model the faces I had highlighted as I really want to get the UVs the wrong way round. I positioned the UV maps I wanted to fix together and then highlighted the edges that I want to merge together. I clicked in the polygon menu in the texture window and used the Sew UV edges function. After this I sew the UVS on the other side to make a completely flowing UV map. 

 

11. Next I quickly produced the feet UVs and got them to the right scale.

12.This was one of the hardest procedures because I had to re-arrange all the uvs into the dark grey area. I had to take as much space as I could because the more area I covered the more pixels I was aloud for my texturing. I also had to decide which Uvmaps are the most important because they would cover the more of the area than the others. For example the clock front will have a lot of detail on it and the back will have a simple pattern on it. The feet cover up a few large areas so it wont go to waste.

  

13. This is the 114 tri, I applied the same technique as the 218 tri UV map.

14. This is the 80 tris again I applied the same technique as the 218 tri and the 114 UV map.

 15. I used the Delete all history tool and then saved obviously this is very important. Always, be careful because when you delete history on an animated object it will remove the animation.

(Next is texturing)