Skills Audit

"We meet again..."

For the first week we have a series of 3D related tasks to complete before friday 2pm, in order to judge our skills so that the lectureres know the class's capabilities.

It's been over 18months since i've opened a 3D package, so this is going to be interesting.

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Texture Test

1) UV Unwrapping - Here is my first update - it took me a little while to get used to the interface as the last time i used 3DSmax it was version 2011.  I decided to break the building down into chunks and tackle the window boxes first - these took me 5 hours to unwrap which was a far too long - clearly my knowledge is extremely outdated.

Here is are two screenshots of the building so far and the UVW map for the window boxes. (the textures are quick placeholders as this isn't a texture test)

Because i realised that my knowledge is outdated, i contacted my friend Frederic asking what workflow he would use to approach this. He suggested that i unwrap the objects individually and copy the UVW modifier over to similar objects to mirror the texture, as a lot of the objects are instances of each other as it was made modularly. Then when all pieces are complete i can compile one big UVW map to texture. This makes a lot of sense to me and i will approach it in this way soon however i must finish the rest of the task first as this UVW mapping takes me far too long.

A few other people in the class were taking a shortcut method of just applying a UVWmap box modifier to each section and applying a texture - as i'm short on time i've done this also, however it doesn't seem like the best way to do it as it would be hell to take into photoshop. The main problem i had with this was trying to understand the model, as it doesn't seem very logically put together.

Here is the end result of the 'shortcut' method.

2) Texture test - for this task i had to texture a supplied dinosaur model which is already unwrapped.

I decided that i wanted to bake my Ambient Occlusion map into a texture so that i could apply it as a multiply later on top of my diffuse texture, allowing me to better see the forms that i am painting onto. I did this successfully but i had some harsh black lines within the AO that stood out far too much so i had to paint them out.

However, even with a basic default material i am having strange black lines appear on the model when rendered - i'm not entirely sure why this is so i am going to have to put up with it, hopefully it won't overlap my textures..  [EDIT] I managed to solve the issue by simply reseting 3Dsmax.

Strange black lines - default lighting, default material, straight from import.

Google couldn't find a 'panasaur' but i managed to find something similiar to the model so i shall use this artwork as a reference for my textures. However it may be a bit difficult giving that this is my first time texturing an organic model, i will give it a shot.

As the seams are in very awkward and unhelpful places i've decided to just texture the larger area at the back as best as i can to show my painting / texturing skills, as it would be hell to try to align anything complex with the seams as they are currently, especially with the short time frame (and my limited knowledge).

Decided to use this less complex reference which has some really nice texture information:

Here is what i ended up with after a few hours work today:

It took a little while for me to get into the right frame of mind with this one as my recent paintings have been quite quick concept work for clients so they have been loose - whereas this is all about layering up the details. I only used one photo texture on this which was of leather, to help get the subtle leather texture to the skin, the rest is hand painted (with an occlusion bake overlayed on top)

I did make a normal map which is applied however i don't think it made a massive difference, i've only ever used ndo to make normals which has worked great for me in the past, but this time it didn't seem to do a great deal.

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Lighting Test

1) For this lighting test i had to light the supplied city scene, simulating a daylight time of day making sure that the shadows are correct values using bounce lights. It was tough to get the right feel of the scene without any textures as the white of the buildings almost bleaches out the result - perhaps i didn't help by including a photo sky that is so saturated. I understand the principles of light quite well through my painting knowledge but it's much harder applying it to 3D when i'm not as experienced with the tool set. However i think i've done an OK job, i used an omi to fake the fill-light so that the light bounces around the scene more convincingly. I wanted the light source to be much more powerful so that i could get the burning sensation - perhaps a bit of bloom - as i feel this helps to sell the light setup much better however i couldn't figure out how to do it without bleaching out the scene and it also messed up the shadows, so i left it out for now - i imagine this would be something that is handled more through render settings which i'm as of yet not as knowledgeable with.

2) For this second lighting test i had to light a supplied Troll model using a classic 3 point lighting setup (Key light, Fill Light, Rim Light) I decided that my troll is most likely going to be in a forest scene so i tried to base my colour and light choices based on that concept. I had an issue with the shadows not forming correctly and being very noisy / jagged, i assume that this is because the model isn't UVW mapped yet so there isn't enough information for max to use to develop the correct shadows-  though i may be wrong. I enjoy lighting alot as it is a big focus in my concept paintings, however with limited knowledge of the software its harder to achieve what i have in my head or what i could paint. Though i did play around with the exposure control to try and play around with the values of the light / shadow / mid tones which helped a little.

Model with default max lights

I wanted to make it look as though the light was seeping from between the trees and other foliage , adding this speckled light effect. I just added a dent map to the lights which worked but very crudely. If i was to do this properly i would draw my own map and re-adjust the values of the lights to get the correct effect, as i've lost some of the intensity of this light at the moment.

Here is a new variation of the setup, a bit less intense with softer shadows - perhaps more natural - though i do like the exposure of the sun burning onto him in my previous attempt.

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Low Poly Model Test

For this task i had to create a low poly version of the below reference, keeping it under 1,500 tris and no texturing. I managed to find a more side-on version of the gun to help with proportions. This was quite easy, if not a little bit boring. The biggest issue was establishing which parts of the gun are actual mesh and which parts are tricked using texture maps and lighting.