Digital Environment
I explored quite a few options when looking at how to go about creating my Digital Environment piece. I want to create something fantastical and imaginary, not something ordinary. Maya allows me to reach the full potential for ideas for a scene. I feel that lighting will play a large part in my environment, I might create it at night to allow for more dramatic lights. However, in my concepts the scope of the pieces might be too large to see the intricate details if it was at night.
Airship
I preferred my airship idea and had it in my mind that I would do this before the unit. I still considered my other concepts but I figured that within the time constraint I'd be able to polish the airship idea more than the others, as I could rely on matte painting and low poly / low res objs to create a background. The character model that I rigged in my industry exercises unit also fits into the Airship's world and I hope to animate him aboard the ship during the scene.
Research and inspiration
These screenshots and bits of concept art are all from World of Warcraft, I like the cartoon style that relies on colourful and simple textures to negate the need for high poly models or detailed normal maps.
The World of Warcraft cinematic team create amazing animated intros for each expansion of the game, I looked at this while doing character creation but the environments are equally as stunning. I watched all the breakdown and behind the scenes videos I could find for each cinematic to look into how the backgrounds are matte painted and then comped in nuke, and how the characters are rigged with dynamic elements like cloth and armour.
The end of the cinematic above where the camera pans to view the landscape inspired me to centre my environment piece around a tall mountain-top like the ones in the cinematic.
The idea is to have my ship dock at a 'pier' that juts from the top of the mountain. I 'sketched' this idea out in Maya rather than creating concept art for it.
While the Airship is technically a 'vehicle', I like to consider it to be an environment in itself. I plan to populate its deck with clutter and boxes, and fill the mid deck with cannon and barrels. This way I can have one 'contained' environment which is the ship and have it interact with a wider and larger environment outside, being the mountain and background.
The end of the cinematic above where the camera pans to view the landscape inspired me to centre my environment piece around a tall mountain-top like the ones in the cinematic.
The idea is to have my ship dock at a 'pier' that juts from the top of the mountain. I 'sketched' this idea out in Maya rather than creating concept art for it.
While the Airship is technically a 'vehicle', I like to consider it to be an environment in itself. I plan to populate its deck with clutter and boxes, and fill the mid deck with cannon and barrels. This way I can have one 'contained' environment which is the ship and have it interact with a wider and larger environment outside, being the mountain and background.
Mountaintop Sketch
I created the low poly mountain by simply soft selecting vertices and pushing them around before unwrapping the UVs and taking the obj into Zbrush.
After taking the obj into zbrush I created the high poly sculpt of the mountain and baked the normal maps from that onto the 2nd subdivision level obj which I took back into maya.
Before putting it in Maya, I gave it a fairly basic texture in Mudbox, I added simple shapes to show the pier, airship and hut on the mountain.
I then looked at some simple lighting in mental ray, I rendered a few images with MR's physical sun and sky and also by setting up some spot lights for some 'night' renders.
I then looked at some simple lighting in mental ray, I rendered a few images with MR's physical sun and sky and also by setting up some spot lights for some 'night' renders.
I also created a simple plain with a normal map to be the base for the mountain, this was a test and I plan to implement it for the background that is closest to the mountain.
Dynamics tests - ncloth
Creating the Airship
Below is the simple reference sketch that I made for Maya to model the airship.
I modeled the each component to the ship separately, therefore the balloon, rigging, masts, flag, engines and cannon are all separate to the ship's hull, eventually they will all be parented under a null control group.
I modeled the each component to the ship separately, therefore the balloon, rigging, masts, flag, engines and cannon are all separate to the ship's hull, eventually they will all be parented under a null control group.
zbrush sculpting the hull
painting texture maps in mudbox
work in progress renders
Ground plane tests
Sorting out the ground plane
I refined the ground plane in Zbrush in order to extract the normal maps for the rocks.
Basic Diffuse map made in mudbox
Ambient Occlusion and wireframe pass of the scene, showing the topology of the airship and ground.
Learning the Ropes
I sorted out the ropes in Photoshop to create a tiled texture with transparency. This allowed them to be placed on the ship's rigging for good effect.
Above are some render tests of the complete model, all textures finished, the glass on the ball turret almost tripled the render time, but I love how the specular colour showed up on the wooden planks on the hull turned out. I readjusted the ships textures, applying displacement and normal maps as overlaid layers in photoshop. This helped the textures to pop off the model a bit more.
Render Passes and Nuke.
Below are the different passes I rendered out from Mental Ray as a test for Comping them all together in nuke. The process took quite a while, and to render the final, single image took over 5 minutes.
Below is the messiest and most ramshackle Nuke script ever. I tried to quickly comp it together, bringing the lights up to a strong white.
I added some glow to the reflection pass, made the shadows darker and the whites lighter. Before adding some fine camera effects such as defocus and chromatic aberration.
I added the background in from my library of various mountains which I've collected over the years, on holidays to the Alps.
Final Playblast
I wanted the piece to focus on the Airship while also allowing me to create a good composition for the camera, for this reason I used anamorphic widescreen as my aspect ratio. Below are some stills with the the matte painted backgrounds comped in.
As you can see, all the dynamic cloths are set up and working. I removed the dynamic ropes that were supposed to flag about because they seemed to just fly all over the deck.
Altogether it turned out quite nicely, my aim is of course to get the final scene fully rendered out, I would probably like to recreate the ground plane yet again.
As you can see, all the dynamic cloths are set up and working. I removed the dynamic ropes that were supposed to flag about because they seemed to just fly all over the deck.
Altogether it turned out quite nicely, my aim is of course to get the final scene fully rendered out, I would probably like to recreate the ground plane yet again.
I especially like how the stills turned out, the matte painting worked really well and was really simple to do, the photos tended to simply work as soon as I put them on.