Ronnie Leah, BA (Hons) Computer Animation Arts, UCA Rochester.

 For my story it is best to firstly identify who the main character is, what their motivation is and their backstory. This will give  me a clear guide of what sort of story to make as the main character drives the plot of the story.  To begin I want to firstly look into what a magician actually is. A magician is someone who wields magic, below I have listed the many different forms this magic comes in. Sleight of hand Illusionist Dramatic/Monolog magician Comedy magician Escapologist Mentalist Black art illusionist Mechanical magician Animal magician Pantomime magician Quick change magician Technology magician Spiritualist Throughout the ages magicians have been a form of entertainment. They inspire wonder, imagination and escapism. They push the limits to what seems to be physically possible for a single human and perform in sometime enormous crowds. They have to have their act down to a T otherwise they will either be looked at as a phoney or even risk their own safety,...

 Today we learnt about the three different types of cameras which can be made in Maya in order to make capturing animation easier. The three cameras, camera rig, dolly rig, crane rig, are all based off of cameras used in the real life film industry and all have their special uses. The camera rig is much better than the basic camera found in Maya as it allows you to pan in specific directions. This makes capturing shots much easier as you can be more specific. The Dolly rig is used for capturing smooth shots while moving in a direction. This can be useful for scene which evolve a lot of movement. The crane rig moves along the X Y and Z axis, allowing you to smoothly capture shots between the three.  The pan shot was very simple and just required that we track two characters walking between rooms. In order to get the camera to understand where you want it to be positioned on a frame, you have to right click and select key selected. This was done on the pan channel when the chara...

 Today I was introduced to the Script To Screen project.  For the project you are assigned a random location, character and item. You are then meant to base your story on the provided information, adding additional story elements based on the context.  For the location I was assigned hospital, for the character I was assigned Magician and for item I was assigned a briefcase. I am happy with the 3 I received as they don't seem too far fetched and seem to work together nicely. I like the way we don't get to decide what were working with as it takes the pressure off thinking of a story from scratch and forces you to think more about how three elements will interact. As my tutor put it, Lord of the rings in its most basic form is about  a farmer travelling to a volcano to deliver a ring. By braking such a complex story down into something more manageable it helped me to understand the depth I can go into when creating my story.  Below I have listed my initial ideas ...

 Today we were introduced to the Soundscapes Project.  The three images I received are below, I began listing words of sound that I associate with the pictures.

 This is the final render of my scene. I have managed to go from what was a concept piece, to a fully realized 3D render. I am happy with how it turned out. At the beginning of the project I was able to come up with a strong backstory to Diomira which I documented in a travelogue. This really helped to paint a picture of my version of Diomira in my head. I was then able to refer back to the first project and pick out the parts I would want to improve upon. This gave me the opportunity to focus on just one of my ideas which would eventually be turned into the final 3D render.  The most helpful thing I did to prepare for the project, was to complete the 3D tutorial farm scene. This took me through the whole process of creating a digital scene and is how I was able to come to the final product. It gave me the confidence to turn my idea into a final product I am proud of. However I felt like more could have been done if I had left more time to do the texturing. I greatly underesti...

Diomira: Travelogue Diomira, the city located to the east, what a sight to behold! From the bustling market streets, to the crystal theatre located deep in the heart of the city, to the surrounding mountain range perfect for hiking. There is something for everyone to experience in the city of Diomira. The city, said to be crafted by the hands of the Gods themselves, stands tall in the luscious green lands and surrounding mountains. Known for its overwhelming riches and mysterious power source rumoured to be a gift to the people for their strong belief in their Gods. Those fortunate enough to be able to afford the cities extortionate prices, will have memories which last a lifetime, however those not as fortunate will see a much darker side to the city.   I ventured into the city in the month of September, when the festival of lights begins. People from all walks of life gather on a golden evening to celebrate the Gods win over darkness, praying that they will bless them enough...

 The digital progress of the 3D scene 

 When it came to the placement of the camera I struggled due to the way the image is displayed in the drawing. I had to not only line up all the models but also the matte painting. I was originally going to render the scene with the matte painting but after having some difficulty getting it to go where I want it to, I decided to render both of them separately and stitch them together in Photoshop, like we did with the farm scene.  For the main lighting I used a directional light and placed it behind the buildings on the left as if it were the sun. I tried to copy the placement of the light source in the concept art. I then created point lights to highlight the light in the windows. I attempted to create the same effect as the concept art with the glowing windows. Finally I made the torches and dangling lights by using the Arnold mesh light. I really liked the effect created by the dangling lights in particular. I had to change the render samples for all of the lights to get ri...

 When it came to texturing my models I only really had to worry about drawing lines for the walls and roof's to show brickwork/tiling. However I feel I underestimated the amount of time it takes to do this as it never goes completely well the first time. I was really proud when I textured the first roof and it all lined up correctly as it meant I did the UV's right. This is something that I struggled with when making the barn scene and said I wanted to get better at it. I was happy that all the UV worked the way I intended them to work even if it wasn't for an extremely detailed texture.  I had a few problems when it came to texturing. The main problem was not all the textures lined up as they were different sizes. This meant the brickwork on the side of the building was bigger than on the front. I tried multiple time to get the size right but never really could. I also forgot to make the UV layer invisible when turning the texture into a tiff file. This meant the UV was vi...

 Today I constructed the scene In Maya. I found it hard to place the assets in a similar way to the image. This is most likely just to drawing not being very accurately drawn. 

 As the middle and far building are very similar, I didn't need to waste time modelling and UV again. Instead I took the model, rotated it and deleted any unnecessary model/edges. 

 I continued unwrapping the UV for my building. After completing the first models UV's this one wasnt that bad. I tried to group together UV's which would require the same texture and order them in a clean way.  I continued deleting faces which where unnecessary, mainly to make my life easier when it came to texturing. The model really isn’t seen from the left side, meaning most of that side will not be needed for the texturing process. This freed up space in the UV's editor and will make the texturing progress less confusing. Theirs no need to waste time on something which wont be seen by the viewer. I order the UV's so that they are on the right side (left side of the model is on the left side) this will help with the texturing process as I wont have to waste time trying to locate which side I'm working on.

 Now that I had completed all the models, It was now time to go back and unwrap all the UV's for them to get ready for texturing.  Once I had done all the UV's for one side of the building, all I had to do was duplicate the asset, group them and then translate -1 along the x axis. This gave me the complete building. I then went through and flipped the UV so that they were facing the appropriate direction. 

 This was the final main model in the scene I had to make. 

 This stall is quite far away from the camera and so it did not need to be in great detail.

 Today we took the matte painting of the mountain scene from last week and turned it into a matte painting using images. The main way of doing this was by using layer masks tool. You line up the images with the original drawing and then manipulating them to fit the shape. The image is then pushed around with the transform tool to fit the direction the original shape is going in. I really like this process of making a matte painting as you can start off drawing a rough shape of a scene you want to make and transform it into something which is quite detailed.  By completing this task it helped improved my overall skills in photoshop.  Original image from last week  New image

 The main challenge with this model was creating the umbrella. I ended up doing this be creating a cube and subdividing it. I was then able to pull out specific vertices to create the basic shape. I then pulled the middle vertex up and smoothed it.   Another problem I faced when creating this object is the fact that it looked too basic. Although it matched the drawing I had done, their wasn't enough there to seem interesting. This wasn't a massive concern as its quite far back in the scene but I decided to look for a solution to make it look more interesting.  To fix this problem I decided to extrude in the model and bevel around the outside. This makes the shape less generic and more interesting to look at. 

 I followed along with the monster tutorials where I left off and managed to complete the entire model. 

 Like the previous model, this one was really easy to make as it only required me to manipulate some cubes into the appropriate shape. 

 The next model I made was the front stall. Most of this model is really seen in the image so a lot of it didn't need to be made. The process was very simple to make and only required the use of cubes.