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

 Within the animation the Japanese Palace gets set on fire and so I made a burnt version. I tried adding a glowing fire texture in the windows however this never really showed in the render. I will so the rest of the effects in editing and rendering. So far I feel this version is a good start and I wanted it to be a darker version so it is disguised a bit in the fog. I do however prefer the original textured version and so want to show that off in the animation before the realization that the palace is on fire.  I really like the melted effect I was able to create on the tiles to really sell the idea that the palace is on fire. 

 Today I UV'd and textured the Shinto Shrine in Substance painter. This was a simple process as the model is low poly as it is a background model.  I originally made the black parts around the top and base metal, however felt that this made the Shinto shrine look too new. As well as this the Shinto shrine is meant to represent nature and I found online they are mainly constructed of wood. I then changed the material to be the same as the red parts of the model and found it to fit much better with the theme.  

 Today I experimented with different textures within substance painter until I found a combination I liked for the palace.  As the original piece of concept art had no colour to it, it was left up to the texturing phase to decide what the actual palace would look like. Although I already had an idea of the sort of colours I wanted to include, I gathered reference images online to be certain it matched the theme of traditional Japanese Palaces.  Below is a closer look of the final textures of the Palace. It is important that it reflects the traditional look of a Japanese palace so I put it against a neon background, which represents the Cyberpunk world. I really like how the building has come together and feel it contrast nicely against the background. All I need to do now is fix some of the UV's on the rooftops of the building.  I feel this is a believable environment for my character to have been brought up in. All I need to do now is figure out how I'm going to rep...

 Today I applied textures to the Japanese palace in Substance painter. Some of the UV's for the roof were a bit stretched, however I will go back and change this later, at this stage I just wanted to see how the model looked so far.  Below are some of the additional textures I found online for the Japanese Palace. I will experiment with different looks for the palace.  Castle Wall - By Louise Coomber stylized tiles - By Mehrad Mousavi pavement snow ground - By Enrique Chavarria Stylised Roof - By Sukrit Tanticharoenkiat Mountain - By Vladimir Petkovic Wood Stylized Plank - By Chew Gashuen StoneWall - By Ben Rosendahl Valorant Style Brick Wall - By Stephen Mulligan Stylized stone path - By Julio Evangelista painterly wood - By Michael Concannon

 Today I assembled the buildings so that they matched the drawings. This was a simple process as I had planned out each part of the buildings, and simply had to put the pieces together. I applied random colours before doing this to objects which will have the same textures when in substance. This will make it so when I drop a material on a single object, all objects of the same colour will also get that material. This will save time having to manually apply each material.  I added in these mountains to compare how the final scene should look. However I am unsure whether to use the mountains in the final scene as they are quite high poly for a background object.  Overall I am happy with the results of the buildings and feel this was probably the best method of creating the palace. I tried to keep it low poly as it is only a background object, however the Palace is only seen in full for a limited amount of shots, meaning I can delete sections when they are not in frame. I a...

Today I continued modelling the environment for my animation by creating the Japanese Palace. I decided to do this in small sections which will be combined together to create the different buildings, much like how I drew the palace. As the palace is only in the background of the animation I decided to make it as low detail as possible, only modelling what the camera will see.    After modelling the basic parts of the building I then UV'ed each part. / After Uv'ing the models I tested out the wall in substance painter. 

 Today I began completing the tutorials I found online for my environment. I started with the grass and trees which will be in the environment.  MASH Grass 3D modeling (Autodesk Maya tutorial) This was a very simlple tutorial, with the entire process taking about 3 mins, however I still got the results I wanted. I like how easy MASH is to use as it is very customizable based on what you are trying to create. I feel I will be able to use this effectively in my environment, especially if I spend more time creating and texturing the grass model.  As this was quite a quick tutorial I also began making the tree model tutorial.  Stylized Tree with Autodesk Maya 2022 and Substance 3D Painter I managed to complete the tutorial up to the point where you apply it to the tree and export to Substance. The process was very easy and mainly just took time making different variations of the same thing. I'm hoping once I complete the substance side of the tutorial the tree still look...