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

 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.

 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. 

 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. 

 I decided I wanted to finish all of the models first and do the UV's afterwards, so I moved on to the second building. Only the top right of this building can actually be seen in the actual image, meaning I will only need to complete the front part of the building in detail. The sides and back can be left in low detail.  The building process was mainly the same as the original building and required no new techniques to complete. I was very cautious when extruding out parts as I didn't want to create a shape which was too complicated to UV. The best solution I found was to make the shape and then extract elements from it to simplify it.  After completing the first half of the model, I then needed to clean up any unnecessary parts. I went around the model and deleted any unnecessary faces, this was anything that I new the viewer wouldn’t see. Not only does this save space but it will also make the UV mapping process a lot easier as I will be working with the faces people a...

 Now that I had completed all of the setup for my 3D scene, It was now time to begin making the scene. I started with the main building on the left, importing its orthographs into a new Maya Scene. I resized them so they were at a decent size and rotated the side orthograph as I had drawn it the wrong way round. I then made a cube and began pulling out the vertexes to fit the images on each side. Once I had my cube roughly the right size, I then used the insert edge loop tool, ensuring that it was on multiple. I selected 1 edge loop to ensure it would be centred and clicked the side of the building, this would be used to make the roof.   I Then pulled up the edge so that it matched the height of the roof in the image. I then used the multi-cut tool to add an extra edge connecting the whole roof. I could then select all the faces and extract the roof to modify it separately to the model. I selected each side and extracted them so that I could work on them all individually....