Lighting & Rendering - Lighting

This week the task was to understand how to solve the problem of turning a highly laminate material to a normal material. A number of steps were required to reach the stage when the material would appear to be normal.The first step required an alpha channel to be incorporated into the image attributes.To achieve this the hyper graph had to be used to navigate around the material attributes.  

The first render of the Bradford University flag on the ground has a translucent material around it creating a glowing effect covering the flag.The first take was to find the first material to lower the intensity of the glow.Then replace it with a Blinn material and upload the flag material to replace the first material. Unfortunately there was a problem with the plane as the material required to create the gradient was not applied until the end as it was not located .

After the material has been applied to the material the next step was to incorporate an alpha channel texture to the plane object to make the red colour stand out as it is the dominant colour. This way the colour red will be more clear and realistic.

This is a render of the flag once the alpha channel has been applied to the flag material which is getting to the stage where it almost resembles a flag in real life.The final step was to

This is another angle of the flag which shows the transformation from the original flag material to the final flag material.

The final render is the final product which is the University of Bradford Flag somewhere in the mountains.To improve the final product another texture could be incorporated to the three dimensional environment to give it more of a realistic apperance.

This is the environment which was created using the chromakey method. This scene shows the kingdom of Gondor in all of its glory embedded into the mountains.

Introduction to Lighting & Rendering .

The aim of the rest lesson for the lighting & Rendering class was to gradually become acquainted with the lighting & Rendering module.The best way was to create a three dimensional plane using a texture for the plane along with a bump map to create the gradient for the plane. 

The first step was to obtain a texture of the ground from the internet then save it onto the computer as a .tga file as it is more effective than a JEPGE file & time effective with regards to rendering time. The reason why this texture has been chosen for the three dimensional placement is because it possessed the texture that was required for the three dimensional plane.

Here is the file that was provided for the plane's material to give it the correct texture. But to make it more realistic the UV's had to be tweaked a few times to replicate the ground.As the texture appears to be very generic for the ground's gradient.

This is the final render of the plane which has been constructed in Autodesk Maya 2016.There is room for improvements that could enhance the overall apperace of the three dimensional plane.Overall the final product is satisfactory so the student can not complain as they have learned a new way to create a three dimensional plane.

This is an example of a three dimensional displacement map that has been incorporated to a floor plane to create the texture and to give it the required gradient.

Motion Capture - The introduction to the year

The aim of today's session was to get a better understanding of the module known as motion capture. To begin the pre production side of the process off you can see the brainstorm of ideas for the final visual effects shot.

These ideas are well thought out for big ideas that could influence future students to think outside the box. Although it would be amazing to create all of the ideas , it was a matter of choosing an idea that met a criteria. The idea would have to be specific to the grading criteria , it would have to be measurable aiming at the right target audience , assurable to succeed, the idea would have to be realistic looking at the time scale which is 13 weeks. Unless these conditions are met the ideas will remain to be ideas. Although imagination is the key is the factor which determines a decent visual effects shot from a poor visual effects shot. The chosen idea was the discovery of a hidden city beneath Bradford Town.

The MoCap production idea was influenced by a number of sources such as adventure  mystery/adventure movies, mystery books, and finally Sci-Fi programs.The MoCap product was inspired by a number of secondary sources.These sources were movies such as The Librarian, Atlantis, adventure video games such as Crash Bandicoot.It was these type of media products that had indirect influence in the thought process.But most of the influences for the environment came from the video game locations. A couple of example of the locations are the underwater cities , portals, other dimensions.

This is a three dimensional screen shot of the underwater city in the video game Crash Bandicoot.

The book mentioned a number of events in the story that made the student's imagination run wild. One part of the book talks about a hidden power in the city of Washington D.C. Further on in the story an anti chamber was discovered in a gruesome way. The chamber was full of skulls as a warning to outsiders. It was these elements that played an important part in the development of this visual effects shot. In terms of Sci Fi movies the librarian series caught the student's undivided attention as they were able to reflect on their future projects.The idea of hidden city within Bradford was an idea that was being developed for quite some time .The reason why the chosen location was Centenary square in Bradford is simple due to the fact that the atmosphere seem to fit the brief perfectly well.

Below is a sketch of the location which has been chosen for this particular scene.

This is the concept sketch which has been edited using the design software known as Adobe Photoshop.

The most important element is the storyboard which has been created to allow the cinematographer to understand what the story is all about. The crux of the storyboard is the discovery of a hidden city beneath Bradford Centenary square.

Here is the storyboard which has been edited in the design software known as Adobe Photoshop CC again to make it appealing to the public's eye. Another reason was to give each frame a number showing the order of the story.

I look forward to hearing from you if you have any feedback for me .

Introduction to Computer Generates Visual Effects

To start of the first session for the computer generated visual effects module. It would be important to go through the basics to slowly introduce future perspective students to the new world of visual effects. Towards the end of the session the class were informed that they had some time to think of an idea for a computer generated visual effects shot for their final project. One of the many ways is to brainstorm a couple of ideas in the form of a spider diagram.

Here is the spider diagram that shows the thinking process of the ideas generated from the student's imagination. The difficult part of the pre production stage was trying to come up with an idea that proved to be creative and realistic.The chosen idea for the CGVFX project is a university that turns students into ghosts who become apart of the university.

There are two concept sketches for the CGVFX project which is a university that turns students into apart of the university.There is also a storyboard for the CGVFX project which is all about students entering the university to sign up for the courses & the spiritual agreement.

The idea was inspired by a number of secondary sources such as movies, books, television series.The  main contribution  for the project is the idea of a place that has a scary atmosphere .The idea is a university where all of the students become apart of the it once they sign up for their courses.

Please tell me what you thin about my idea for my final project for the computer generated visual effects module.I would really appreciate the feedback as it would be helpful even helpful towards the end of my project.

Anatomy & Movement

This particular topic proved to most useful as it allows animaitors to observe the way they move in motion. From examining this sketch the animator can tell the weight / balance that the subject is showing as he is sitting on a sofa focusing on his aunty's phone . 

But the major downfall was not being able to draw all of the motions displayed by the subject as they move from one point to the next point. However the artist could benefit from making more gesture drawings as the subject may not appreciate staying in one position for more than five seconds.There are positive elements & negative elements about the sketches .

The positive aspect of the anatomy & movements sketch is the fact that the artist managed to sketch their nephew just before they moved from one position to the next few poses. The animator managed to bring across in the sketch the fact that they were focusing on the iPad with intense concentration. Look at the way the head is facing the screen now this shows that the young boy will suffer from neck pain in the future. As you can tell by the body language the young boy is relaxed.

 Now moving onto the aspects that could be improved for the next sketches. If we look at the next key poses  we can see that they have been left incomplete as the young boy asked to leave in a hurry. But the artist did managed to get down a brief gesture of each pose as their beloved nephew ran from the tv room. This sketch proved to be a difficult task as it tested the artist with his time management skills as every second is precious.

Scenic Composition.

The artist was expected to sketch a scenic composition so he chose to recreate the RE centre which is situated on the grounds of Bradford University. As you can see the artist decided to go for the animated look for the scenic composition work blog portfolio. Although the sketch has not been shaded the artists decided to talk about as he felt that it had a certain chic feeling to it.

The animator decided to create this sketch using the blind drawing technique as he felt that it was the best way to include all of the smaller windows / window frames etc. Although the sketch is incomplete we can see that the artists struggled to obtain the correct perspective as they were standing at a bizarre position. Even if the artist spent their time trying to fix the sketch they would be getting no where with their chosen median which is a permeant marker. 

The other two areas that may have needed more work to make them stand out to the crowd is the ground.Which is lacking global illumination which is important for the artist to get across to the public to gain their interests. If the arts carried on they would have managed to create a nice scenic composition despite the perspective being out of alignment with the RE Centre in real life.

Contemoprary Architecture.

The artist has recreated their television room with the use of a charcoal willow as his chosen median. The artist wanted to make the sofa the main attraction in the room as they considered it to be one of the focal points in their opinion.The charcoal willow sketch has been fairly successful as it clearly shows great depth within the hallway. There is a fairly balance contrast within the television room  & this is down to the strength of the direct light which originated from the window. 

The artist is happy that the sofa was within two thirds of the rule of thirds golden ratio . As he was focusing on making sure that he obtained the correct dimensions for all of the objects within the room. The major issue is the alignment of the doorway which is leaning towards the left side.The artist has decided that the reason behind this was down to the artist focusing too much on their measurements & not taking the time to see if it was in line with the paper. 

The artist wanted to create more emphasis on the hallway as they observed that there was less light looking at their observations. The artist tried to create highlights in certain areas to create a well balanced composition. But after careful observations the artist felt that they have managed to create a burnt look as apposed to a normal look.But the artist does feel that the sketch is successful overall.