Evaluation

Wrote it, but completely forgot to put it up!! ><

After the long, arduous (well, not really, it was pretty chilled out to be fair!) road to the end of the term, we can finally say we did it! :)
We spent a lot of time on that project, each doing what we did best, or at least to the best of our abilities if we had no idea how.
If anything, I wish we could have had a little more organisation between us. We didn't do badly, but at times, we were all over the place. :)
I would have liked to make the scene bigger, but smaller is best, when you can detail it correctly.

Even though we couldn't get a final render done, which is still really rather annoying, we have a playblast. We tried to home render all our final scenes, but for some reason, even though the whole project folder was taken, some textures were missing. Despite being inside the folder, in the correct places. We will probably attempt ti figure it out over the time off, and hopefully come up with a full render, just for our own benefit. :)

I'm not sure what else to say, except that I'm really proud of my team, and that we all pulled through in the end. ^^

Problems, Problems, Problems. ):

We ended up having about a bajillion problems when the rendering happened.

Both Karl, and Harry attempted a home render, as the renders we attempted to send through to the render farm kept failing, or the settings were entered ever so slightly wrong.
It turns out, even after pulling the entire folder from my laptop where the final scene had been pieced together, and all the textures carefully kept in one place, some of them still ended up missing. x__o
It's visible in the final playblast, as the biggest one that disappeared was the market stall! I'm still not sure how that happened.

All in all, we couldn't get a final, shiny, lit render done within the time, but did manage a playblast. This unfortunately meant that we couldn't place the animations properly. :|

Animations!

Cat!

 

And the children started off as mine, but Dean gave me a kind helping hand. As a result, he has the final file. :)

Final shops and pub

These are the final, finished models for the pub, and the two shops. Yes, I cheated and just butchered the larger shop to make the smaller one, but isn't that what production is all about? ;)
I could have found a better, simpler way of making the shop fronts than extruding them constantly to create what I did, but it works, and it is in the process of being properly textured, which is all good!! :)

Furniture - COMPLEETED

As you can see, very simple furniture for a very simple pub interior. :) Dead pleased with the way it's all turned out and fits in to my floor plan. I could have done the square tables a little better, but that's the simplest I could make them to cut down on polys. For added smoothness, really. They didn't need to be incredibly detailled, as they are in a poor person's pub, which made my life a little easier, in that respect. All in all, quite enjoyable to make!

Pub Furniture

So, pooling together all my research images for pub furnishings, I have created some standard pub tables, chairs, stools and a bar area.
They're all coloured in to make me feel a bit better about them. :)

Very quickly photoshopped for reference whilst modeling, this is the final outcome of those drawings.

The L-shaped bar - using my own knowledge of pub furnishings, and various google image results for generic looking bar areas, this is what sprouted. Plain, simple, and made of wood. Not too fancy, as this is not a fancy-man's pub.

These tables and chairs, I had imagined to form a set of sorts, so they had to be very similar to each other. I ended up using an image of a table and two chairs posted previously (will edit it in later), as they pretty much spot on hit what I wanted to create, so the design is very much based on them. Simple, sturdy, possibly uncomfortable, but after a few pints you won't notice so much.

The bar stools! :) These were quite fun to do, actually. Its a generic stool. :) Round topped, long legged and has braces. Not much to say about it really. It's just a stool.

Round table, to match round chairs. Surprisingly difficult to do accurately - had to resort to rounded rectangles to get the shapes correct.

Modeled images in next post.

London Photo Spree!

As a group, we went up to London to get a load of reference photos from the city itself, including texture ideas, arch designs, ironwork, pub fronts, and the like.


http://www.flickr.com/photos/92813406@N00/sets/72157623292591939

Shop Numero Uno

So this is the two out of three visible sides for the largest shop, that was originally two shops, but it made more sense to amalgamate the two into one retail being, and use the space in a better way.

I have yet to add in window spaces in the top two floors, but when I steal all the windows off Dean to put in there, it won't be a problem. :)
The downstairs windows are large for the displays.




And a random apple I made that may well end up on the market stall. Using a random texture from google. :)

Pub Furnishings

As our lovely gentleman will be heading into the pub, today I'm focusing on furnishing the inside, now that the outside is complete.

Stall and Pub

Going to work on the shops under my jurisdiction tomorrow, but today, I'm finishing up the pub (name still in debate) and the market stall for our street! :)

I'm going to have some blendshapes set to make the nCloth thing that's happening with the market stall tarp work properly, so it looks a bit more realistic than some horrible old, lifeless, straight polygons.
So far, it's coming along nicely! I've set out some containers for fruit, or veg, or other strange bits and pieces are you are likely to find in a market stall where people live.

At this precise moment, I'm debating: what to put in the containers; whether or not they should be loose or grouped; and what to do with the side I've left open.

And my pub, is coming along nicely! I have to add in another floor to the top to make it huuuuuge as pubs should be.
Only concentrated on two sides of it, as they will be the only sides we can see! Bless the built up land that is London.

Got to work on the interior later today - going to add an L-shaped bar area, stools, tables, chairs.
Not the best furniture either, as this is aimed more at the working/lower middle than anything else.

3D Street Plan

I have two! (One in development, one complete, but unrendered)

So, I'll be putting them both in this post a little later today after some TLC for myself. :)

Did he say "diagonally"?

Yes. I think he did.

So, as part of my research into grotty little back alleys and street plans, I remembered that there is a set of alley ways - one lovely and swish, the other a bit grotty and nasty, in the Wizarding world.

So, I've been looking at illustrations of Diagon Alley and Knockturn Alley, and found a street plan for how they are both laid out. :)
Pictures of the set from the Harry Potter films as reference, granted they are very brightly coloured and nowhere near our imagined colour scheme. :)

Also been checking out old pub fronts, which hopefully, we can get some nice pictures taken of on Tuesday in London. :)

No Gods Or Kings. Only Man.

So, I've been feeling that steampunk would be fabulous as a style to work with for this unit.

And, as the second installment is hitting us on February 9th, the underwater, art deco style city of Rapture caught my attention.

I'm part way through the process of deciding whether or not to shell out the £70 for the amazingly amazing special edition, mainly for the artbook and music.

But, I do love the colours, and lighting of Rapture.

As it's underwater, it's quite ghostly. A failed utopia in a brilliant setting. Burst pipes, windows, brass archways, very 50s style.

Absolutely fantastic to walk through! :D

Reminds me a little bit of Gotham City in some ways.

 

 

CASTLE! :3

So, I started following a tutorial online for making a castle.

AND HEY, what do you know, castle modeling is really really simple! :D
I've so far learned about the duplicated special thing, which has let me put all the little squiffy bits around the battlements. I've got to go through and add in all the little details tomorrow and Monday, but otherwise, the base design is done. :D

First Post!

So, hello. Again! :)

Welcome to my (Laura H) Digital Environments blog.

Before we get properly cracking next week, I'm gonna have a go at some tutorials for modelling buildings. I found a lovely one for a castle, which is here for anybody who sees and is interested. :)

Intro post, over and out.

Chuz~