Factory/Station Progress

I have added more details to the factory/station interior and played with basic camera setups and the scale.

One of the main additions I wanted to make were thinner details - such as pipes. I have played with the pipes which were there, however wires and circuitry would also add to the large wall areas. Such details were present in the old mills I visited. I will use some photographed elements from the mills by compositing them, but for those which don't work this way, I may discuss with the team in regard to helping modelling them.

Well before

Latest (comp test with fog as suggested at the last peer review)

POV - look to the left

 POV - look to the right

I have now received the textures from Michal Zagorski, so that's the next job whilst tweaking the UVs. I really want to make this look as good as possible in the time I have. I am also toying with the thought of dirtying things up more and adding rubble features using Mudbox or ZBrush, especially if the help is available. But, we will have to see how the texturing goes first, and with the comp it may look fine, but it is definitely a process which will bring more detail and, hopefully, realism. I have scheduled an intense week on this particular process, with miscellaneous jobs intermittently fending for attention. However, this factory interior with the extreme long shot and Tyler's POVs have overriding priority in the project at this moment.

The stage after that is to discuss and develop the lighting to a higher standard. For me,

Factory Preparation

I have received a version of the factory from Lina Ivanova of what she has achieved to model.

Since, I have been tweaking the scene by grouping and renaming within the Outliner for organisation and easier changes; UV mapping; converting everything to polygons; re-routing textures; fixing scaling issues; adding details such as rubble; setting up render settings; tweaking the layout; smoothing objects; setting up image based lighting and more...

The factory from a test extreme long shot. Many tweaks have been made.

Myself and Michal Zagorski have also been out photographing the Old Mills in Dundee for textures and source images to composite into the scene. This should add much more realism to the environment.

The issues so far with the environment, I feel. are there is are the scale isn't real enough, things aren't deteriorated enough, there needs to be more little details and things such as weeds composited. The texturing and lighting stages may take a bit of time, but I have experience and this shot is my focus from now.

Vertigo-esque shot of ladders

For the lighting, I have used a HDRI sourced from the internet with similar colours and time of day of which we shot the other shots and live action on green screen in. And I have added some spotlights in upon this.

A Smart IBL: http://www.hdrlabs.com/sibl/archive.html

I have other options as well

For this type of shot I take a lot of inspiration from the visual effects industry, creating some very ultra-real work. For example, the work on The Great Gatsby (2013):

The Great Gatsby (2013)

So, if I take inspiration from this, I can use the modelling and the live action I have, and then texture, light and composite this in an interesting way and I can make something hopefully very beautiful.

So, it is my job to use the final stages of this development to make this look as real and interesting as possible. Lina has done a good job with the modelling, and now it is a foundation for me to really build on.

Much more on this soon...

NURBs Model - Final + Video

Here is the NURBs model with all of the parts created:

I feel there is a lot of room for more detail, specifically in areas such as the lights and screws. However, I am happy with the overall look from this camera view and the new modelling processes in which I have learned in the time which I have had.

Here is a panning camera view of the model:

MSc | NURBs Lamp Post from Fraser Murdoch on Vimeo.

Warehouse For Test Progress

This is Lina Ivanova's environment so far for the test (which we shall shoot for next week.)

The lighting will be a little different, based on film noir, and the textures shall be touched up in terms of resolution.

I will do a multi-pass render and create an atmosphere in the place in the composite. Then, I might composite the beautiful Alona Kiricenko into the the environment after the live action (green screen) shoot next Wednesday with Michal Zagorski (if the chroma keying goes well enough...), and follow the storyboard presented in a previous post.

Environment For Test So Far

I am doing a test this semester for compositing an environment in Nuke.

For this, I am working with classmate Lina Ivanova.

So, here is a render with physical sun and sky lighting.

Once a few more objects are modeled and placed into the environment, as well as some simple textures are applied, I will set up the camera, lighting, render layers and then add elements, other styles and correct everything and generally composite in Nuke (I might even add a live action character if all goes exceptionally well)...

Here is Lina's full post on this.

NURBs Progress

(Kind of)

I have simply added a few basic objects to it since the last update. If it was real, it would now function as it is intended (yes, if it was real) as I have now modeled the lights. They may need a little more attention, though ..I'll make sure I don't keep them on, as this is bad for your eyes.

I wanted to see it a little differently, so I did a very basic IBL, assigned a mental ray shader (looks like a blinking plane!) and composited it in Photoshop.

Shoe And Tell 2

Simple 3D modelling is practically done...

Extruding the lace through the holes and around each other was actually fairly easy and simple. I find polygon modelling a lot easier than NURBs. However, I have worked in polygons for a couple of years now.

It is also good to model this shoe, as it is simple. Being simple, by going into detail, you can make something that ultimately looks good.

This is a photograph...

Polygon Modelling Progress

After one afternoon I got the basic shape of the plimmy recreated:

I have just duplicated it for demonstration purposes, but there is some shape coming together so far. The laces should be interesting... as well as later Mudbox sculpting, lighting, rendering and compositing...