Digital Modeling

Game Scene Environment Presentation:

Game Scene: Putting the project into Unity & Final Touches

This week the scene was due. So we got everything into unity and started adding finishing touches to the scene. Putting it into Unity included importing all of our buildings, adding normal maps, using the terrain editor, and adding colliders to our buildings.

Putting the project into Unity we utilized the terrain editor which is a really powerful and relatively easy to use tool. This allowed us to create a nice mountain like background for our scene which we all felt complemented the scene well. We also used some foliage like grass and trees to help liven the scene up. 

After putting it into unity we added some more finishing touches to it like the sky dome which provides a nice sunset in the background as well as adding a wood floor to the insides of our buildings. We then went ahead and put in lights inside our buildings to and we put an area light around all three to help them pop.

 Last we went ahead and added mesh colliders to our buildings, so they would interact with players as they should. Above are a couple screenshots of images that we took of the scene.

This project was definitely a confidence booster of being able to make models and get them into a game engine. Overall I learned a lot about modular modeling, making easy to work with UV's, and how working with a team can provide great results.

Game Scene: Texturing Progress

So this week I went through and started going through the process of texturing. So here is some of my progress. The way that I got my textures was through taking in game screenshots. I felt by doing it this way it would be the best way to achieve the feel of the game.

Here is my first texture map after I got the wood and the wall textures from in game, I had to play around with them a lot in Photoshop. I used a lot of the transform and perspective tool to get what I needed. I also used layer adjustments to adjust the brightness, hue, and contrast of the different textures. 

This is my second texture map that I'm using for the building which is the roof textures and the stone textures. For both of the texture maps I also made bump maps to help give some depth to areas throughout the building. While texturing I also had to adjust some UV's or make new UV's because things were not looking as clean as I wanted them to be. But the Re-UVing was a relatively painless process since I've had some practice now.

Here is a quick render of the building in its current state. There is definitely few things that I want to tweak and make a little better in this last upcoming week. In this next week my group and I will also be putting our building's into Unity. When we are putting them into Unity we will be trying to utilize the terrain editor and adding collision to our buildings.

Game Scene: UVing and Modeling Progress

Game Scene: More UVing & Modelling Tweaks/Additions

Here is another progress update on the building I'm currently modelling. I worked on some of my UV's more and am pretty much ready to move onto texturing. I added and tweaked a few things on the building to make the overall model look a little bit better. I also have started to make my UV maps and get them organized.

So as you can see from the pictures above I have laid out all of the UV's for the middle of the building to be textured. This will include the wood and wall textures. I have stacked similar UV's on top of each other to make as much space as possible so I can also make the objects high resolution. I will probably mess around with positioning of the UV's a little bit more to make sure I'm making efficient use of my space. Then on the second UV map I will do the stone texture for the base of the building and the roof texture for the building.

I also went ahead and added some more decals to the building to stick close to my reference. They help the building look even closer to my reference and I thought they were a nice touch. I would like to add similar decals that are on the building like these but I'm close to my poly count right now due to beveling objects. So I might try to mess around with some other objects/beveling to reduce my poly count to add other decals in.

It's hard to tell but I all also changed some things that I disliked about my previous roof. I didn't like the original top of my roof because it looked clunky and didn't fit the model well, so I went and changed the top of the roof and how it flows into the other geometry. I will be working on texturing next and I feel that will really bring the building to life. I think it will be challenging to achieve the style of Overwatch but I think I can do it. The texturing will definitely give it the blizzard feel and make the building look a lot closer to my reference. 

Game Scene: Modelling & UVing

Here is some of my current progress on the Overwatch building that I am currently working on. For modelling I spent a good amount of time trying to to get the roof correct. The slight curvature of the roof gave me some issues initially. At the start I tried to move each individual vertex or face to try and get the curvature but it wasn't working out as I hoped. So I figured there must be a better way to do this, and after some searching around I found the lattice tool which helped me out a ton. The larger middle sections of the roof I did by just moving the faces and vertices which took a lot of time, but the side sections of the roof I used the lattice tool and that shortened the process tremendously. 

 I have also started UVing, which surprisingly enough has been a fairly smooth process. The image below shows some of my UV maps for the pillars on the front of the building. I have also stacked the pillars on top of each other since they will all be receiving the same texture. I will be doing this for all my models that will receive the same texture to save map space and to make texturing a little bit easier.

Here is a little bit of a closer look at the roof that I have been spending some time on. I also have it UVed already but I would like to clean it up a little bit. As you can see the roof kind of flares out at the bottom and has slight curvature all throughout. I spent a good amount of time on this as I mentioned earlier but I also spent a lot of time on the curved pipe shapes on the roof as well. The pipes did not work well with the lattice tool so I had to move around a lot of edge loops, vertices, and faces to get a smooth feel to them.

 Here is a shot of some of the other pillars and walls that I UVed too. They were not too much of a challenge because they were just cubes so it made UVing fairly simple. After I had got done with my overall model I went through and noticed I was still pretty under poly count, so I went ahead and added in bevels to the pillars. I just added in small bevels to make the pillars feel a bit more round and give it more of that Blizzard feel.

In my upcoming time I'm going to start some of the texturing for the building, which I'm anticipating will be the hardest part of the building so far. I also plan on finishing up my UV's for the rest of the building. Lastly, there are some smaller details of the building that I would like to model and add in because I want to keep as close to my reference as possible. 

Game Scene: References & Starting to Model

So my group and I decided to do an Overwatch scene on the map Hanamura. This is the building that I plan to do in the scene. My other group members are planning on doing other surrounding buildings so that the scene really feels like it goes well together. I went into the spectator mode in the game and took a bunch of screenshots of all different angles of the building. Here are a couple of my references that I am using to guide me in my modeling:

Here is what I have modeled so far for the building. The building itself is going to be based on mostly texturing and that's what will really bring it to life. But as I was looking at it, I noticed it's a lot of basic shapes. So my group and I are planning to have everything modeled and UVed by next wednesday, November 16th. So we can just spend most of our time texturing and really giving our buildings that Blizzard style/feel.

I have the basic shape and feel of the building going right now. I'm going to start working on modeling the smaller details of the building and the roof for the building. I will also have to play around the corners of the building because it has a slight curvature around the corners of the building, which provides a nice feel to it. I also added some standard shaders to different areas of the building to help me identify which texture it will be using. The brown will be wood, the dark gray is where I will be putting in the stone texture, and the white will be where the white walls will be textured in. 

Dining Scene Presentation & Final Renders

Diner: Modeling,Texturing, Lighting Progress

This is what I have added to my scene so far. I've done a pretty good amount of work over this last week. Overall I finished up most of the UVing for my scene and started texturing throughout my scene. I've also decided to add a little bit more personality to my diner by adding some influence from the Fallout Series. I'm going for a diner that would have been in the Fallout world before the nuclear fallout hit.

Here is my table that I have UVed out and added texture to. I did chrome skirts so the table better fit the theme and then textured the top and bottom. The UVing was a bit challenging to unwrap but other than that it was a smooth process. 

Here are my bar stools and my bar counter currently. I UVed and textured the bar stools completely now and I also added a bump map to the leather seat of the bar stools to help make it feel more realistic. I still have some work to do for the bar counter, in which I have to UV and texture the base but the top is all done.  

Here is a render of the new door I created for the diner. The black pane in the middle is actually a window but I still have to put in a sky dome so that the windows will show an outside view. I plan on adding the sky dome soon because I think it will add a lot of character to the scene.

Here is a render of the cola bottles I made. This is where the hints of the fallout universe start to come in. I used two different types of Nuka Cola which are very different. The left image is just regular Nuka Cola with is basically just like Coke. But the image on the right is Nuka Cola Quantum which is much more vibrant and radiant. It actually glows in the game which is why I modeled it this way. I made this by creating a mesh light for the object inside and the I increased the intensity of the light. 

The last thing I would like to show are these posters that I added in. These are posters also help tie together the theme I'm trying to achieve. These were fairly simple to make but I think they add a lot of character to the diner and they help achieve the overall theme of the scene.

Overall I would have to say my biggest challenge in the last week for the scene was the UVing. It took a while and was challenging to unwrap the objects in my scene. But doing so much of it helped understand how UVing works a bit better and will hopefully make the process quicker in the future.

That is some of the progress I have achieved in the last week. I also UVed my booths and my chairs but in the next week I need to texture them as well. For this last week I need to texture my building, add the sky dome to my scene, add some indoor lighting components into the diner, work on my overall lighting, and put a few small objects scattered throughout my scene to help tie it together.

Diner Progress: Modelling and UVing

This is my dining scene so far. Thus far I wanted to make sure that I had the core of my scene modeled. So I have modeled the bar stools, the tables, chairs, the booths and the bar area in the back. I also tried to add some windows but they are coming out more like mirrors than windows at the current moment. I've also done some various UVing throughout the scene. Here is an overall view of my scene:

Here are the bar stools and the bar that I have modeled for the scene so far. I gave the bottom part of the stool a chrome material to match my reference and really give it that 50's diner vibe. The cushion of the bars stools just have a standard shader on right now but I plan to UV and texture it.

Here is a closer look at my booths and my "windows". The windows are giving me some issues right now of being more reflective than I would like. I've tried some different things like playing with the material attributes and adding in different lights but neither worked. The booths are UVed but need to be textured still.

 Here is a look at my chairs and my tables. I still need to do some touch up work on my chairs but I also gave them some chromish attributes for the legs. The chairs and tables are UVed but still need to be textured. I added some ridges to the edges of the tables and to the bar so I can further push the idea that it's a 50's diner.

In the next week I would like to focus on completing the UV's and starting some texturing. But I would also like to start populating the scene with smaller items such as soda,plates,utensils, and other diner items. I would also like to start texturing the walls and floors for my diner because I feel like it would really start to bring the diner together.

Blocked Out Diner

I have blocked out the composition of my diner that I want to model. I'm going for a 50's diner. I composed the diner to have a more cozy feel. So everything is in a more compact space. I used one of my references to compose the booth and table section but I decided to add diner counter in the back to bring the whole thing together a bit more and add more of 50's diner feel to it. I'm definitely going to add pictures on the walls and add items onto the tables but didn't think it was necessary to get the over all feel for the composition. 

Grocery Shelf Assignment

For this project I created a grocery shelf with different types of grocery products on the shelf. In this I had to create six boxed items and three glass jar like items. I went for a more old/vintage theme with wood shelves and older products. One new tool I got to use was the bevel tool which helped me in creating my boxes edges. I also got a lot more practice with UVing and texturing during this project. 

I ran into a few maya crashes but saving often saved me from not losing a lot of work. I also ran into a few UVing issues but going back and just redoing the UV fixed up the UV's for me. I didn't run into too many issues with this assignment and kept a steady workflow for getting models done.

Table & Chair Assignment

In this project I created a table and chair which included texturing, UVing, Modeling, and making sure the dimensions for the table and chair were correct. The assignment took me a good amount of time and taught me a lot. 

One of the issues that I ran into the most was just trying to get the correct UV's for my objects. I solved this by carefully making sure that I was planar projecting correctly and that I was correctly cutting the right edge/edges of my UV, so it would unwrap correctly. 

Another challenging aspect of this assignment was making sure that all of the dimensions were correct and accurate to the references that I was using. The measure tool in Maya made this a bit easier on me by allowing me to measure very precisely.

I also ran into a few crashes along the way but frequent saving allowed me to not lose too much progress. Overall this project provided a good amount of challenge in both UV and Texturing, which taught me how to be more efficient those areas. It also taught me how being accurate to your references is very important.

Pencil Assignment

In this project I created a pencil. This assignment taught me how to create specular maps and bump maps. I also learned how to UV objects in my scene. I was also able to texture the pencil which is how I learned to create a bump map and specular map. One of the issues I initially ran into was that my crimp would not move with the rest of my pencil, but I went back to the tutorial and figured out how to fix it which was by deleting the history in my scene. The only other issue I had was that Maya crashed a few times, but I saved frequently so it wasn't a big deal.

Overall this assignment taught me a lot about various aspects of modeling especially UVing and texturing. Breaking down the pencil into several pieces also gave me  a new perspective that breaking down an object can help a lot when modeling. 

Primitives Assignment

This is my render of the primitives assignment. Which basically allowed us to learn the basic tools of Maya and use them in a creative way. Basically we could only use the pre-made primitives given to us and we could only scale, rotate, and move the objects around. So I created a scene based of those guidelines!

I arranged my scene to make the fountain the main focus of the scene with other objects around it. I put it in the center of the shot and the center of the scene to emphasize that it was the focus. I also used some leading lines from the shadows of the objects around it such as the trees and bench to help bring the viewers attention to the fountain. I chose this camera angle for the final render because I felt it brought out all of the dimensions of the objects very well and provided nice shadows throughout the scene.

The overall scene that I was trying to create was the center of a park. I did this by placing benches, trees and bushes throughout the scene. I further emphasized this by placing the benches around the fountain and walkways to the fountain, which you will often see in a park. I feel I accomplished creating a park because of the reasons I listed above.

The biggest issue I ran into was how was I going to create a fountain with basic shapes. So initially I tried to place water on the base of the cylinders of the fountain but it looked off. So I decided to change the actual cylinders themselves to water and implied that there was a base under that water. This worked out a lot better and looked a lot more like a fountain.

Overall I think this assignment allowed me to learn the basic tools of Maya well and also allowed me to be creative in a different way, which I enjoyed a lot!