Modelling Showreel May

Finally finished putting together a modelling showreel of my recent 3D work. My poor pc has been rendering all day and all night for the past week. I was hoping to have this done and up by Wednesday but some shots required tweaking and re-rendering and then I decided to add a couple more shots to better showoff some of the pieces featured.

Churchyard

Adding the final elements to this scene now. The tree in the foreground spoils this view but everything else seems to be working well. I'm thinking of building another type of tree to add variety to the scene and fill some of the empty space. I also think adding some subtle grass pieces around the fence and graves will help tie everything together and ground all of these elements.

Last push to finish this and then I can start something new. I'm thinking I may choose a shorter project like a vehicle to keep things fresh. I also keep thinking about doing some more z-brush work but I'd like to have more practice with hard surface modelling first.

Rebuilding A Tree

I'm reusing the tree I built for my Lancia scene. However I wasn't satisfied with how it look so spent some time today rebuilding and recreating the texture maps. I still isn't perfect but it's a vast improvement on the original and it's has a more efficient use of polygons.

You can see from the images that I've also added a sky and treeline. I wanted to see how everything was starting to feel together. I've still got to finishing laying out the gravestones properly and add a front fence. I would like to add some ivy to the surrounding wall and some of the graves to add some variety.

Building A Graveyard

Today I finished texturing the gravestones and started building my graveyard. It's tricky trying to create a unique looking area using limited pieces. You can see from the pic that it's looking alright so far. The stones still need some moving to create tilts and leans that would appear over long periods of time. I was hoping the grass tile would look less like a tile and more natural once the stones were in place but unfortunately it still has a flat repetitive feel. I'm not sure there is anything I can do to overcome that. Creating a unique texture for the entire area would be costly requiring a huge image and file size to generate enough detail. I'm also concerned the polygon count is going to be huge for this scene once all the gravestones are setup. I've still got trees and an outer fence to add. My poor PC will struggle when it comes to rendering the final video I'm sure.

Farnham Royal Church

As I was rendering these screenshots for this blog post I noticed a few areas of the texture that wasn't quite working correctly. Three hours later and I've finished tweaking for now and feel happy enough to move on to the next piece of the environment. I find myself losing track of time when I'm engrossed in something creative and hours just pass by in an instant. I just noticed the roof is very dark when compared with my reference photographs but that's a tweak I'll save till tomorrow.

I have started building some gravestone assets to populate the churchyard. Texturing these should be a far simpler and quicker process. All that will then remain is to create the large ground areas like grass and gravel, add a skybox, a fence and import some of the tree's I've already built.

Texturing The Church

This church model is nearing completion now. You can see from the above image that most of the texture work is done. I still need to add the stone detail and texture on the hall section shown above and also need to texture the second hall building is behind which isn't visible. This shouldn't take too long and I can finally call this piece finished. I'm excited to start work on some smaller elements for the scene. Working on this large piece has involved a lot of time and patience but thankfully it's beginning to show. This should make for a great portfolio piece!

Church Update

Progress is starting to pick up with this church piece. I've been working on it whilst working on my poster work to break up the projects.

The tower is finally textured and what a massive jump the piece makes having this in place. I find the modelling aspect to be slow going at times but find myself getting really absorbed with texturing often spending hours tweaking and rendering.

I'm building the church in three major sections; the tower, the main hall (shown above) and a second hall which is still to be built.

I have been spending far too much time revisiting the real church and wandering around the graveyard this week getting new photos for reference usually for specific windows and also taking pics of interesting graves that catch my eye. Frustratingly, most of the windows are unique taking similar elements and shapes and using them in different ways. This slows me down as I find myself wanting to accurately capture the variety in the architecture. I'm sure I would have to sacrifice this variety if this model were used in a game engine to enable it to be built in a more efficient manner.

There is one more window to be built on the main hall, and some smaller windows and a door on the rear side.

Bell Tower Construction

Here's an update of my current project. It's taking a while to build so I thought I would show some screen captures of the 3D model. I have just finished these ornate stone windows which sit on each side of the top of the bell tower.

The main arches were very challenging as they have a lot of detail in the ridges. Here I've built the main areas and I'll include the finer details in the texture and normal map. I have to keep tweaking areas to all the pieces sit correctly against one another.

With the arches finished I now have to integrate them into the tower and then mirror the sides correctly. I love using symmetry to quickly build up the model. That's definitely a positive of architecture that you re-use your pieces to build the larger structure and have a massive jump going from just having a few detailed pieces to having this huge intricate structure appear within minutes.

Gate House

I've started a new piece focusing on practicing my architecture and building skills. I've chosen to build a church and graveyard. I wanted something old with a lot of history and traditional building materials. The pictures above show the small gate building to the graveyard. I'm really happy with this how this turned out for a first go at a structure. The polycount is really low with all the details baked on using high poly models.

The tiles are really effective and are completely built from scratch. I built a full set of tiles which I spent some time rotating and moving them to give the random appearance. I then painted the tiles using some brushes.

I created the wood effects using several wood tiles and overlay with a few details such as the carvings taken from photo reference.

There is a gate that I've modelled but is not textured yet. It should be relatively simple to add that in tomorrow. My next goal is to build and begin texturing the clock tower.

More Lancia Texture Work

I think I'm finally happy with the textures on this model now. After hours of experimenting, re-baking, re-texturing, re-sizing and more I can call this a finished piece. I'll need to render a video turntable to show the car off properly.

Lancia Texture Polishing

I have spent the last few days remapping and retexturing the Lancia rally car. It's now covered in a nice layer of dust, I've added decals which really add to the depth and detail. Areas like the front grills have been reworked. The textures are more efficient and look better than ever. I also cleaned up some geometry and added a few minor details like a steering wheel, rear view mirror and dashboard just to give the window silhouettes some nice shapes.

Carriage Textures

I've spent the past few days pulling this model apart and building high poly parts. I'm getting very efficient UV mapping each model but as always each model throws up different problems to solve. I tried to use fewer texture maps with this piece even though that meant re-baking several times after working out better ways of mirroring and reusing parts. I changed the rear suspension to be the same as the front. I have found some versions of this carriage use this system and others have a more complicated different rear suspension method. I decided it would be more efficient to re-use the front suspension. This is the more likely solution if I were building this model for a game engine.

I'm not sure if I took the mud layers too far but I like the grimey used look. This carriage has been places!

Next I will be building a horse, reigns, and driver. I think I'll start on the driver tomorrow. It's been a while since I have done any organic modelling so that will bring some new challenges.

Brougham Carriage Model

This is the project I have been working on for the past week. I wanted to wait till I had it UV mapped and applied basic textures before I shared it. I found the undercarriage suspension tricky areas to get my head around. It has a lot of complex parts and finding good reference was tricky. Luckily I came across a blog in America who specialised in restoring carriages and wagons. I was even luckier to find they were also working on the same model of carriage. Good quality reference is always invaluable. I could make parts up and most people would be none the wiser but I can be a perfectionist with a strong desire to capture everything I create in a realistic manner. That meant getting my head around leaf spring engineering. I think I know how leaf spring suspension works now!

The next stage is to go back in and start building high poly models of the pieces. Then bake on some nice normal maps. After that I can apply proper textures. I like the idea of having a shiny carriage but I know it would push my skills further to add dirt scratches.

P99 (correctly named)

I've been finishing off this model finally! Tidied up a lot of the normal maps and added small little details like the nuts and bolts. Built bullets which came out nicely. They add some interest to the image which I'm really pleased about. I can't decide if I prefer the gun with or without the silencer.

I shall be focusing on my 3D modelling for the next week. Hoping to start a new project soon.

Mud & Paint

 

 

I finally have had the time to get back to my Lancia. He's been unloved and neglected for at least a month.

Spent a while adding the paint lines in. As simple as they are, I was being too much of a perfectionist in positioning them and having be correct to the reference photos. I think this second attempt at mud is better but it still isn't quite there. The original rally car is covered in sponsor decals but I decided against them. Most would be covered by the mud anyway. :P

The car has a lot of life and history to it now. Actually feels a part of the environment. I tweaked the shadows and reflections again. I think they're right now.

My next task is to give more life to the muddy road by adding tire tracks and finally recreate some stronger grass textures. I also feel I could do with some bushes to fill out the distant background.

Updating my wood environment

The grass is the last bit I want to tweak. It looks pretty naff to be fair and really stands out now I've darkened the mud and made the hills more grassy. Also the bushes in the final shot look awful blacked out from the shadow. I'm really struggling to get my lighting correct despite reading a book on rendering and global illumination. Still on the plus side the scene looks stronger than ever. Just the car mud and decals to go!

Sky and Treeline changes

Spent a few hours last night cleaning up the treeline alpha and tweaking the saturation making them look like a background element. I spent a great deal of time getting the reflections right on the windows. It took me a lot of experimenting to realise the falloff map needed to be tweaked to get a higher amount of reflection. With that changed I felt a cloudy sky would have more interesting elements to reflect so changed out the old clear blue sky.

The scene feels more alive and interesting now with car feeling like it is a part of the environment. My next tasks will be to change the ground plane, make the mud more darker damper. I also want to decorate the car with it's rally colours, decals and some splashes of mud.

Lancia Body Work

Baked a the high poly normal maps for the doors and rear panels of the car. Just need to do the bonnet and boot door and then I can begin working on the decals, paint and finally mud.

Lancia Feedback Changes

I've been improving my portfiolio pieces. Today focusing on the car. I have re modelled a high poly body that I have begun baking onto the low poly version. One of the big points in my feedback was that the paint didn't look like car paint, and the reflections weren't strong enough to make the car feel like it was a part of the environment. I've started playing around with those areas but it's still not right.

Improving my PPK textures

I spent my day off re-modelling and recreating my normal maps for my PPK portfolio piece. With just the ambient occlusion, normal map and simple noise texture the model has come on leaps and bounds. I'll finish creating the high poly pieces for the other parts when I get some more free time.