Endings and Beginnings.

So today is my "last" day of sabbatical.  

I am happy with what I have accomplished and learned.

I continue to tweak my western scene, though it is very subtle stuff now, and I continue to work in Maya.  Today I spent it working with different mental ray shaders and some more detail modeling of my boat.

Although my sabbatical is complete I will continue to update this as I fix things and learn things.

Old West - Minor Adjustments

I just modified a few things for comparison:

Increased the indoor saloon lights a little
Added some heat distortion in the distance
Added a bit more reflection in the saloon windows on the second floor

Western Scene Update

Updated scene:

• adjusted the lighting a little and composited it together.
• Moved a few objects around in the background - mainly to avoid making the cowboy have stuff sticking out of his head.
• Adjusted the displacement a bit on the ground
• Did some comp painting for shadows and such
• Added a bit of glare glow around bell tower
• bunch of other stuff I can't remember.. HA!

Maya Work - Boat

Did some learning today and some work on the boat.

Added a mesh of rope, and played with the canopy tent.  I also added little details here and there.

Most of the rope and cloth stuff was done with NCloth.

Threw on basic materials just so I could see the different objects better.

Minor Western Fixes

Just a few updates today.

• I updated the tree for a few more branches.  I also added some segments and roughness to some of the larger branches.  I added a bump map to the bark as well.
• I angled some of the branches more toward the focus of the scene.
• Adjusted the Final Gather lighting a little.
• Adjusted the ground plane texture a little.
• Changed the texture of the mid-ground wagon.  I made it grayer and older looking so it did not blend with the buildings behind it.
• Added a few extra shrubs in the background.

An Old Dusty Road

What a day... Today was one of those days that I felt I worked and worked and barely accomplished anything.   I worked on re-making the ground plane wagon tracks today.   Still not sure I am happy with what I ended up with.  Will have to wait for some critique.  I need fresh eyes on it.

Maya - Working on the Boat

Took a break from the western scene while I wait for crits.

Worked mainly in Maya and modeling today.  Still can model about 4-6 times as fast in Max.  Mainly because of the many tools that make modeling easy in Max... they don't exist in Maya without scripts.  Very odd.

Fishing Boat

Some more progress on this boat.  Not as much as I would like, but I had to go back and fix some mistakes that were made... and then Maya crashed and had to do a bunch of it again...sigh... Maya doesn't autobak like Max does either.

Western Scene - new composition

Updated the composition a little:

• Moved the cowboy around a bit
• Adjusted the horse in background and added another.
• Removed a couple of things that were interfering with the cowboy.
• Moved the foreground tree to become more prominent.
• Adjusted some of the church and post office textures so they don't "glow."

Continued to play with lighting:

• Blued the shadows some.
• Lengthened the shadows
• Tried a new composition method by dividing FG, Direct Light, and Sun FG and compositing together.

Maya Effects

working on sparks ...in Maya

Quick update

Continuing to work in Maya's Effects.  Nothing wild and crazy.. just watching lots of instruction.

Continuing to tweak the Western scene as well.  I liked the previous posts, but got some really good critiques that I will be applying in the next day or so.  More then.

Western Scene Update

Some work with compositing.   This image is the adjusted composition with the color of the render.

Basic Composition

 This image is with the generic sepia applied... Just showing this for contrast purposes

Generic Sepia applied

 I did not want to use just plain sepia.  I want color in the image as well.  I want more focus into the depth of the scene, so am bringing the color forward with a z-depth application of the sepia look.

Z-depth Sepia

 Same as above with the windows' color brought out more for contrast.

Z-Depth Sepia and Window Adjustment

May work on a bit of scratches and old photo edges.. .not sure.

Maya Materials and Effects

Played some with effects today.  I took a break from listening and just messed around some with the materials and fire effect.

I was able to navigate and create a moderately complex shading system and know what I was doing.  Ha!

This is the texture layout for the burning wood.

Below is a still from the fire animation I tinkered around with today.

Maya Dynamics

Starting to learn Maya Dynamics today.   This stuff excites me.  Particles, soft bodies, physics, liquids, etc.

I haven't posted on the western scene for a couple of days because I am waiting for some more feedback on the cgtalk forum.   I will definitely post more tomorrow.

It's week 9 at school and only a month till my sabbatical is over... Panic time?    I feel pretty good about what I have covered and done so far, so not really.

Maya Day - Animation

Spent most of my time yesterday working on the gritty stuff for Animation in Maya.  Graph Editor, set keys, set driven, etc.

It was a bit dry because I did not want to skip through it in case I would miss something.

Also spent some time rendering out the western image in high resolution.  Takes about 1.5 hour for that one frame to calculate all the GI and FG and then render!

Maya - Dock

some work in Maya
Very basic (and bad) lighting I just threw in so I could see stuff
Boat is incomplete
Nothing is really textured.

Adding Horse to new Camera Angle

Added the horse, tweaked a bit in Photoshop with various adjustment layers.

Camera Angle and Lighting

Working on the composition of image some more.

Moved the Wagon around a bit as well as the camera.

Still tweaking...

but am stopping for the day and wanted to post something up.

Worked on some models and materials of the buildings.
Worked on position, lighting, and materials of cowboy and horse.

Threw together very quick comp to see how it is coming along....

Materials & Composition.

Today I am working on modifying the composition of the western scene.  I like the focal point of the cowboy, but he is getting lost in all the textures of the background.  I am considering a couple of things.

• Manipulating the models' position a bit to get better composition
• Changing some of the distant materials to be more plain and desaturated.
• Adjusting the cowboy's texture.
• Adding the cowboy as a layer instead of rendering as part of scene - enable me to adjust background easier.

Maya Update

I worked with Maya quite a bit today.  I had short periods (and really long) of time that I was waiting for my Western Scene to test render.... so I opened up Maya.

I just finished going through Lights in Maya and was going to start Animation.  With all the stopping and checking the rendering progress, I decided not to do lessons.  I ended up starting a "simple" scene and working on it.  I will post some rough screen shots tomorrow as all the work is on the laptop.  

Working free hand is a good way to see how well I know it.  For the most part, modeling is pretty smooth.  I may not use all the fancy tools yet, but I am getting done what I need.  Materials - will need some more practice and some work on the Mental Ray materials in Maya... their names are much different than in Max.

My simple scene is a old dock with a boat in the distance.  Images tomorrow possibly.

Working with Global Illumination

Some lighting updates.   worked with Global Illumination and photons.  Lots of rendering and waiting today.

Final Gather Based on HDRI image

Global Illumination only.  10,000,000 photons 

Final Gather and Global Illumination combined.

And as I finished this... I realized I had not unhidden some of the models:  curtains, posters, pebbles, shrubs.  NUTS!   Those Global Illumination calculations take about 3/4 hour to render!

No image today

Still working on the lighting.  Who new a sunset would cause so much hassle?  Learning stuff... and that it the whole point anyway.

Continuing with Maya as well.  Have gotten a good over view of materials and shaders as well as lighting.
Nothing to visually post for that.    I have passed all the quizzes and tests though!

Basic Composition Update

Put in the sunset.
No depth of field yet.
Added Ambient Occlusion
Little bit of dust/depth fog.
Little bit of color adjustment
Added a bit of glare around the church top.

Adjusted Lighting

tweaked the lighting some based on some critique.

New Composition

Some things done recently:
Added the new horse and rider
Added a couple of tumbleweeds
Adjusted the comp so the lit windows are only on the unlit side of the building
Added some Ambient Occlusion - subtle shadows
Added a bit of glare from the sun.
And the usual composition stuff:  Saturation, DOF, Dust layer, etc.

I may also post various locations and direction of the horse and rider later.

Adding the Horse and Rider.

Couple of things on this update
Threw in a quick rider and horse. Very basic texture - just some basic matte with multi-subobject material on character. Very basic pose and horse is not posed at all yet. I need to bring the horse's head to the camera left a bit and down as well as adjusting the legs some. No saddle has been added either. I just wanted to throw this up to see how the focus is looking. I think I may need to actually push the rider and horse back into the scene a bit more.

I don't think I will need much detail in the texture for the sunset shot, but the daylight one, I will need it more. I will also need more work on the modeling for the daylight scene.

I also dropped the light in the saloon another 30%.

Discussion of Style

On my posts at CGtalk.com [Link], there has been some differing opinions on the lighting of the scene and the style of the image.   My post in response follows:

My goal is a stylized realism.... Not sure that makes sense to anyone but me. Maybe 80-90 percent real looking with artistic license for the rest. The lighting of the interior of the saloon... I will probably drop that down a lot more.. right now it's at 66%, I will probably drop it to about 30% or so. I would like to end up with a colored old photo look. Sort of similar to the sepia photos of old, but with some color thrown in.

To me, the image is too saturated for my liking, but I will be fixing that in Pshop in post. I also plan on adding the dust and Depth of Field as in my test image above. I will play around with some glare around the church bell too. 

Horse - Maya UV mapping

Ok... Maya UV mapping is pretty old school.  No pelt mapping, No quick way to do an organic object.  It isn't hard, but it goes back to the initial Unwrap techniques of using cylinders, spheres and planar mapping.  In 3dsmax I could have unwrapped this horse in about 20 minutes easy.   In Maya, it took me about 2 hours... and I mostly knew what I was doing.

I have yet to come to something that in my opinion is easier to do in Maya than Max.

Horse - in Maya

So I continue to work in Maya as well.
I decided to create a new horse for the western scene.  So I did this low poly one in Maya  Took about 6 hours... getting faster and more comfortable with the tools.

Note to self.... don't use Maya's Mirror Tool.. just duplicate.

window updates

Adding some light and models to the interior of the saloon.

First image:   pure comp, no adjustment to lighting.

Second image:  basic comp with some adjustment to saloon lighting.

Maya - Modeling

I have finished my first complete model with Maya.
This is the Digital Tutors Maya 2012 modeling project.

I feel like I am pretty comfortable, though not fast, with modeling in Maya.

Sunset - New Lighting.

Here is an updated scene. Adjusted the light as per suggested. Added a few objects in foreground and messed up fence more.

This shot is without any post work.

Composition in Photoshop

Today was a bit slow.   Lots of waiting for rendering because I put all the settings up to high quality.

I ended up modifying a couple of models:  the ground plane, fixed some issues in saloon windows and grain store windows  [NOTE:  the windows that come with max have a lot of flipped faces]

I have decided to work with 2 different scenes:  a sunset and a noon-day one.

Tried my hand at compositing in Photoshop today and worked on the sunset.  This is were I am so far.  I need some critique for this part.  I am sort of waffling on the sunset scene now that I see it.

Lots of color adjustment, background composite, Photo-filter for warmth.  Some Depth of Field and Haze.

Background Changes

changed the rocks some... added a few more. modified the textures for variation.
Adjusted the cactus height.

Updates - Dirt & Horse

The last day and a half have been productive.  The render shows the following updates:

• Background hills have gotten an overall.  Added rocks, roughed up the terrain, and added a lot more shrubs.  Moved around the cacti some.
• Adjusted the texture of the dirt road some to make the grooves more obvious.  
• Unwrapped, textured (in Mudbox), and posed the horse.  I ended up converting the horse to editable poly instead of skinning forever.  Much faster that way.  This could be a problem if I need to animate it, but for now I am aiming for a still.
• Also added bridle and saddle to the horse.  The models for these are simple and only meant to be seen from afar.

I think my next step is to start playing with the light direction.

Back from Vacation.

I was away the beginning of this week so did not get anything posted or done.

I am going to work a bit on the background today.

Buildings Textured.

Ok.  I think all the buildings are textured.  The hotel and building behind it are meant to be newer buildings and thus, the cleaner wood.

I still have the horse to do, though I am going to also rig it a bit and pose the horse with it's head down.  I probably also need to put something on it.  I may try to get away with a blanket, but may need to model a saddle and simple bridle for it.

There are probably other things that I have missed texturing, so will have to look around.
I also want to add a couple of larger rocks.  I am planning on putting one near the water trough near the saloon.

I also have a stagecoach that I could put in the scene, but I am not sure where I should put it yet.

Just a little change...

Updated the wagon, moved tree around.

Last update for the day.

Some more work this evening.

• Aged some of the buildings a bit more.
• Modified the texture and model of the foreground wagon.
• Moved around tree a bit

Roof Adjustments and Model Manipulation

I worked on Maya some today.  Not bad.  I feel like I am getting a hang of the tools.  It is just a matter of finding them.

I fixed the roofs.   I couldn't let them go.

I also adjusted some of the positions of the buildings on the right side of the street.

And I dropped the camera a little lower so it is more of a point of view shot.

Texturing and Modeling Update

Added Texture to Church, Post Office, and Barber. Also added a few extra models to those 3 buildings. I still need to adjust the roofs.  The church has some gaps on it's upper edge.  The textures for the post office and barber, I just don't like once it was in the scene.  I will have to change those.

Over on cgtalk.com, it was suggested to add the extra wagon in the foreground.  I like what it does for the foreground, but I am not sure of it's placement.

I have 2 more buildings to texture and then I am going to start working on the lighting.

Texture WIP

Texture WIP update

Added texture to some buildings in the back and middle ground.
Swapped out tree with Mesquite tree
Added Cactus

Texture WIP

New Trees!

So I came out the weekend with some great ideas.   I really liked the Mesquite Tree.

I found that the Mesquite was a native Arizona desert tree and that it often served as a nursey for new cactus, protecting them from the sun:

http://lowenddslr.com/photos/sabino-canyon-nursery-tree.php

I had also found some free script plugins that helped create the base tree shape.  One of them did not work well with 3dsmax 2012 and I had to adjust the script some.

Using the script, I was able to get the basic shape and branches of the tree complete very quickly.  The resulting mesh was a bit messy so I ended up doing a lot of editing and cleaning up.   Soon I had my mesquite tree, modeled and textured.  3 Hours!

I was on a roll, so I added some cacti and this is what I ended up with:

Cactus and Mesquite

Trees ... A tragedy

At first I wasn't going to work any more on the tree that I had in the scene.  But after some unwrapping and texturing difficulties in Mudbox, I decided to take the tree further and add leaves.

I had done some research and looked up Arizona Trees and had chosen a Black Walnut.  Using reference, I made my tree a black walnut.

This was the result of about 5-6 hours work.  A good portion of the branches were hand created and placed.   I placed about 80% of the leaves manually, with the last 20% I used particles to fill in the tree.  This was a crazy amount of work that was fairly tedious.  

I posted this tree on CGtalk and got some comments back:   'Wrong kind of tree!  Doesn't look like a desert."  It was suggested to make the tree look more scraggled and thin, less leaves and shorter.  Maybe swap out for cactus.

This was great criticism.  I can't believe I had missed it, but my heart dropped.... that was 6 hours of work!  I went into the weekend and did some research.... 

Texture Progress

Alright, here is a Texture WIP.

The Saloon (my hero building) took about 2 days to texture.

The ground plane was textured in about a day.  This was actually done prior to the sabbatical.  I used it to become more familiar with Vertex Painting in 3ds max.  I then demonstrated it in class.

All the little stuff - barrels, net, buckets, etc are containers and took about a day to texture.

Each building in the front third of the scene is taking about a day to completely UV Map and texture.

Right now, I am working on the tree. It is taking longer than I expected as I am painting it in Mudbox. I have discovered minor modeling and uv mapping issues that have set me back.

Texture WIP

--- Side note: The red building in the back was just a quick color assignment but gives me the flash of the old Clint Eastwood movie "High Plains Drifter" when the entire town is painted red.

Starting Point for Sabbatical

This the level of modeling I had complete as I started.

Modeling WIP

Concept

The image of the Old West environment is based around the 1840's and is located in the Arizona desert.

I am not completely sure what type of lighting I am going to use.  Currently I am thinking dusk, with the sun shining toward the camera through some of the roof tops of the buildings.  Although today, I thought I may also try to mimic an old sepia photograph.  We shall see...

The image will be a still but I have the possibility of drifting the camera a bit - although that will mean animating some of the objects in the scene:  tumbleweeds, cloth, etc.

Next post I'll show the progress that I started with 2 weeks ago when I started the sabbatical.

Starting My Sabbatical

I am about 2.5 weeks into a sabbatical.  I have a lot I want to do during this time.  My focus will be on two main areas:

• Completing my old west town 
• Learning Maya

I have worked on my old west town for about a year.  Prior to starting the sabbatical, I had about 90% of the modeling complete.  None of the texturing or lighting was started.  

I original started working on this scene for several reasons.  I often teach an Advanced Texturing & Lighting class and expect my students to build an elaborate environment to demonstrate texturing and lighting techniques using mental ray.  Second, I found I was demonstrating how to use some tools in 3ds max for modeling and texturing and some of the buildings in this scene just sort of grew out of those demonstrations.   Lastly, I have always loved western stories, environments and ambiance of that period.  

I am learning Maya mainly to expand my knowledge, to make myself more rounded as a teacher and 3D artist.  I am finding it a very interesting experience.   As some one who has used 3dsmax since it was in it's DOS days, switching to another 3D package has its challenges.  I know what I want to do often times, but the vocabulary and tools are a little different.  I am spending most of my time finding what tools are called and their locations.  I already have the actual skills.

Anyway, that is a quick summary.  I will be posting WIP here often.  I am also posting these on cgtalk.com as well.