Door developement

Ok so having decided we would probably do the blendshapes when and where we need them, I've had time to continue work on the front door. Basically it was too plain for an object that's going to be seen close up. I had an experiment with the planks on a one in / one out pattern, but it looks bad, so instead I drew all the planks out and defined the gaps between them. This looks a lot better. Then there was the question of the wood texture. Mayas default 3d wood texture looks aweful no matter how much you play around with it, so I downloaded a better one from www.cgtextures.com. It is subtle and looks so much better.

Then I had to play with the gold texture a bit more, because in the current lighting for my scene it shows up a nasty brown colour. In playing with the abient colour and reflectivity, I inevitabley made it look brighter than the sun, but after further playing it looks ok.

I also took the reflectivity off of the tile material, so the porch roof isn't so shiny. I also had to use the automatic mapping function on the small steps, as the texture wasn't quite working.

Lastly, I switched the statues around so that they point towards the door rather than away from it. (It just makes more sense, and leads your eye into the door more.)

I'm pretty happy to call the door finished now.

Door frame texture

Today was one of those days where I worked loads and got very little done. Using Hyper Realistic Creature Creation, (Alias), I attempted dealing with the painting weights using various reccomended MEL scripts and tools such as hold weights. All of which resulted in failure. However, I managed to secure a meeting with Alex tomorrow and he assures me he will be able to help.

So once again I ended up working on the door. Tried out the textures I wanted to and suprisingly I think the gold texture works a lot better than the tile texture. I decided not to bother experimenting with the wacky planks, as it's not really necissary and I'd rather save myself the time. I also pulled out the steps a bit more. I think it looks better, but it's never to late to change it.

Grass test

Ok, this has been way more stress than it's worth. I followed that tutorial and fitting grass into the scene is basically not going to happen. The plane is far too big, and fitting grass with a suitable density into it causes all sorts of problems. I.e. I would have to smooth off the whole plane creating unecissary polygons, I would have to have it on an entirely seperate render layer, and even then it would still cause the computer/render farm to crash. A small patch such as the above is do-able, though it can't really be rendered with mental ray, and placing patches all over it is quite a lot of unnecissary work.

So I've gone for the simple solution of ditching the whole fur/grass thing. The realistic grass it creates doesn't really fit the style anyway. Instead, Dan suggested I go to work in finer detail with the soft modification. I agree.

mental ray tests

I used Phil and the tutorial posted previously to do some mental ray tests, specifically focusing on global illumination. Under the current settings it takes a looong time even just to test render, but the results are immaculate. check this out compared to previous renders. I also wacked a grainy texture onto the tiles and walls. The top image, being the latter, has a colour adjustment on the grass as I've had endless comments about the grass on the others being way too deep.

full colour test

Soft modification and rearrainged trees

In response to Dans suggestions I re-arrainged the trees to be closer to the front of the building. I also applied his colour suggestions and I think it works quite nicely. Might still need some fine tuning and definately a grainy texture. I also used the soft modification tool to create some hills for the land surrounding the mansion. next step is to colour the ground.

early colour tests

so here are some early colour tests. No textures thus far, just trying to get the colour right. The first image is totally wrong, its screamingly loud and all I can see is orange tiles. The second image is simply way too purple, and is too rich in colour. The third is getting there, adding more red based the colours from Phils research into the villas. The fourth is more like what I was aiming for, adding a bit more orange to get that salmon colouring.

The balconies and gutters are still completely the wrong colour, they stick out way too much.

Also, I perhaps need to seperate the actual glass planes of the windows from the mesh and do something more 'windowlike' with them. (I.e. transparency? lights coming Through? Simple reflectivity? At least a different colouring.) Particularly with the windows on the side sections as they are completely lost in the colour having no window frames or anything.