Week 5

During this week I again focused on my statue I was creating in Mudbox, but I also decided to begin adding a landscape and background to my temple. I was shown a little bit about using a HDR image as the lighting and background so I though I would also give it a go. Using a tutorial I was able to create the indirect lighting, however, I ended up struggling to find a suitable image to fit my scene. As I has aiming to have my temple on a cliff or mountain side, I would require images of a similar scene, but I found it difficult to find any images that worked well. At one point I did find an image that somewhat worked alongside with my temple, but the image was at 4k quality. This meant the render time took a lot longer than it was previously and when I come to rendering out my animation, it would take a fairly long time.

Maya Tutorial

This is a quick attempt at using the HDRI map for indirect lighting. I used a HDRI map of some sky and clouds. I wouldn't use this image for my final scene due to it not fitting at all when I have my landscape.

It's not the biggest image of the render but you can see how the lighting is like. There isn't too much difference from the modelling scene which is useful, but there isn't much light within the temple. So I'll most likely put an ambient light source inside just to add some light.

Before I went hunting for HDRI maps, I began my work on my landscape. I had seen my peers creating landscapes from planes with lots of subdivisions, so I gave it a go as well. I made a plan about two, maybe three times the size of my temple and gave it subdivisions of 50 by 50. I then used the brush tool select the faces I wanted to alter. I played around with the tool for some time just so I can get an understanding of how I wanted to make my landscape look.

The plane I am going to turn into a landscape using the brush tool.

I put the subdivisions at 50 by 50 and made it so I will select the faces with the brush tool.

A quick test of what it like to use use the brush tool and to move the selected faces downwards.

This is my final landscape. I am happy with the outcome as it looks quite a bit like a mountainside, except for the bit at the very front. I wanted to make the edges curve downwards on all sides so that the camera doesn't see any edges of the plane. This also means I wouldn't show the very front of the scene in any camera angle as I don't want the front to be in shot at any point.

Lastly, whilst I was working on my statue in Mudbox, I was advised that instead of attempting to make the model like Zeus, instead I should design it to be a Satyr. This means I should try and add fur to the legs of my model, although I do need to remake the legs in either Mudbox or Maya. This is due to the me using the Andy Rig. The Andy Rig model has been designed so that it has clothes on, more specifically trousers and shoes. These are fairly noticeable on my model and I haven't been able to effectively remove them. So I can export my model as an .obj, import it into Maya and remake the leg. Then I'll have to take the statue back into Mudbox to sculpt it before once again transferring it into Maya to add fur and textures.