W.I.P. Old Street

[agentxi]

Here's a work in progress of what I've done so far.
It is an old street, I was inspired by the Concept Art from Hunchback of Notre Dame book. My reasons for chosing this has everything to do with composition, difficulty and a chance to show my modeling/texturing skills. I will be applying to film studios and probably some gaming companies in Canada with this once I am done with high hopes, but in all reality, it's not enough, I'll need 2-3 more pieces to add to my portfolio before a studio will consider me, but it never hurts trying asap

anyways, enough jibber jabber.

used with maya7, rendered in mental ray.
grey image: default shader render using mental ray.
white image: ambient occlusion setting/shows more details in the modeling.

grey
white

[wombie]

Its looking very good so far, nice detail and lighting. Can't wait to see it textured as well!

[unleash]

Nice work,
Looks very neat...im not going to comment on this one because i don't think i should if skillz compared...

Nice work, are you going to texture this one or not? O and is your final render with HDRI or not?

[turvas]

Thats some serious s*** man. Real pro

[agentxi]

thank you all for your kind words. Unleash comments and critiques are always welcome with me.

As far as the lighting goes, the grey image i used Mental Ray, with Final Gathering, Global Illumination, and Image Based Lighting (aka hdri)

my lighting will need a lot of work and touching up on down the road, but i wanted a solid place to start. the lighting will change quite a bit once i start adding my textures. right now it's pretty much just the default lambert shader on all the objects... the scene will look completely different once i add textures, bump maps, specularity, reflections, etc...

The white image i used a mental ray shader called mib_amb_occlusion

it basically creates self shadowing or some such thing...i'm not entirely sure how to explain the shader :s, i'm using it to help show the details in the models


anyways, I guess i'll keep posting up my progress as i kinda get to the "next stage" of things...

[unleash]

Looking forward to see the progress
I and an idea, don't know if you can use it, but maybe you can add like oil lamps to the fronts of the buldings.....like at the doors or on a pole or whatever!! And if you have some time left you could maybe make cables in the air between the buildings like washing lines.

Well hope those helps, it would i think give you an good overal lighting source...except if you want o keep it a bit mystic the nyou could like....well that some of them are "disabled" .

[Mayor]

Great work man, how many hours did you put into it?

[agentxi]

unleash:

maybe you can add like oil lamps to the fronts of the buildings.....like at the doors or on a pole or whatever!! And if you have some time left you could maybe make cables in the air between the buildings like washing lines.

I have thought about the street lamps but in the end I've decided that it would break up the composition of the image too much and I have considered your suggestion about the wash lines going across the street, but I would have to conclude that it would break up the composition too much as well... I will post the actual reference image i am using in the next day or so, so you can see kinda what i am going for as far as the image and composition goes.


Mayor: I have spent roughly 2-3months on this, but it has been only part time and in my free time...I am guessing I have another 2-3 months of work to do on this piece. I am planning on adding small things like flies buzzing over the barrels a bee landing in the flower box in the top right corner, animating wind blowing the awning cloth, wind affecting the signs...making water ripple, etc...

I have quite a bit of work to do, but i hope it will all pay off in the end

[turvas]

One idea: Add another (maybe low detailed) house in the back. Cuz between the last houses you can see the sky down to the street, which is RAAAaaaaaaare even in old towns. Get my point?

[Chamenas]

I want to see it textured!!! , great stuff though, no complaints.

[agentxi]

turvas: i see your point, and I have considered this for many hours myself before I started the project, but as i have mentioned earlier...I did this image because of composition.
The logical thing to do is to have houses all the way down the street, and if i do this I am sure it will turn out fine. But in the viewpoint of composition, leaving the sky in there, creates "lines" for which your eyes will follow back down from the top of the image, down the the center, and even to the bottom, but by also having that 2nd awning in there, it will divert your eye back to my central object in the scene, which is the bakery, (...the large building on the left side with the awning). All lines (whether obvious or sublte) will lead your eyes back to the central subject in the scene/composition.

chamenas: thanks, I will be texturing it once i am done modeling the scene, which i think will take a few more weeks to fully finish the detailed modeling process.

[agentxi]

well for those of you who are interested. I will kinda post up some steps i did for how i am creating my project. This might give some sort of insight as to how i process things both physically and mentally (tee hee hee, i said mentally)

so I first started the project I was going in a totally different direction, but after much thought and discussion I have ended up doing what i am doing now...so here's what my street first started off looking like.
version 1 street I did not like this scene because the composition was very weak.


while I was discussing "composition" with a friend, we were flipping through some Disney concept art books to see what makes a strong scene strong composition-wise, and I came across this image, and I fell in love right away, it's from the Hunchback of Notre Dame (sweet movie btw) *inserts copyright of Walt Disney Pictures here

I love pretty much everything about this image, I love the composition, atmosphere and layout this image has... that and I'm a big fan of anything from a fantasy era. Now studying and perfecting composition can be a life long journey but seeing that I would like to get a job within a year, I figured it would be easier to use an existing piece.

so my very first step after deciding what I want to do is called "Grey blocking"

Grey blocking is basically what it sounds like, blocking out the scene and it's grey because of the default maya lambert shader. My goal for this is to mimic the composition and generalize the shapes I see in the reference image. This will help me with the scale of the scene and to get the overall feel for it.

I like to do everything in "passes". My First Pass is usually a very generalized version of what I want and it's very easy to tweak and change things if needed. (saves time too if you need to change a full composition)

The Second Pass will be much of the same, but will include more details, things like, blocked out versions of windows and doors or low poly props, etc... Like in this image

Reason for having so much detail in the bottom right corner of the screen is because I was unsure as to how I should do the wall stones, so I just modeled a small section to see how it would look

and finally to where I am now.
I pick a section in the scene and just start increasing the models details, until I get it to how I like it, then go on to another section of the scene and do the same thing. I have already done the bottom right corner, cobblestones and added details to the props, I am currently on the bakery building.

bakery details image

I know I know, long post, too much reading...but I used pictures

*now I should add that this is the way I do things, I am in no way saying this is THE way or the ONLY way to create scenes, I am just giving insight into my work process.

[tamlin]

A really interesting post - and that's coming from someone who has never attempted 3D work, and wouldn't even know where to start. I think it's always interesting to find out how other people work and the approach they take to making images. This is almost a tutorial in its own right!

[Chamenas]

very, nice. As Tamlin said, with some expanding could make a great tutorial. I just wish I didn't try to do so many things, 3D is something I'd love to do.

[unleash]

It indeed is very handy!! I figured out what most of my scenes where missing, composition, and through this kind of post you can learn very helpfull things and tricks!! So many thanks from me.....I can't give any rep to you now but I one you one or two

Like the compostion to, but I do think that a wasingline could make the image even better. Not that I don't agree with your decisioun thought its your scene. But i had an idea, like out up a washline(or however those things are called) and put a prop on it that doesn't fit in the time like an mini robot. But make it very small. I think that would get you an great effect!!

Too much text there, but's worth reading i think I typed it*duh*