2D Art Week 05

Original John Berkey Illustration

For this week, we took an illustration by John Berkey and recreated the perspective and lighting in maya. The piece I chose had a one-point perspective.  I modeled the elements of the painting using simple shapes.

After I rendered out the shot in black and white, I put it into photoshop to paint over while using the painting as a color reference.  I lowered the opacity of the layer and cut out the background so I could make a gradient for the sky and stars.

I then painted the trees using 3 shades of green (light yellow green, mid-yellow green, dark-blue green).

I did the same for the snow: painting in three shades of white/gray/blue with light, mid and darker values mixed with yellow.

After the trees and ground, I painted in the car with a light gray and yellow/orange as highlight and specular.

Finally I painted over the house model using warm light coming from the windows and lantern.

3D Art Week 05

Modeling a Cannon in Maya

First I started with importing the image planes and putting them in orthographic views (side and top down).  I placed them perpendicular to each other and centered at the origin.

I created a 10 sided cylinder for the barrel of the cannon.  Then I made a square for the base.  I extruded the cannon from the cylinder barrel and then I sized, placed, shaped and extruded the base until it was about right. Then I extruded the sides by shaping a single plane and extruding it until it fit the orthographics as much as possible.  I paid a lot of attention to tri count, managing to keep the count under a thousand tris. 

Then I auto-UVed, exported to FBX and brought the cannon into UE4.  

I also added two point lighting to the cannon in maya.

How to Rig in Maya

Dear Riggers,

I have uploaded Chris's Powerpoints to the general channel in Teams.  Have fun rigging!

Basic Constraints in Maya

Custom Nurbs Controllers and Placement in Rig

Parent Constraining your Rig to Controllers

Hierarchy

Null Hierarchy

Other Settings:

2D Art Week 04

2D Composition, Color and Drew Struzan

This week we chose a poster from Drew Struzan to recreate and identify the composition.  I chose an unused poster from Back to the Future.

First I identified the strongest direction of the composition.  This one happened to have strong diagonals that cross between Marty McFly's diagonal kneeling position and the watch he sits on.  The eye bounces between Marty's face, the watch knob, his parent's faces and back to him.

From the position of the important points of the poster, I determined that this poster uses the RULE OF THIRDS.  From the overall shape, I concluded this poster also uses an ICONIC composition.

Process Pictures:

First I did the line work using the pastel brush in photoshop.  Then I airbrushed the value in shades of gray.  Next I did color blocking of the gold, orange, blue, and skin tone using overlay and color burn layers.  Then I painted color overlay layers to bring out more saturated colors.  After I finished the foreground elements, I added in the background using air brush and splatter brushes.  Lastly, I did a couple of adjustment layers (Exposure to desaturate the layers, Curves color adjustment and then a final overlay of a pencil texture).

3D Art Week 04

Lord of the Rings Lego Project

Last week I modeled the high and low poly versions of the ax and created a LOD group in maya.  This week I continued modeling the character pieces associated with Gimli.  First I modeled a high poly and low poly version for various character assets.  Then I UVed them and made the LOD groups in Maya.  I then exported the FBX files and did the UV snapshots for the helmet and Lego Character.

Character Models Completed:

• Gimli Lego Body Legs
• Gimli Beard
• Gimli Helm
• Gimli Ax Head
• Gimli Ax Handle
• Gimli Ax Handle Long

Other Models Completed:

• Rohirrum Helm Gold
• Rohirrum Helm Silver
• Urak-hai Helm

I then imported the FBX into the Lego library and applied textures in UE4.  I imported the texture materials for Gimli's helmet and Gimli.  For the ax and the other helms I applied basic lego materials.

I then put all the pieces together using blueprints and compiled them (I did not make the elf helm).

Here is the final picture of Gimli in scene: