My Michelle

Producer, week 5- FINAL

Michelle Mulier — Wed, 12 May 2010 04:27:05 +0000

So my project description is basically creating a house type thing in Maya that is based off the work of Daniel Merriam, then take renders of the house into photoshop and create a composition out of them. I created 3 different compositions; one underwater, one in the clouds, and one in a forest, because I couldn’t decide what I wanted to do.

: Underwater

: Clouds

Forest

Production, week 4

Michelle Mulier — Wed, 05 May 2010 05:20:56 +0000

Ok, so I had to regulate my finals and schedule them out to get them done, and since all my other finals are due this week, Im gonna be honest and say I dont have much done this week. This is my only final due next week so i have all weekend to focus just on this project.

So I started doing the backgrounds this week.

This is my underwater scene, since I couldnt take a pic underwater its done all in photoshop.

I havent totally decided on the forest background but Im gonna edit a few forests together. So here’s a few a i might use..

Heres wat Im thinkin for the sunset…

production, week 3

Michelle Mulier — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 03:48:59 +0000

Ok, so to save time I’m going to do any texture I want to include in photoshop instead of Maya. So I colored it and did the lighting this week instead of texturing. I’ll adjust the lighting as needed once I start compositing the whole thing. I’m a little ahead of schedule so I decided to do 3 different compositions cause I couldn’t decide which one to do.

In the first composition I put the “house” up in the clouds during a sunset. I put a quick cheap sunset background on it in Maya just so all the glass reflects the right colors, I’m going to take it out and replace it in photoshop though.

My second composition is going to be underwater.

My fourth composition is in a surreal looking forest, like an enchanted forest. I think the green is to bright though, I need to darken it a little. Also, I’m going to change this to include a few more colors in this one besides green.

production,week 2

Michelle Mulier — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 04:44:46 +0000

So this week I had the same problem as last week where things just couldn’t be translated correctly from my 2d drawing to 3d..so I had to change a few things. Plus, I once again discovered that with the time limit I have since i still need to texture, light, and composite the piece, I had to simplify it a little more. I would have posted some pictures of my mistakes on here, but pretty much every mistake i made, either just made the whole model vanished or maya would just shut down on me before i could get a picture..kinda hard to explain if you’ve never used maya before but lets just say it wasn’t very happy with me. So I changed a few things, and eliminated a few things, but anything I changed I kept the overall feel of the original and I used alot of pieces from the original design, there just in different places.

section 1

the sun looking design at the top of section 1 is actually a clock. The face is opaque right now but once it has a glass texture on it, you will see the clockface, but here’s a screen cap of it while the model is transparent so you can see the clockface.

section 2

section 3

the front/center part of section 3 is going to be glass and inside are 2 bells. So heres a screen cap of the model when its transparent so you you can see the bells.

all pieces put together

production, week 1

Michelle Mulier — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 05:27:45 +0000

Ok, so here’s the deal. For this week I had it planned that I would have my model about halfway done. However, I ran into the problem that most everyone would have when translating from 2d to 3d, some things just dont work, and I had to adjust my original plan so I took it into photoshop and eliminated some things, I also simplified it by taking out parts I just dont know how to do and cant get done in the time we have. So here’s my updated layout…

And here are renders of the work I did on the model this week..I have all the basic shapes down and some detail I just need to go in and do the rest of the detail this week…

Judging week

Michelle Mulier — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 04:34:04 +0000

The questions I used were:

1. What qualities of the work make you feel like it’s a success or a failure?

2. What can be improved?

3. Is it original and interesting?

4. Any other comments?

So I talked to at least 5 people about this, and everyone said the same things:

It’s a success because it’s a great design, it’s cool, it’s interesting, it’s original even though it’s based off another artists work, it’s really well thought out and laid out, and all the accents (color, texture, etc) work well together. However, I need to simplify it, it’s just a little to much to do in the time we have for production, but I need to simplify it in a way that it wont take away from the surreal decorative look that it has to it now. So Ryan Scott suggested that I need to decide what the end product is going to be (whether it’s gonna be just a picture, or an animation, etc). Once I figure out what the end product is going to be I can figure out how close I’m going to get to the house, so I can figure out how much detail I should include. Like, if you’re going to see it up close I should make everything perfect (bevel the edges, make everything really smooth, etc), but if it’s not going to be seen up close, I don’t need to worry about that.

So, I decided that my final piece would be a picture. I’m going to take my 3d house and put it in photoshop, mix it with a 2d background to make a finished piece. This way you won’t be up close to the house, so I can simplify it by not having to include those extreme details. So, right now I’m working on deciding what my final composition will look like, but I will have that completely decided by the time it gets to lighting the piece (week 4 of production).

5 week production schedule:

week 1: modeling

week 2: modeling

week 3: texturing- there aren’t too many textures so Im thinking the texturing is going to take less time than modeling

week 4: lighting- I only need it lit once and I only need to light whatever part I decide to use in the final composition so I’m only going to give that one week

week 5: finished piece- fully rendered composition.

Something like this is what I think of when Im thinking about my final composition, of course it will be a whole different composition, but it’s the idea of mixing 3D with 2D to make a finished piece…

Designer, week 2

Michelle Mulier — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 07:17:49 +0000

For the second week of the designer phase I said I would play around in Maya , since I’m not very fluent in it and I need practice in it before I start this piece. So I’m posting some screen caps of another environment I’ve been working on, which is inspired off the great hall from harry potter, and it’s pretty much on this piece that I’m learning Maya…

Teachers tables and goblets before texturing..

table setting before texturing

dumbledore's chair and goblet before texturing

birds eye view before texturing

And here’s where I starting playing with texturing objects..

ceiling supports

dumbledores goblet- textured but default lighting

I also have another version of my color scheme….

color scheme

playing with glass goblets- default lighting

designer, week 1

Michelle Mulier — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 04:21:13 +0000

so in my plan i had said that i would layout all sides of my house on a grid during the last week of the explorer stage and continue it into the designer stage, so here is all sides of my house laid out on the grid….to make it a little easier i split it up into 3 sections..

Front on Grid

3 other sides of section 1 on grid

3 other sides of section 3 on grid

This is the color scheme i want to use along with one of daniel merriams paintings in which the color scheme is used

These are the textures im considering using:

for the walls: stucco cement

possibly for the trim: rough wood

for door, lock, and bells: metal

for some designs and the clock and possibly the trim: smoother wood

some of the designs like the orbish things on top of section one, and the orbs hanging from the house will be colored glass. The windows and the clock plate will also be glass, but not colored glass.

Explorer, week 2

Michelle Mulier — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 07:27:23 +0000

So, I don’t have a whole lot to show this week, but instead of doing alot of exploring since I have my idea, i sort of went more into the designing phase. So I chose to do my first idea with Daniel Merriam. So I’ve just been doing drawings of how I want my house to look. I didn’t like a lot of them so sadly they kinda got ripped up and thrown away without me thinking about it so I didn’t scan them in or take pictures of them. However, I do have 2 drawings that are still alive so i posted them to show i HAVE been working on this. The first one is a dud cause no matter how many times I change it, the idea I wanted with this one just cannot be translated into 3D. The second one is the one I’m working on now.

Explorer, Week 1

Michelle Mulier — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 04:53:14 +0000

Another idea I came up with is mixing this project with my project for my 3D animation class. For 3D animation I’m doing a model of The Great Hall from Harry Potter, but I don’t know if I’ll have time to do the gargoyles that hold up the bowls of fire along the side of the hall (there are 4 of them) as well as the dragon gargoyles up on rafters in the ceiling, so I’m considering modeling the gargoyles for this project and then inserting them into that project as well (my 3D teacher has already agreed to this). Doing this would be way more fitting to the time limit that we have and has better possibilities of actually getting finished rather than the idea suggested in the previous post. Also, by doing this, in the end I would have one fully completed well modeled environment instead of having 2 semi-finished environments.

These are the dragon gargoyles on the ceiling rafters:

Since I couldn’t find any detailed pictures of these gargoyle I found a Dragon sculpture that I would base it off of. It’s from the Dragon Bridge in Ljubljana.

This is one picture of the gargoyles along the side of the hall: