Group Work- Dividing Work and Presenting

The next task was to divide the work up between the group. We decided this in our second group meeting (minutes by myself):

- We decided to model a Joseph Evans Reliable Steam Engine (pics and info can be found here http://www.steampumps.net/JosephEvansReliable.html).

- It was decided that we would each be responsible for a part of project but if any one of us struggles, we can share the workload.

- I will be designing, modelling and texturing the main environment the machine will be in- probably a factory of some sort similar to the museum.

- Teresa will be building the governor on the engine.

- Dan will be mainly building the mechanicals of the engine, however we will divide the model up and work on different parts each.

- Kevin will storyboard the animation, design and add lighting, and animate the scene.

- We also discussed the presentation on Friday. Although I will not be present for this due to prior arrangements, as a group we feel there is enough to talk about as we know what we are doing, who is doing it and how we will present the product. - Within the next week, we are all going to research the steam engine, prepare for the presentation, and I will begin designing the environment.

After this meeting, I began designing an environment - not knowing it had to be based on where the machine was actually used, not just a generic factory. Below is my initial design:



My first draft of the environment looked like this:



All the textures are original except the skybox. Below are the ones I created:



This brick texture was created from a photograph I took in Castle Coch in Wales:



The stonework texture below...



...Was adapted from this photograph I took in the same location:



I then created bump maps of these images in Photoshop by applying a plain grey image on a layer above the image, then applying a High Pass filter to the grey. The bump map for the stone texture was also used as the ceiling diffuse map and the stone floor was also used for the supports in the corners.

I was then informed the environment had to be representative of the environment the device was actually used in. Luckily, the textures could still be used for the new environment. First, however, there was the task of modelling the engine to deal with...

Virtual Environments Group Work- From the Start

For the group project, I was with Dan; Teresa and Kevin. The brief was to simulate in 3D an artifact from the Langdon Museum of Power to show where the machine would have been used and what it was for.

After a visit to the museum to take reference photos and videos of various machines to give us a basic idea of what they looked like and how they worked, we met as group to choose an engine. The minutes from the first group meeting, by Kevin, are below:

Minutes from meeting
- We arranged a group meeting for Monday October 5th at 10 AM
- All group members attended this meeting
- We discussed what we believe would be the best way to approach the task in hand
- We discussed what pictures we liked from the collection that we had taken
- We discussed what we could do for each picture that we liked and then narrowed it down working out whether it would be too much work, too little work, or just not within our knowledge of 3dsMax
- We also discussed how best to share work among each other, decision to use Dropbox was made
- Another visit to the museum was discussed, and the time allowing we will hopefully revisit
- The machine that we decided we would most likely be modelling is the "reliable steam engine"

To summarise, we chose the Joseph Evans Reliable Steam Pump, which was placed near collieries and was designed to pump tar from storage tanks to road or rail vehicles for transport.



Our initial visit to the museum had produced many helpful images and videos of the engine. However, Teresa's extra research such as revisiting the museum to obtain more detailed images; corresponding with people who worked with the machines and obtaining designs of the location the engine was used in was invaluable.

Completing the face: Ear, Mapping, Animation

Once I had imported the ear into the main scene with the head, I placed the ear in the correct position and attached it to the face. It would not Weld, but as it "clips" the face slightly it looks like part of the object. I have also tweaked the nose and improved the eye texture:



Next up was UVW Mapping. This was achieved by adding an Unwrap modifier to the original half of the head. Following the tutorial, I created a cylindrical map around the face which gave me the following map:



However, this only applied to one half of the face so I created another Unwrap modifier above the Symmetry modifier. This created a map with two overlapping faces:

(second face moved for illustration purposes)

As can be seen, the two sides of the face are overlapping which is not good. I selected the mirrored side of the 3D face using Polygon selection, which allowed me to flip the texture map for this side of the face horizontally. I then resized both sides of the map to fit within one image and created the following UVW Map:



To apply my face to the map, I used a segment from the map I had created previously in this project for the main face section. This only needed minimal tweaking. For the rest of the map's skin texture, I used a mixture of the Clone stamp, Smudge tool and copy and pasting tiled sections of skin from the face. To apply the hair, I used hair from my reference image and inserted it in the correct place to create my face map. The ear texture was also reapplied on the ears in the new map:



The next step was Bump mapping and the addition of Noise. This was done using the process described earlier in this blog with the High pass filter in Photoshop.



After this was specular mapping, a new stage. I followed the tutorial for creating this map (using the Lighten tool on a darkened bump map to bring out the "shine) and applied it as Specular map in Max:



As can be seen, I have added some spheres in the skull with a red skin texture on to fill the gaps between the eyes and the outside of the face. Although it does not look completely like the corner of the eye, it is better than black space.



With the maps applied to the face, it was complete! Images below are in this order: final render - unsmoothed mesh - NURBS mesh - symmetrical TurboSmoothed mesh.








The final step was some animation to the eyelids to give the face some life:



The aspects I feel could use improvement are the nose which requires more detail; the ear which could use more complex geometry; and the eyes which do not completely fill the gap. Also, the texture map is not perfect above the eyes where it meets the hair. The texture also pinches towards the centre at the very top of the head. I am not sure if this is due to the map I used or the cylindrical mapping technique. Overall, I am happy with my face given the limited time in which to create it. Organic modelling was a whole new area to me at the start of this module, and I am proud of how much my ability has improved in these 5 weeks. I now feel more confident about complex modelling in Max.

Making an Ear

To create the ear, I initially tried building it piece-by-piece. Once I had done the outside of the ear, I realised that it was full of triangles and was not giving good results:



Going back to the drawing board, I used the same technique as creating the face mask. With a reference image in the background, I drew topology splines in Max then moved the vertices to match the topology of the ear:



The geometry is quite simple, but it follows the basic structure- the ear has a raised area around the edge, dips inwards then goes in again towards the centre. I then created a Planar UVW Map using the UVW Unwrap modifier:



I then applied a photo of my ear to the map, which matches the geometry closely:



This gave me a textured model of my ear which I could export as a 3DS ready to be attached to the face:

UVW Map problems?

So, you have your model with a UVW Map (pretty much) all done but notice a vertex or 2 which need moving. You move the vertex, and end up with:



And so you re-create your UVW Map only to notice something else is out of place. Rinse and repeat. To prevent this, before you move a vertex, you can save your UVW Map:



Now move your vertex and watch that horrible tiling reappear. No worries, though:



Simply load your UVW Map and your texture will be reapplied correctly! Good times.

(This worked for me but it doesn't work all the time, if you delete vertices etc the map still has to be re-done...)

Building a head

The video above shows a draft model of my head.

The skull was created by placing a sphere behind the mask and scaling it to fit the edges. I then made it an editable poly and removed one half as Symmetry would be applied later on. I then removed bottom half of the sphere. By holding shift and dragging the bottom edges, I could extend them to build the back of the head. Cutting the faces was helpful when new smaller faces were required. To join this to the face mask, I used the Attach tool which then allowed me to weld the new vertices to those of the mask. The result was this:



The next step was to make the back of the head more human instead of a flat drop. This was achieved by cutting the large faces into smaller segments which were shaped to create a natural shape:



However, the front of the neck was more troublesome. I created a cylinder primitive and scaled it to fit the head then removed three quarters of it:



I then Attached the cylinder to the rest of the head, as can be seen here there is serious clipping as none of the cylinder's vertices are welded to the head:



The next step was to Weld the vertices of the cylinder to that of the face mask and the back of the neck. This was a time consuming job as the cylinder's faces had to be cut and new faces created to suit the shape of the mask.



I then applied Symmetry and sculpted the sides of the neck to provide a less circular shape. Finally, NURBS smoothing was added to produce this result as seen in the video:



There is still pinching which needs fixing and the nose still needs tweaking. I have built ears, which will be applied. Also, the UVW Map for the entire head needs to be created.

Model Improvements: Now 100% more human

When the face was textured and lit, two issues became apparent: The cat-like puffy lower cheeks and protruding lips. These have been fixed and the chin has also been brought more in line with my profile.





I think this is a massive improvement and leaves me free to focus on the other parts of the model.