Finishing the Door

After talking to a tutor, Mark, at uni, I have since lowered unnecessary edge loops, lowering the poly count. Now all polygons, as far as I can see, contribute to the shape. This didn't take long and was fairly easy.
I then decided to begin texturing. It was the roots I had initial trouble with. I tried hand painting the roots in Mudbox, however, this didn't give me nearly the effect I was after, so I took the diffuse (color) UVs into photoshop. I then tried placing a simple bark texture over the top and setting it to overlay. This didn't look right either, not showing any kind of real texture, although still better than just colour. I then searched the internet to try and find and find a good tutorial. Eventually I found this tutorial on using the Projection tool in mudbox to paint textures straight onto meshes and use them to sculpt with displacement maps. After a long search I eventually found the right texture but it didn't quite fit the colour scheme. I took it into photoshop and shifted the Hues and Levels around until I got a nice brown. After projecting it onto the model I didn't feel like I got the same tone as I did with the hand painted model so I set the opacity of the texture layer to 80% and set the layer to Overlay in mudbox. I then extracted the Ambient Occlusion layer and set it to overlay. After that I extracted the normal map and went back into maya. I then added an lambert material to the roots model and added the diffuse map to the colour layer and the normal map to the bump layer. The effect was perfect.
I then repeated the same process with the door, mushrooms, vines and floor. Once I had the technique down I had no real problems.

Once I had done this though I wanted to look at the foliage around the door. Knowing a good place to start was with flat planes but when I initially started this I found that it looked cheap and flat. After taking a quick jump into Skyrim to look at how the foliage was done there, I found that there were several planes carefully placed to make up the plants and foliage. I looked closely at how they had been arranged in Skyrim and tried to repeat a similar pattern This work very well. With this technique in mind I then looked at the leaf I had in the door frame. The mesh looked rigid and the normal map didn't do much to improve this. I then decided to use use a similar technique used in the Legend of Zelda; Ocarina of Time, the game I was taking inspiration for the door from, and deleted the leaf mesh and merged the vert left on the branch to make a point. I then took a high res leaf photograph and deleted the white background and saved as a PNG to keep the transparency. Then made a plane in maya split it 4x4, just enough to get the rough curved shape of the leaf, and then added the texture on top of it, including a normal map created with a "sculpt by displacement map" in mudbox.

Already being fairly familiar with point lights and directional lights and after having a look at the tutorial emailed to us on rendering from Mark, I set up 3 lights in the scene. One Directional light as a Key Light, for sunlight, which I gave a slightly yellow hue, wanting to give the scene a warm feeling. One ambient point light as a fill light, used for softening the shadow on the door from the roots with a slightly green hue to give the impression of diffuse light coming from the rest of the forest. Finally I set up a rim point light with a cool blue colour on the left side of the door to stop the warm colours of the other lights oversaturating the scene and the give the scene a bit more contrast. After a few test renders I discover that the lighting wasn't taking the transparency of some of the foliage into account. I found that this was because the lights and render setting weren't set to ray trace. After trying this with success in high quality renders with mental ray, I set up a camera with a pivot in the middle of the door and animated it to do a 180 degree swing around the door over 120 frames. I then render on production quality with mental ray into Targa files. I then discovered that I then used Adobe Premiere to compile the Targa files into an MP4 file. Unfortunatly, it is very difficult to find an application that will compile into .mov on a PC so have had to make do with MP4 on H.246 at 720p. This should be enough. If not, hopefully the uni Macs will have a media encoder I can use to convert into .movs.

Door Unwrapping

After finishing the final vine, I decided to deal with the last problem before moving on to UV unwrapping. This problem with the mesh was the bunching up of edge loops caused by the extra geometry need to add the leaf onto the tree. This wouldn't be much of a problem, but the mesh is of a smoother, more organic shape and I would prefer to have only quads on the mesh. Eventually, I decided to delete the entire edge loop up to the leaf itself and then split the, now 5 sided, polygon where the leaf meets the tree in half. This left a tri, so, realising I had just enough space with out causing the edge loops to bunch up again, I created a short edge loop that added an extra vert on the tri, making it a quad. This seems to have had the desired effect.

I next moved on to unwrapping the roots that make up the doorway. Being relatively new to UV Unwrapping I decided to start by faces that made up a visible area and then planar mapping them. Once I had done this with all the polygons I began attaching as many of the shells together as possible to make larger shells that would run smoothing from one to another. Although time consuming and sometimes tedious, I did not find this difficult.

 I am fairly happy with these UVs, although I am a little annoyed that one piece will not attach and stay in scale at the same time (the large piece on the top right). The only reason this annoys me is that it leaves a visible inscision. I am going to have to be careful when texturing not to leave a visible line.

The next thing I unwrapped was the vines. These were especially difficult due to their awekard shape. I figured the best way to do this was to use Automatic Mapping and then straighten up the pieces with the align tools. I then sewed the edges together to make a rectangle, making sure that the edge that was not attached was on the side that is not visible. I then put the ends in the corner of the map, since they are not visible. The mushrooms were fairly easy, The "fruited" mushroom I used Automatic Mapping to create the pieces and then stitched them together so that the incisions could not be seen. The closed cap mushroom I used cylindrical mapping to get the majority of the mesh mapped and then planar mapped the end.

The final thing I needed to Uv was the door. After looking at the Uvs I found that all I needed to do mas manipulate them into a more accurate size.

The only remaining task is to texture, light and render. I have condered making two versions. One that is lower poly and can be taken into a game engine and another that is higher poly and looks smoother.

After finally finishing the design for the door, I began work on the model in Maya. I decided that the first thing I should do was to start with the roots that surround the door. My first idea as to how to tackle this task was to extrude large cylinders to make the shape of the two "main" roots.

I then attempted to do the same for the other roots and then merge them together. This proved to be extremely difficult and involved far too much freehand vertex manipulation which ended up with an extremely messy mesh. I then, abandoning that method, attempted to extrude the sides of the main roots to create the smaller ones.

This, not only looked ugly, but also proved difficult when doing this with more than one attached root. Although I am sure there were ways to get this method working, I decided it would be easier to try a new method.
I started again by creating the rough shape of the base of the roots with the "create polygon tool" and extruding up. I then merged a few of the verts that made the gap between the roots, while keeping everything as quads. I ended up with a low poly version of what I wanted.

Although I could have subdivided this manually with the "Insert edge loop tool" I realised that this too would require far too much freehand vert manipulation, which is very fiddly and often very inaccurate. I realised I could get a much better result if I import the mesh into mudbox, subdivided once (would have like to have sub-ded more but didn't know if there was a poly limit) and reimported into Maya.

The result was just what I wanted, bar the bunching of the edgeloops at the top, although this does seem to so a good job at emulating the grain of the wood. My next task was to attach the single large leaf on the side of the roots. It was only at this point that I realised I would need more geometry to attach the cylinder like leaf stalk. I used the insert edge loop tool to add the require geometry and merged an 8 sided cylinder onto the appropriate area.

I then extruded and manipulated the cylinder into a stalk shape. I then used to create polygon tool to create the shape of one half of the leaf. I used the interactive split polygon tool to split the shape into quads. I then extruded and manipulated the leaf to give it thickness and a curve. I then lined up the leaf, duplicated it, deleted the required faces and used the merge vertex tool to attach the leaf to the stalk without moving the stalk vertices. I then repeated with the duplicated half of the leaf. I then realised that the leaf was too small and scaled it up by moving the pivot point to the side of the leaf closest to the tree to stop it scaling in the wrong direction.
I then needed to make the door itself. My first attempt was to again use the create polygon tool, split it into quads and then extrude and manipulate it into shape. However, this proved too messy and made the topology too uneven. I then used a box with 5 subdivisions along its height and width, Manipulated it into shape and moved it over to the door frame. It took a fair bit more manipulation to the the door to fit the doorframe well, fit the design and to be able to swing open without noticably passing through the frame.

With all the main elements made, the only things left to model were the smaller details. I made some mushrooms by extruding and scale faces on cylinders; and I made vines the same way, although I want to make one more.

I still have to deal with some bunched up edge loops caused by the extra geometry used to attach the leaf stem and some odd topology on the underside of the leaf. After this I intend on making one more vine, adding some planes for vine leaves and add some sort of ground, possibly with grass. Although I know that Maya can make grass simply using it's fur technology, I would rather use technology that could be imported into a game engine like Unreal. I may, again, use some upright planes onto which grass textures can be placed.

Finally finished the design

After doing what I felt was enough studies to produce some actual designs, I jumped right in and painted a 3/4 view of the Kokiri door.

3/4 full concept for Kokiri door

After doing a rough linework layer based on the sketches shown in the last post, I began blocking in the basic colours with round hard edged brush. The colours I chose were based on the general desaturated look the Kokiri forest has in the game.

The colour and texture of the door was taken from the Kokiri shield, appearing to be made of bark from the Deku tree. A sacred tree to the deku people.

I also noticed that the symbol of the shield roughly represents the letter Y. It is for this reason I chose to draw the letter F with a similar organic swirl to it.
The single leaf that hangs of the side of the tree acts as a call back to the large leaves atop each Kokiri house.
The vines and toadstools were put it to give the image a more "fairy forest" feel. Although the "Fly Agaric" mushrooms were chosen for their bright red and white colour which adds a complimentary splash of saturation to the painting.

Once I had all of the elements I needed in the painting, I took a chalk brush with a low opacity and added tone to the image, building up the tone over time, blending as I went.

Now that I had a more detailed painting with a bit more texture, I felt I could be a bit more rough with the orthographic designs, keeping the linework in and only adding enough tone to define the shape.

The back of the model wont be over detailed. It will only show the opening in the roots that the door covers and the texture of the inside wall of the tree.

Studying for the door

Since the Kokiri doors are embedded into the roots of the trees they live in, I decided to create a very quick thumbnail of what the door might look like before performing studies to improve the look of the door.

Initial Thumbnail

I then decided to look through some images of tree roots to find the ones that would look the best in the Kokiri forest.

Although I could have gone for a root system a bit more Arcane and twisted, I decided on the above root type. This is because the Kokiri race are eternally young. These roots have a much younger, smoother and more playful feel to them.

Root study and door sketch based on root study.

After a quick play with tone and line to get the technique down I decided to create a quick sketch based on my studies.
On it's own, however, the door looks a touch bare. So, I began to look out how I could attach vines to the door frame.

Again I began scouring google images for a type of vine that was not too covered in leaves or too thick. I wanted a vine you might find in a western "fairy forest".

The above vines are small and have an interesting shape and is sparse enough in leaves to not take attention away from the door.
I have yet to design the door itself, although I would like it to be made of "Deku" bark. The same material used to make the deku shield.

The Deku Shield is made from the same material I would like the door to be made from.

Modelling: Architecture Research.

Our next project is to make a door or window based around the architecture of a game in Maya. My first choice for the game was Mass Effect 3. The main reason being, the game has many different cultures, all of which have different architectural styles. These styles are based around a very well thought out history and visual theme for each individual race. However, the game is extremly long and does not allow the player to return to certain missions, some of which have brilliant but rare architecture. Although I could look up the missions on Youtube or find pictures on Google Images, I feel it would be better to be able to look at the architecture from all angles in game. It is for this reason I chose to look at the Legend of Zelda; Ocarina of Time. I know the game very well, so I can get to areas easily and quickly, and it has several different races, each with their own visual style. This game was also made 10 years ago, so the game lacks detail on its architecture. After looking at the briefing presentation we were given, it says, "Design and produce orthographic drawings
(Front, Side, Top, 3/4 View) of a doorway or window
suited to the game aesthetic." The brief does not say I must create a model that is in the game, just one that is suited to the style. This means I could interpret the style of the game into something with a higher poly count and higher res textures. Although a lot of the archtecture can be a bit unexciting, there are areas where the visual style shines through to give the feeling of a culture.

Hyrule Castle

Hyrule castle, for instance, does not have a particularly unique or insteresting style of architecture. The castle looks like a standard 12th century castle. As similar story can be seen in Market Town.

Market Town

Although there is a bit more style to Market Town than the castle, it still has a very basic medieval theme.
However, when I looked at the other cultures in Zelda, I found there to be much more style and culture that could be shown in something as simple as a doorway or window.

Kokiri Village

 The Kokiri live in hollowed out and painted trees. Although, like much of the game, there is very little detail, there is a very definite "earthy" colour scheme and style.

Link's Kokiri Tree House

I could look at the patterns, colours and fabrics used by the Kokiri and create a more detailed and interesting asset to suit the culture.

Darunia's Chambers

Although the Goron's have much less in the way of architecture there are many clues as to their culture that could go towards producing something for them.

Zora Cavern

The Zora have next to nothing in the way of architecture, using water filled caverns as their homes. Despite this, I could design a cave front decorated with some of the patterns found in the patterns and designs found in the Zora King's Chamber (below).

Zora King

I have, never the less, chosen to use the Kokiri for my asset, since they offer a good oppertunity to produce something with interesting, organic shapes and colours.

The Kokiri are a woodland people that remain children forever (and dress suspisciously like Peter Pan). They are guided by the wise Great Deku Tree. They live in Kokiri Forest where they live in hollowed out trees. As a result their colour scheme is a mixture of browns and greens. The few petterns and shapes created by the Kokiri, like the Kokiri Shield and the Kokiri Emerald, all uses desaurated earthy colours and flowing organic shapes. With this in mind, and a bit more research, I believe I can create a door for their tree-houses in Maya.