The CAVEE test =D

Since lighting and texturing isnt my job I thought I'd jus slap on a random material, I stuck in directional lights n spot lights to bring out the caves rocky texture. With the real texture its probably gna look wayy better. I thought I'd try out MudBox instead of pulling and smoothing the individual vertexes out. It turned out better then I expected!! I had to.. Export the block out of the cave into a FBX file, then import that into mudbox, remould it, then SAVE. I then had to convert it back into Maya to save as a MB file =D

Learnt alot today from tutorials on mudbox and maya working together. Something I feel the need to learn more in depth after this project has finish.

The PROCESS!!

1)The Original Plan
2)After making the Oil Refinery's and the SUPPORTS for the top.
3) The Main building is complete
with metal fences + Chimneys for the west side of the smaller block.
4)Compressors/ converter looking things plus MORE PIPES! =D
5)The FINAL Power station/Generator. More Gas cylinders, Broken Fences laying around. Broken Supports.

Closer study on structures =O

Blast Furnace!!

Priest of Steels Creation -I jus sketched it out to get the feel of the shapes =D

Battersea power station sketch =O

Battersea Power Station!!





















Sketchh~~


The Power Station was very Squared.
Architectural aspects to not down for my own design:::
*The HUGE chimney pipes.
*The Smokey yet open atmosphere
(Cant use this point for mine, since its gna be in a cave,)
*The Shadows produced.
*How the Windows aren't very necessary for a power station. Only the middle, main section and the blocks on the side had proper windows. It was probably the office part?
*Ladders and Pipes coming out from top to middle.
* Scaffolding looking structures holding up the base of the chimney
*Plain Colour, not very exciting colourwise. Bricks?
[We're gna have a Blue Light coming from the opening anyways. But a mixture of Red Bricks and Blue Lighting PLUS smokey fggy effect = A purple like colour! =O With bring out a nice contrast to the dark police station, and the Bright pretty flowers in the middle of the cave. ]

Blast Furnace!!

William T.Hogan, S.J. -Fordham's Steel Priest

William Thomas Hogan worked at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh. During is research for his dissertation on steel productivity. It was the first detailed study on the subject and his methods of productivity measurement were adopted by the U.S department of Labor, releasing his fist book, Productivity in the Blast Furnace and Open Health Segments of the Steel Industry. Published in 1950.

Enough of he brief intro.

I found images of THE STEEL PRIEST at Industrial Economics Research Institute.
...ignoring the steel priest himself..

The Blast Furnaces Behind him where pretty interesting. It reminded me of my days in science.

I did a few sketches from these images. Looking closer into the pictures, if you zoom in, the bars supporting these HUGE pipes have a continuous pattern. Either in a continuous [wwwwwwwwwww] shape or a ladder on its side. There are also many steps connected to the blast furnace, Probably for handling the molten liquids. Or for health and safety? Theres also a few cylinders on top of each building. Stains on the metal plates in the corner of the picture, Plus the Smoky mysterious feel from the heat. Im thinking .. in a cave.. this mysterious smokey fog may cover the top areas.. or even place it between the buildings. As seen in one of Jame's findings, in the video. The light reflects back up the hold from above, reflecting light upon the dust particles. Since its an UNDERGROUND cave, it should be very dusty. With a broken Power Generator, it should be dustier. Im sure a smokey fog effect can be put in using maya.. or after effects even if maya doesnt work out for us.. =D

The Giant Pipes coming from the top of the blast furnaces are pretty cool too, adding them into my design would make them reflect reality more maybe? Even with a made up model of a "power generator" =D

Back to work! ~~




Lotsa things to thing about, so little time! ><

I DID have research on COLOUR!!

I just went throught the DE FB page our group has been using all this time.. and found.. I REALYY DID do colour research!

T____T - got marked down at formative because of this..

Self Improvements::
Blog EVERYTHING I find T_____T
.........................................................

DUDEs!!! I found this blog, this guy has a real SENSE FOR COLOUR!! think he uses painter or sumthin.. i dunno. heres the link =D

http://crayonboxofdoom.blogspot.com/

andd THISS OMG SO MUCH DETAIL::

http://www.johnwallin.net/site/pix/ct6.jpg

Bridges have KEYS to standing up =O

This was a weird but interesting fining, I knew realised how important this bit of "ancient" design was. THE KEY TO A BRIDGE! Is the middle block =O

As explained on the website i found...

THE KEYSTONE

The keystone is the most important stone in an arch bridge, without this stone the arch would collapse. The keystone holds the arch together.

Heres the link I found this useful bit of information from^^

http://www.technologystudent.com/struct1/arch1.htm

Anddd it has examples of bridges in europe =O Big difference to the stone bridges in asia no?

The Great Wall of CHINA

The Yanmenguan Pass, Daixian County, Shanxi

Since I'm going to have to model the broken bridge. The cracks and broken halves must have a variation of shapes/cuts. Ive been doing some research on bridges. The French bridges, and rest of europe.. all have really narrows pillars as it gets closer to the water. This may be from the erosion from rain.. the river its actually in.. waves.. all natural. However. Im looking for a bridge thats DRY on land. And maybe damaged for natural reason.. other then water. So a thicker base is needed.

I've been looking on the TheGreatWallOfChina Page, its actually quite interesting how painters have portrayed this wall. But im more interested in the decary/danage section of the gallery.
Especially the part at..

"Zhenbiancheng City, Huailaixian County, Hebei"

The damage seen here are pretty interesting. in the arch closest to the right, it seems as though something large, like a boulder has passed through it. and the crumbling crack on the left hand side.

Theres a pile of bricks to support the structure too. That could also be a point to keep in mind? Other bricks or broken pieces of the bridge alone stupporting the whole object??

The Bridge!! =O

I've been meaning to finish this but heyyy! its DONEE! mwuahahahahaa
Time to Model the actual BROKEN bridge!

For these past few days.. Ive been working on my post production project.. not going so well.. but its getting there! Ive also been experimenting on different approaches to capturing the caves inner darkness.. its isolated.. lonely.. damp.. cramp-ness!! Ive figured a Cube.. extruding to my liking.. then playing with the vertexes.. then SMOOTHING SOME areas gives it a natural effect! =O
Not everythings perfect! Playing with vetexes just breaks the perfection! which is all GOOOOOD =P

[I threw on a random material since looked so stupid in boring Grey.. =P]

The Storyboard^___^

Since I already made the block out, we decided it would be faster to create a camera in the scene to act as the main character Mr.Rat. By using the camera, we wont have to struggle with drawing angles, instead, we would only need to mimic the Rats movement.


Brief annotation:
*Starting point on the Bridge
*MrRat looks around..then up
*Loses balance,
*Butt Slides down the brides
*Lands on ground safely
**Looks up at the arch
**Turns head towards fountain
**Jumps onto fountain
**Take a drink perhaps
*Hears a noice, in shock turns around to the power generator.
**Walks towards Police Station,
**Looks up
*Walks round flower patch, towards Doorway thing
**Goes towards power Generator
*On second thoughts the flowers smell nicer.
*Checks out the Tree
*Hears a Sound again
*Cave ceiling cracks a CHUNK off
*Falls on top of Mr Rat
*THE END

The Block Out I did the other day.

While having our group meeting, we were discussing changes design wise to our map. As the discussion went on, I quickly made a block out according to the members suggestions. I surprised myself that day. The speed of modeling was definitely an improvement. =D

Heres the result.

The Front



The Back

THE CAVE!! Part 2

The Tutorial I found on modeling caves =O

http://book.hourences.com/tutorialssae2.htm

Its really detailed. I'm hoping its not too hard of a struggle. Theres much much more to model and research on =D

The CAVEE!!

Our group has decided.. since our environment is set in a cave, it should hold thee realistic damp..rough and gloomy feel. Since we have NO IDEA how we're going to do this, we've set ourselves a task. RESEARCH ON CAVES.

We've even planned a small field trip to our local chislehurst cave^^ ..But sadly I cant go ..because of personal reasons... So I'm just going to have to stick to secondary information, PHOTOS =D

Luckily I've experienced going into caves a few times in my life already.. from random holidays abroad, as a kid I liked exploring! and ended up getting lost a few times.. but i lived^^

I remember going to this cave in thailand, we had to sit on a boat for a good 20-45mins until we got there. It kind of felt like I was in one of thoses scooby-doo episodes where the gang accidentally find a hidden passage to god knows where. ANYWHO, we had to jump off the boat, and got to explore for a bit^^ in this case.. the cave was kinda.. cracking?.. all crumbled down.. kinda.. felt cramped, the place was damp, mysterious. and it actually felt like the place was falling down..O_O" Was banned from screaming too.. no idea why.. maybe the place really was falling down =P

But yea.. since I was young.. I didnt own a camera..
I have no evidence.. so.. GOOGLE TO THE RESCUE.


The Limestone hills of malaysia.
SARAWAK
Amongst the most famous caves in the world are the caves in MULU National Park.

I love how the contrast of lighting brings out the detailed shape and texture of the rocks. Its clear enough for me to see the layers!! Reminds me of one of Ryan's concept pieces, was truly amazing. The use of texture and lighting was excellently planned^^ It's a good thing hes our texture man!

However, even with a pro texture man I must fairly play my part as modeler, and get these organic shapes planned out. I had a faint idea of the construction of the cave. Using a poly sphere, But clearly that has become a problem. Its very hard to model the..dunes?.. rocky..like.. lumps. xD As I did more research, Ive stumbled upon a tutorial explaining the technical layouts using a poly CUBE. What was I thinking.. of course it would be a cube..would make life so much easier!

So now I have the task of....
*Collecting more CAVE images
*Analise the elements needed
*Test Model
*Redesign my own version to fit our "script" =D
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My job after this will be to work on the Bridge, PowerPlant..Generator..thing and a smexy fountain =D


[More Cave images + annotated comments on the elements COMING SOON =P ]