Physical sun and portal light

Here is the result of the second tutorial teaching us about using physical sun and portal lights properly.


Here is my alteration of the scene.

Maya Static Image Overlay

The first of today's tutorials from alan involved us manipulating maya so that we could model around a flat image. Getting the orientation of the grid first was the hardest thing to do, everything else was easy. Here is a render of my result.


The reflection over the chairs is due to not modeling them so they block it, other than that i think it went well.

E-sting stories and storyboards

I have come up with 3 ideas in which i believe that i have enough time to do all of them.
(Please download the images to view properly).

Idea 1 - Chew Toy:

In this one the E4 is a dog toy and is thrown to a live action dog to play with. The dog thoroughly enjoys the toy squeaking it frequently. A white flash occurs and fades, no more dog or chew toy can be seen but instead a blast pattern on the floor as a wad of fur lands into shot.


Idea 2 - TV Flood:

We start seeing a TV dish and a signal being received. An E4 appears on the TV screen, then more appear at a faster rate and breaks the screen, pours out and a large E4 rises out of the pile.



Idea 3 - Box Monster:

A large shadow of E4 looms over an un-suspecting box. It turns confused and it is shocked when it sees the massive E4. It is overloaded with awe that it explodes.

new project: Models and metaphors

In this project we have been asked to create within 5 weeks a short 12 second icon advert for the channel E4 they have been dubbed E-stings and i will refer to them as such.

to begin with i have downloaded the offical pack from the E4 website and used the image of the icon and save it off as a usable format for maya while also at the same time making a black and white slightly blurred version for the bump. I took ages to try and model the icon into a 3d model as a start while thinking of ideas.

IT LIVES!!!!!

During a rearrangement of the files on my computer i came across my scene file for digital environment of which refused me to render properly anymore.

I thought what the hey and opened it up to see if with more understanding of maya would help me fix it, i tried with mental ray and found that it does render something but not the scene, then i remembered a few issues with lights and linking i came across in the transcription project so i selected everything and relinked all of the lights and da dada daaaa! IT LIVES!!!!!

here is the render of what i had at the point of failiure.

Transcription finished

Well the presentation went down nicely even though the footage was incomplete due to lack of frames.

Anyhoo here is the full video, enjoy!

Render time is too long!

This is slightly scaring me now, my render isn't half way yet and i doubt it will be complete by the time the presentation is tomorrow, so i'm going to compile what i have got in the morning and set up a computer at uni to render as much as possible and add that to the video when the time comes for handing in the work, seeing how long this has taken as it is, i fear it will miss the deadline, if possible can i hand it in on friday if i fail to get it rendered in time.

I found some audio to go with the render its called Nocturne No. 1 in B Flat Minor, Op. 9 written by Frédéric Chopin (a composer who died just before the globe was built).

Click to download

Rendering

Oh god this is going to take ages, i calculated my render time to about 34 hours to render my 3410 frames, its been rendering since about 10 last night, its going to be quite a close call before the deadline.

on a side note i have taken your advice phil and saturated the blue print so its not as vibrant.

backdrop

I have created a "blueprint like" backdrop for the model for which i want the building to rise up through it matching the lines drawn.

Modeling done, animation start.

oh god this modeling has been a pain, the stairs were my biggest problem trying to solve how they work (the metal beams holding the whole lot up in the picture look way too thin to hold the whole lot up but hey i may aswell follow what i have got). well here are all the pictures in order including ones i have already posted here of the modeling progress.

Polygon count : 52693