Playing with Environment

 For this render I used the vRay plugin fur to create crass and a paint effect tree converted to polygons. Default lighting. The plane has been made "bumpy" with soft selection and a grass texture has been put into it with a bump map.
 Playing with the physical sun and sky lighting creating a sun set using a tutorial. Also playing with the tree and plane again. This was a good learning tutorial and I may use the physical sun and sky lighting for the environment I create. I'm also looking into adding an image in the background or on a plane to create a background/sky. It may limit me in camera angles however.

Playing with shadows and light here.

I have rigged my mechanism's legs which was very difficult and took me much loner than expected which was frustrating. However, I still need to learn how to animate the character walking.

I've also been watching tutorials for creating depth of field in the cameras on Maya. I think that would look really amazing. Hopefully I have time to do this. I'm aware that it can also add to rendering time significantly.

Mechanism - Model process

I've finally finished modelling and texturing my mechanism. It took me a lot longer than I expected and I must say I may have been a little too ambitious with wanting to make such a complex type of model. I feel like I've gotten a lot more confident with modelling with Maya because of it though.

I've gone for mostly silvers and coppers. I've put a valve type of mechanism on the top of the model which gives it a type of steam punk look. I've also given the model glass textures. For the poison I used an ocean material to give a liquid type of effect.

The next step is rigging which I hope goes well. I've already began watching tutorials. I think I should be able to create the joints and bones. Nervous about actually getting the model to walk fluently and move forward. More tutorials and experiments will be required for this I feel.

Next Steps:

 - Begin rigging the character

 - Create environment the mechanism will be placed in

 - Create the plant creature

 - Find music/sounds and start composing so that I can time my animation to the sounds
 - Lighting/Cameras
 - Animation time!

Making grass and other amazing things! Using the Paint Brush.

I made this in Maya using the paint brush tool. I used two different types on grass in this image and painted onto a bumpy plane I created. I really like this effect as the grass looks so 3D and realistic. This only took me 2 minutes to create once I'd figured out how to do it. I'm so impressed and thought for some reason that creating grass in Maya would require making each blade of grass from scratch or downloading Vray 2.0 or something alike in order to make this happen.

However....

I did run into a few problems.

This render is done with the Maya renderer.

When trying it with Mental Ray nothing showed up. After figuring out that I need to convert the grass to either NURBS or Polys.. My file became much slower and then I rendered....

The render time was incredibly slow just to render out one frame and the grass looks horrible in comparison to how it was looking before.

So I may need to create different layers and render them individually with different renderers and then piece them together.

Watching this tutorial here to learn how:

I've also found a really good tutorial fr making cogs in the machine:



I've also been playing around with what I could make for the scenery using the Paint Brush. I've discovered I can make trees, water and flowers easily. There's also types that come as polygons so are more successful at       converting into polys.

Tree concerted to a polygon and rendered in Mental Way.

Non poly trees. This is a Maya Software render. They didn't successfully turn to polys as I think they're an image wrapped around an object. Made a plan with paper texture which makes the trees going through it look like they're sitting in fog.

Snowing! I think this effect looks awesome. Also mushrooms.

Flowers and water. The water looks amazing but I don't think I'll need to use it.

Playing with textures and lighting

Playing with lighting and cameras on Maya.

Experimenting with putting a bitmap on for a material (used Lambert also)

Rendering in Mental Ray using the mental ray metallic effect. Could be a good texture for the brass metal of the mechanism.

Car paint texture in mental way. This is another mental ray material. It gives you the option to change the flakes, colour of the reflection and many other options to give a really good effect. I think this may work well as a metallic like texture/material as well.

Playing with the ramp shader for transparency. Maya gives the option to combine two colours with the ramp shader. This may work well for a plant texture.

In this render I experimented with overlaying the bitmap image as a bump map texture. I also controlled the amount of 'bumps' in this render. 

Tutor Feed Back and Development

After sharing my concepts to the group, my tutor agreed that my second idea (mechanism) was the strongest and most developed so this is the one I will continue to work on. He thought a good idea would be to show the cells inside the plant form changing, to indicate a significant change in form. I think this would really help to strengthen my idea, but first I will have to work out how to do that on Maya.




This is Redwood Ciders Line Trial. I will use this as inspiration for making my mechanism model as I want it to have more appendages and mechanical structure  I will continue to sketch and brain storm to have come to a more defined model before constructing it on Maya.





I will also use the Parasitic Wasp as a large influence on the appearance of  the mechanism as I want it have a more insectile, sinister appearance. The Parasitic Wasp injects one egg inside an afford and as the baby parasitic wasp is born it eats it's way out of the afford, inside out, and the afford suffers from a gruesome, long death. 

http://ruthlesstruthdotcom.blogspot.co.nz/2010/09/dream-and-parasite.html

http://www.robaid.com/bionics/wasp-hounds-sniff-explosives-and-illegal-drugs.htm

http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/bugs/wasp/

http://500px.com/photo/18781497

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ac/Orange_Caterpillar_Parasite_Wasp.jpg

I will now begin sketching and drawing inspiration from these photographs for my mechanism. 

Concept sketches

I have shown the textures I may consider and the basic order of the form changing. I've also included notes on my ideas so I won't explain too much here. The idea I'm currently most interested in is the second concept "Mechanical structure clones plant form" as I feel it has the most depth, meaning and story. I also feel it's my most developed story progression and relates to the change of materials with more context than the others. My plans are to develop the mechanical structure more and perhaps do a few more rough sketches on how I would like it to look. I will research sci-fi, steam punk and other mechanical parts such as engines to get a feel for what type of mechanical gadgets and materials will be on it and how those will fit together. 

Concepts and sketches

I scanned these images and notes from my workbook and gave more contrast to them on Photoshop as I drew in a very light pencil and it was hard to see. So my original drawings were more tidy. My new concept which is the one I'm currently most interested  in is - A mechanical structure turning a natural plant form (dead and natural) into a form that is alive and mechanical. The form is made of metal materials (copper, steel ect) and has many mechanical parts and screws to help is move and operate. It has four long, spider like legs like that of Dali's paintings (my inspiration.) It has a tube of poison liquid on it's back and infects that into the plant form which then begins to form little lights under the surface of it's skin. The lights move around and eventually begin to come to a natural stop. In the places the lights stop, metal begins forming on the plant forms skin. At the end of the film, two mechanical creatures walk away together, identical as the original mechanical creature has created a clone of himself.

My second idea is a more simple one - which is the skin of the egg peeling away to create an organic, bird like creature who flys away.

I did a quick sketch in Photoshop of my mechanical model to make it more clear before illustrating my concept.

Concept Idea

One concept I've been experimenting with, made on Photoshop CS6 using my Wacom Bamboo tablet. It's obviously heavily inspired by one of Dali's well known works.

Drafts

Here are sketches and notes I've written in my book to help me begin planning concepts. It's a little all over the place as I was just quickly trying to get ideas onto paper, I wasn't sure if I would upload this onto my blog. I've begun to start thinking about colours, inspired by Dali's work. Here I have tested some colour palettes using a wash of watercolour paints. I've also really been exploring the egg concept of re-birthing from the material/physical world. 

My next step is not to move to the computer and start illustrating me ideas more clearly using Photoshop.

Precedents

Salvador Dali

Painted bizarre surrealistic work and dream like landscapes.

I feel really inspired by Dali's work in both the surreal style his art is depicted in and the ideas and meanings behind his work.

The Persistence of a Memory - Is Dali's most famous and well recognized artwork from the 1930's. I love the ideas behind this, the melting clocks which make us question the "collapse of our notions of a fixed cosmic order." I think this idea fits behind a lot of his other work as well and should be a theme I explore and make a few sketched to. The ants in most of his paintings symbolize death.

I'm fascinated by the rebirth idea in this piece. This will be another idea I make a few draft sketched to.

The idea of a man carrying the ocean on his shoulders is really interesting. This could be an idea worth exploring in my project.

The main themes in Dali's work that I find interesting is our notions of a fixed cosmic disorder, mans rebirth through an egg and a man carrying the ocean on his shoulders. I also like the surrealistic way in which he depicts his thoughts.

Drawing inspiration from Dali's colours and subject matter and carrying this through to my textures - the main colours and patterns that stand out to me are yellows, desert, sand, dirt, wood, skin and water. Possibly some old, grunge like textures that fit with this aged look.

Now I will begin to start sketching ideas and forms. I think starting with a simple form and turning it into something more complex may be a good place to start from. I've also been thinking about taking a form as hard and rigid as a clock and softening it the way Dali has done in 'The Persistence of a Memory.'