The Ride

MY Web Site

2010-03-20T05:06:00.000-07:00

My website is done at last! :D

After a while of learning Dreamweaver and getting around using html and CSS, I have made my first website for my portfolio.

www.jakechilds.co.uk

check it out !

Website Links

2009-07-06T13:57:00.000-07:00

My website

www.Jakechilds.co.uk

The end of the line.

2009-06-21T06:01:00.001-07:00

Now that we have come to the end of the year where we handed in our film in Friday just gone, Ive take some time to reflect on the overall project.

I was very please to be working on Anna’s film with Dan Cripps and Dan Ryan as we all get on very well with each other and know that we can rely and trust one another.
From the very beginning we all new our roles in the film. Me, Anna and Dan Ryan will be doing modelling, texturing, concept art, while Dan Cripps will be animating and rendering. We all decided the camera shot from for the storyboards to the block out as we could all discuss and talk about each scene.

The film as a whole has been very enjoyable to work on learning many new things like texturing in Mudbox, using render layers, using the render farm and many other bits. Am very please with the out come of our final film, as it shows off all our skills that we put into the film. Although we still have had our fair share of problems along the way with many things like the rendering farm being stupid, rigging problems and other technical stuff. What it all comes down to is the final animation film at the end and I think this is a good reflection of our 3years at Ravensbourne. There are still a few things that we need to tweak on the film for the RSA degree show as other factors out of our control have stopped us working on parts, but these wont be major changes so it won’t take too long.

Am glad that we have finished our film now and that all the hard work has paid off to produce what we have, but on the other hand a little sad that we wont be working together anymore on a project and seeing other people as much from our class.

Our only other thing to consider is entering our film into different animation festivals and to win as many as possible. :D

Time plan

2009-06-20T03:53:00.000-07:00

Heres a time plan for Easter and the third term.

The other terms time plans can be found on Annas blog page here:

http://therideproject.blogspot.com/2009/06/aims-for-last-two-weeks.html

More compositing

2009-06-18T16:14:00.000-07:00

This is scene one shot seven that I have compositied together and graded to show the different layer involved in making up this scene.
In the image there is a character layer, an enivronement layer, a sky layer, paint effects layer and a shadow layer.
I thought this would be a good way of showing people the different layers in this video below.

The ride scene 1 shot 7 from Jake Childs on Vimeo.

Render Farm issues!

2009-06-18T15:29:00.001-07:00

Now we have a render farm one may think that everything would go so smoothly with rendering and things would be rendered a lot quicker then rendering from one pc machine. This is the common thought most people had in our class. Over the last couple of weeks we have had many issues with the farm like;

Only using one CPU out of 128 which makes it useless. (This was resolved)
Maya jobs keep failing.
Simple renders taking ages to render out.
Getting stuck on one frame making the whole job fail.
Rendering the frames out saying that its done but only to find the images are blank.
Finding missing frames when its says its complete.

If there's lots of different jobs going at once and more pending then it WILL be quicker to render on a local machine then sending it to the render farm. The old way seems to be more reliable and less hassle providing that we have computers to work on..

This term is probably the most intensive use that the render farm has been put under. There was always going to be some problems as being one of the first to use this. But hopefully issues can be resolved for the next time.

Cave screenshots

2009-06-14T12:03:00.000-07:00

Here are some screen shots of the cave where you can see inside from the out side.

Forth cave
Third caveSecond cave
First cave

Some more screen shots of the cave in wireframe mode.

This week

2009-06-14T11:51:00.000-07:00

Most of this week we all have been compositing together the images that have been rendered out. There has been a few problems with some of the layers where some things in the scene have been left out which means they have to be rendered out again, wasting more time.
But now we have got most of the scene all rendered out and composited, its just a few little things to clean up here and there, so I think its going ok.

Cave image composite

2009-06-09T04:11:00.000-07:00

For the pictures used for D&AD and the RSA catalogue I wanted a picture of the caves to submit. For this Ive used many layers to get to the final images. This will be the same sort of process used when compositing the cave animation.
In the video below you can see the final image, the layer break down of the picture and then the final images again.

After Effects layer break down from Jake Childs on Vimeo.

Compositing today

2009-06-08T13:06:00.000-07:00

Today I started on some of the exterior shots that needed compositing. This was a process of getting the render layers from the render farm and organising this in After Effects so everything is in the right order. You have to make sure that the frames you are importing are at 25 FPS and not the default of 30FPS, this also has to be changed in the overall composition. Other wise the animation time will be off.

Once this is done then the fun starts. I stared adding different effects to the layers and on an Adjustment layer which effects all layers beneath it.

The main effects that Ive added were;

Brightness & contrast

Curves

Exposure

Hue & Saturation

Tint

Glow

Here are some images that Ive done today.

Kittys Balloon

2009-06-07T11:40:00.000-07:00

kittys was meant to holding a balloon in the island room, but had to be cut out. So here she is holding a balloon.

Kittys ride

2009-06-07T11:25:00.000-07:00

Here I was doing more animation of kitty in her cart. I wanted to animate the cart, trying to get the weight right and also have the animation of kitty inside.

Am please with the videos above with the time that I have with this animation. Theres room for improvement but time is of the essences.

kitty island

2009-06-04T14:14:00.000-07:00

kittys room composited togther. The website on the left hand side www.videocopilot.net
is a really really good website for compositing footage and lots of effects. Anyway back to the DOF, in After Efects i set up a simple ramp as you can see. The black part of the ramp make things go out of focus and hte White part is in focus.

This is a proper DOF map, rendered out in maya that is used in our cave sequence. As you can see like the ramp the further away from the camera is darker which is out of focus and the nearer the camera which is lighter is in focus

Animation in kittys room

2009-06-04T13:34:00.000-07:00

Ive started doing little animating test in Kitty's cart and her inside the cart.this was quite a challenge as I haven't really done much this this before. I started off just animating the cart getting the speed and the weight right then I added kitty.

Today looooong task

2009-06-04T13:23:00.001-07:00

Today Ive been finalising my pictures for the catalogue and D&AD. This has been quite a long process, as I wasn't to sure which one to use, but now Ive picked the ones I like and Ive been composting the layers together.

I had slight problems with the depth map as I didn't know how this essentially effects the other layers in After Effects, but in the end I got it to work.

This what Ive done.

p.s hundredth post ! :D

Character animation

2009-06-02T16:17:00.000-07:00

For the animation folder I stared to do some walk and run cycles of my character kitty. Here's whats Ive got ! :D

walk cycle

Slow walk cycle

Run cycle

This weeks to do list !! 1st of June

2009-06-02T16:15:00.000-07:00

This weeks tasks are:

Do some character animation.

Knock up some renders for the catalogue and D&AD

Some composite test renders.

Lighting in kittys rooms.

2009-05-31T12:35:00.000-07:00

I started setting up of the lighting in this room, but I didn't want the clouds casting shadows on the rest of the environment. So I selected the objects that I didn't want the shadows to be cast and turned this option off in the render stats.

An occlusion pass of her room.
Here's what it looks like after the shadows have been turned off.
I also wanted to give the sun a glow as if it has a light inside.
This is the rainbow road room.

Animation in the rainbow road room

2009-05-31T06:53:00.000-07:00

Here ive done differernt animation test for the rainbowroad room.

Rainbow Animation from Jake Childs on Vimeo.

Rainbow Animation 2 from Jake Childs on Vimeo.

Rainbow Animation 3 from Jake Childs on Vimeo.

The Graveyard Grass done

2009-05-29T10:20:00.000-07:00

This is basically how the graveyard grass is going too look. The ground still needs to be textured to cover up part of the grass and where the track lies.But here's some pictures of what ive done.

Test shots for kittys room

2009-05-28T13:19:00.000-07:00

Now that I have everything in both of kittys scenes and pretty much in place, its just a matter of tweaking a few things too look the best it can be!

This is island scene.

This is more cardboardy textured cloud's and waves.

This is the rainbow scene.

The graveyard grass

2009-05-28T13:03:00.000-07:00

I have now taken on the grass in the graveyard, same sort of process as the exterior

environment but without the flowers just plain grass. Some parts are looking more green that others but this is still in the early stages.

Heres some screens shots.

This weeks to do list !! 25th of May

2009-05-26T12:45:00.000-07:00

From last weeks list of to do, Ive done kittys hair again, Ive been texture lots of kittys environmental objects, finished off modelling and texture kittys boat, Ive done some cart smashing animation and rainbow animation.

This weeks tasks.

Compose kittys environments
Finalise a few things.
Possible start rendering the caves scenes.

New path textures up date

2009-05-26T10:57:00.000-07:00

I have came back to looking at the path trying to make less blurry. The best way I thought was to only texture right in front of the selected camera view and nothing else. This is because there would be more detail in this one section then the entire scene. Also I used a 2048x2048 texture.

This is one of the texture that i made.

Rainbow Animation

2009-05-25T15:32:00.000-07:00

Above is the textures I used to for the rainbow animation, which was done by animating along a curve. Its was done with surfaces then converted to a poly as you cant use the extrude under the polygon tabs. The hardest part was getting the spacing in the aches correct so its doesn't look odd.

This was the tutorial that I looked at to achieve the rainbow.

http://www.wonderhowto.com/how-to/video/how-to-extrude-a-surface-along-an-animated-curve-in-maya-248996/

kittys Boat cart

2009-05-25T13:51:00.001-07:00

Here's is kitty's cartoon like boat that fits around her cart. The original concept was to have the boat fold out as she enters the room, but because of the time constraint on here scene this would have worked out.

These are some early shots of the boat in wire frame mode getting the concept and style of the boat right.

This is basically the boat finished with out any texture yet. I really like the style of her scenes in contrast to the rest of the animation.

Here's the texture maps for the boat.

Cart Smashing into the jury room.

2009-05-25T13:28:00.000-07:00

I started looking into the cart smashing through into the jury room from the tests that I done at the start of the year. I quickly picked up from where I left off. I had to make a special map for each plank so that when the cart hits, they break up like wood smashing apart. There are a few tweaks that Ive still got to do, but this wont take too long. The debris and chunks of wood will be composited in at the end.

This is the fracture map that determines how the pieces brake up, but this was the wrong size and all the parts didn't break up like in the image.

I re sized it to 60 pixels by 60pixels like in a tutorial and even though it looked OK in the screen it still didn't break up properly.I decided to do each plank with this fracture map below and its works a treat :D

Here's a few screen shots attempts that Ive tried.

If there is time I will use this same plug in (blast code) for the zombie hand smashing through the mausoleum.

Here's a few different video clips of my attempts at getting it right.

basic dolphin rig

2009-05-25T11:23:00.000-07:00

Here I rigged a dolphin to swim around it kittys scene, it was only simple but here's what i did. This scene might be too short to even see the animation of the dolphin, but we will see.

I used programme called camtasia studios to screen record what I have done so you can see the movement of the rigged dolphin. Its a very nice programme though I didn't realise it picked up my music in the background haha.

flag animation test on the castle for kittys room

2009-05-22T15:55:00.000-07:00

Here I wanted to add some animation to the flags on top of the castle as flags would naturally be moving in the wind. This scene is going to be very short so you wouldn't necessarily see this this but it will be better then solid flags not moving and it will add the the rest of the scene making it move believable.

Kittys hair

2009-05-22T08:41:00.000-07:00

This is the new and improved hair style after a few tweaks and decision from Anna this is what I have done. It looks alot better than the other style.

Glad thats done :P

The grass looking like grass :D

2009-05-20T02:25:00.001-07:00

Here is a compilation of different shots at different stages when I was making the grass.
This is a simple texture that I made quick in photshop to define a path and where the grass should be.
This was a picture that I found on 3D total which I really liked which was created in maya. I used parts of this for reference.

Kittys hair attempt

2009-05-20T02:01:00.000-07:00

Over the weekend I have had a go at creating hair for kitty. This was a process of taking a low ploy version from maya into Z brush to start sculpting and adding extra detail. Then from here take that mesh back into maya to extract only the hair and take that hair mesh into mudbox to paint. then back to maya finally.

These were previous attempts at creating hair few weeks ago.

For the low ploy mesh which I took into Z bursh I used the top version of kitty as it looked like original designs .In Z brush I was using different tools to volumise the hair and add more detail.

Thess two pictures below were the first attempts at creating the hair for kittys. This was very hard to get the hair looking right. Some parts just look odd.
This is the second attempt, which I began to make the fringe longer and defined andmore detail.
Once I was quite happy with what I had done I started to texture this in mudbox adding a highlights and a bump map.
Hair colour map.
Hair bump map.

Photoshop tutorial for making jeans

2009-05-20T01:44:00.000-07:00

http://9tutorials.com/2007/11/06/realistic-denim-jean-texture-from-scratch.html

This tutorial help me in create the jean texture for kittys jeans

Kitty gone ulgy

2009-05-20T01:23:00.000-07:00

More getting bored, and having fun with different textures. heeheh

Swine flu pandemic !

2009-05-20T01:18:00.000-07:00

Getting bored late one night.

This weeks to do list !! 19th of May

2009-05-19T13:39:00.000-07:00

From last weeks list the textering for kitty is now done, and the grass is basically done now thank god! lol erm.. path texture is kinda done I think, well Ive got one in place for the time being. Over the couple of days me Dan and Anna have been attempting to create hair for the characters with much difficulty, but I think we have found a a suitable way to make it look good.

So for this weeks list is as followed.

We have got to have everything in place, in each scene, modelled and textured.
sort the hair finally out asap!!
Probably something else but ill fill thing in later :D

kitty textures are done!

2009-05-15T02:16:00.000-07:00

Over the last couple of days I have unwrapped kitty ready for texturing and now finished texture her now. Now I have a to make a start on her hair now. This is will be a process of taking it into zbrush, maya and mudbox to achieve the right look.

Face texture though its hard to see in these images.

Face texture .
Finger nails look good.
The zip was done with a bump map in Mudbox which I had to make my own stamp from photoshop.
Zip with a gray texture to make it look right, so it doesn't blend into the top.

Here the bump map for the jeans to add more detail.
Here are the boots more dirty then above as they look too new. Plus these look better !

Tree Animation

2009-05-12T01:08:00.000-07:00

From the meeting with Dan Dali yesterday he mention about how everything moves slightly and nothing is static. Dan said about how the trees could move about in the wind. With us looking out at the window at the leave as they were blowing around. To have all this secondary animation in the background would make our whole animation move believable.
With this in mind I found a really good way of animating the trees and grass to sway in the wind a little bit.

This is what I quickly put together to show the rest of the group. The trees wouldn't blow about as much as in this video below, but I wanted to over exaggerate the movement of the trees.
Also, just as a test I put this on the rest Farm to test if everything was working as it should be.
These 100 frames took about 2mins to render out using 70 odd CPUs which was pretty GOOD ! : D

This weeks to do list !! 11th of May

2009-05-12T01:06:00.001-07:00

From last weeks list, all of the points were met.

This weeks list is below.

Finish off the grass in the outside environment.
Unwrap kitty
Texture kitty
Make a start on kitty’s hair.

Last weeks to do list !! 4th of May

2009-05-12T01:04:00.001-07:00

Start modelling the castle in kitty’s room
Texture kitty’s castle.
Work out which way would be best to create the grass.
Texture other objects in kitty’s scenes.

kittys castle

2009-05-07T16:01:00.001-07:00

This is the Castle for other scene where you see kitty going over the rainbow and this castle will be in back ground.

I am really happy with how this came out as didn't really have a drawing to work from, so I was taking ideas from different places, mainly the magic kingdom castle in Disney land to achieve what I have below. AS your only going to see this from the front view, the back looks unfinished and horrible but your never going to see this so would be a waste of time .

Time taken:
1day to model
1day to texture

Chest

2009-05-07T15:55:00.001-07:00

Here is the finished model of the chest with gold coins :D

Coins for the chest

2009-05-06T01:45:00.000-07:00

In the chest in kittys room there is going to be gold coins in the chest. For the texture of the coin I used Crazy bump for normal maps to display the detail instead of modelling loads of detail
Am sure Ive said this before but Crazy Bump is a really simple program to use but generates really good normal maps from pictures.

Here are some screen shots that I took for the coins

This was the texture that I made and used for the normal map.

Pack of Crisps

2009-05-03T16:24:00.000-07:00

Texturing a pack of crisps seems easy right? Well I wanted to texture the inside as well as the outside on one plane. Other wise you would get the outside texture repeating on the inside, which I didn't want, as the inside is silver foil.

In the picture the graph network on the right allows you to have two textures to display on one plane depending on the normal facing to display which texture.

Final image with ambient occlusion and grimy textures.

cans

2009-05-03T07:16:00.000-07:00

More junk to add to the clutter in the outside environment.

Final texture that I used

Final texture that I used

Mario kart wii reference for kittys room

2009-05-03T03:26:00.000-07:00

While playing Mario kart on the Wii I thought two of the leves would be a good source for kittys room. One of the leves GBA Shy Guy Beach is set on an island with plam trees, blue sky, fluffy clouds etc. The other GCN Peach Beach is set part on a beach and on land, which also has palm trees, blue sea, blue sky etc.

GBA Shy Guy Beach

GCN Peach Beach

Two days of grass

2009-04-30T11:11:00.001-07:00

Ive spent the last two days making the grass for the exterior environment where the three girls enter the ride. It has been a fun experiment with the grass but it has taken along time. It wasn't too bad at the start, but where Ive been layering up the grass to add extra detail each time I render a shot it has been taking about 5mins to complete. So every tweak and adjustment that I do Ive got to wait around 5mins to see the effect that the changes has made, and if that's not rite then try again!

The grass is made from the paint effects and fur. I done it in this way because with the fur grass in Maya you can really customise where you would like the grass to be. So if I want a path I can takeaway grass in that area or adjust the length of it, this will give it more of a natural feel to it.

Here the tutorial that I skim read to remember what I had to do from my test that I achieved earlier on in the year.

http://www.triston-cg.890m.com/tutorials/paintingfurtutorial.pdf

With the added paint affects grass to fill out the rest of the area which does look nicer then the fur grass and added weeds and flowers really does give the feel of a over grown place which hasn't been looked after for awhile.

Ive now got to the stage where am quite happy with the grass in all the camera shots.

Below is some of the many render shots that Ive taken showing the changes that I have taken.

Cart Uv unwrapping

2009-04-29T15:23:00.000-07:00

Anna ask me to unwrap the carts uv's as she had to make a start on texturing the actual ride model. But she wouldn't let me texture the cart :( haha :) Anyway here are the uv's layed out for both the carts.

Sparks in the first section of the cave

2009-04-27T01:34:00.000-07:00

In the screen shots below I was testing out sparks and lighting in this section of the cave for when the cart banks around the corner. The sparks started off quite long and dense (pic.2) . Then I reduced the number of particles and the life span to make them shorter and sparse. In (pic .5) you can see where I added a point light to the lantern to omit light to brighten up the area below. Pic .7 is what I finally decided the sparks should look like with them randomly omitting as it goes around the corner with a light the flickering on and off at the same time.

more junkage

2009-04-26T16:11:00.001-07:00

Cardboard boxes and bottles for the outside environment.

Fence

2009-04-26T15:24:00.000-07:00

This is the texture that I have painted in Mudbox for the fence which I think looks quite nice!

Fence texture
Concrete post texture
Gate texture for the fence.
Screen shots

Epileptic Lights arghhaha

2009-04-24T14:04:00.000-07:00

Here are some of the tests that I done with the light expressions. They work really well with the cart sparks as they emit going round the corners on the track.

This is one expression that I used on the point lights for the cart.

pointLightShape1.intensity = sin((time * 50)*pointLightShape1.OF);

Brace your self !

Outside environment junk

2009-04-23T15:45:00.001-07:00

I started modelling some junk to fill part of exterior environment. I started modelling the objects in maya and took some into mudbox and texture

The rusty wheel texture.
Here is the tyre texture.This is the end result put back into maya and composed.

I really pleased with how all of this has turned out, both modelling and texturing.

Track shader

2009-04-22T16:16:00.001-07:00

I made a shader in maya for the tack as its worn down on top more as the cart wheels been rolling over it, which will be cleaner then the side which are dirty. Here some images to how I got to the end result.The procedural shader was done with ramps and applied to a blinn. With the different ramps I managed to get a really nice texture for the track. :D

Randoms

2009-04-22T02:45:00.000-07:00

Cool screen shots of the cave :D

Post up date

2009-04-22T02:30:00.000-07:00

I went back to the fence that I had made, and it look too new and clean. I remember Dan Dail saying similar things to other groups about how they needed to be made more gritty and dirty. So with this in mind I went back to add more detail and to make them look old as they had meant to have been there a long time.

I had some ideas in my head of how they were going to look like, so i made some changes in Maya, then took them into mudbox to add more detail. From the high mesh objects I am going to make a normal map out of them so it will carry over the high detail onto the lower mesh.

Here some screen shots of the post from mudbox

Then I went onto painting a texture for the fence.

And here is the final thing which looks good !

Cave texture tests

2009-04-20T01:28:00.000-07:00

Below are some screen shots of different textures that I have been trying out for the cave environment, these have been painted within Mudbox 2009.

This was painted in mudbox, but looked more like the inside of a human intestine so some one said.. lol It could have worked tho. !

This texture with made procedurally within maya

All these picture below were all painted in Mudbox.

The texture on the left hand side looks good.

Here I was thinking of a different texture for the ceiling from the walls more dampish texture if that makes sense. hehe. But your not necessarily going to see much of the celling as this is going to be a dark environment.

This red texture could look good if another texture or weaked in photoshop.

Not really liking the blue marble affect.

Some of them look applausable and others just look a bit odd. Ill be painting bump maps/or generating normal map to add more defining features to the cave texture.

Kiittys room

2009-04-08T01:39:00.000-07:00

In the mean time from doing the cave scenes I have been modelling parts of kittys room, this is going to look really stylised to contrast the other part of the ride.

The only parts left to model are the ; the castle, kittys foldout boat from her cart and i think that it really every thing else is done : )

Cave environments

2009-04-08T01:33:00.000-07:00

The cave environments are now all modelled ready for the long process of texturing them. Here are some shot of the caves.

I am very pleased with how the modelling has gone on the cave and how each shot is going to follow on from the next. I will be mainly texturing straight onto the modells within Mudbox 2009 as this is the easist and quickest way to achieve a really good out come.

PhotoShop brushes inside Mudbox ?! er.. ! : )

2009-04-07T15:17:00.000-07:00

Hey I found a good tutorial on 3D total where you can import photoshop brushes into mudbox 2009. Before I knew this, I thought there must be a way of getting the brushes from Photoshop into mudbox and use them is the same way like photoshop, painting textures and sculpturing. The video tells you to download a little programme that can view the brushes inside the brush file, which is really handy.

Check it out ! http://www.3dtotal.com/ the video should be on the first page, if not check back thought to a different month to find it.

"Mudbox 2009 Quick Start Series - How to Use all your Photoshop Brushes inside of Mudbox' by Wayne Robson"

This is going to make my life a lot better and the textures are going to look F.. Amazing ! lol

Light expressions

2009-03-29T12:18:00.000-07:00

Where the cart is going round the corner in the caves making sparks it produces a lot of light or flickering of light. Instead of keying the light intensity on and off manually, I wanted to have more of a random feel to the light intensity, to make it more natural.

I started to learn a little a bit about expression in maya and applied this to the lights intensity. After a while trying to make this work I kind of got a desired look and feel to the light, but the only problem was that this worked throughout the whole timeline, which I i didn't want. I still wanted to be able to have a master control over it turning on and off. This proved a little tricky as the new attribute didn't want to go under the right section on the light. Then though the hypergraph managed to put in under the section, (which was Lightshape1) and made this keyable.

Here's a couple of pic to show you what I mean.

In the video below you can see the effect of the expressions on the light.

This has worked really well to have a organic feel to this. Pleased with this :D ! !

Sparks

2009-03-27T04:22:00.000-07:00

From having a little play around in Maya at making sparks for the cart on the mine cart section, I wanted to have some reference to work from.
I have a fire flint and striker to make fires if you don't have matches available.

"The magnesium alloy rod and striker will last for up to 3,000 strikes, producing a 3,000°C (5,500°F) spark that is bright enough to be used as an emergency signal."

I was using this fire flint and striker and a lighter to produce the sparks.

Here are some videos and pictures of what I have.

Here is the video that I complied.

Cup of lava

2009-03-12T08:09:00.000-07:00

A slightly different way of creating lava with N cloth, but this way takes awhile to calculate and render. Quite nice finish though.

Stalactite / Stalagmite

2009-03-04T14:31:00.000-08:00

The difference between stalactite and stalagmite are mites go up tites come down. Stalactite hang from the "C" ceiling and stalagmite "G" grow from the ground.

Here is a little experiment that someone has done. It show how stalactites are formed.
Nice little reference.

A stalactite (Greek stalaktites, (Σταλακτίτης), from the word for "drip" and meaning "that which drips") is a type of speleothem (secondary mineral) that hangs from the ceiling or wall of limestone caves. It is sometimes referred to as dripstone.

Stalactites are formed by the deposition of calcium carbonate and other minerals, which is precipitated from mineralized water solutions. Limestone is calcium carbonate rock which is dissolved by water that contains carbon dioxide forming a calcium hydrogencarbonate solution.

A stalagmite (from the Greek stalagma ("Σταλαγμίτης"), "drop" or "drip") is a type of speleothem that rises from the floor of a limestone cave due to the dripping of mineralized solutions and the deposition of calcium carbonate.

Lavacicles are geological formations resembling small round-tipped stalactites that are found in lava tubes, the name comes from their resemblance to icicles.

Lavacicle is really a generic term that encompasses several different types of stalactites found in lava tubes.

Enter the cave

2009-03-04T02:04:00.000-08:00

Once I got the animated blockout for the first scene in the cave I started to model the environment. I had to wait till I had the blockout as I didn't know what size everything was going to be and didn't want to start modelling then having to change it later on, which was a little bit of a pain.

Well I have made good progress in the last couple of days with most of it all done now and in the scene. There needs to be a few changes and I will get feedback from the rest of the group and make the changes needed.

Overall its looking really nice soo far :D

Here are some screen shots of the scene.

kitty Island

2009-03-04T01:35:00.000-08:00

This is what I have started modelling in the second scene for kittys room. At the moment it is going quite nicely. I think this should work well with kittys personality with every all happy and tranquil. So far I have modelled the island, palm trees, the treasure chest and the parrot. There only a few more models to go in the scene and its quite simple yet stylised.

Painting in Autodesk Mudbox 2009

2009-03-03T15:25:00.000-08:00

While doing some sculpting in Maya I transferred one mesh to Mudbox because I wanted to test out painting textures straight on the the model, then bringing the texture into Maya.

It was really easy to paint onto the model with my Wacome tablet. You can import texture files as you would in Photoshop to uses them as stencils the paint on the texture. You can use normal brushes and imported brushes used in Photoshop to use within Mudbox.

Once I tested this out on a model I had to get the texture from Mudbox to Maya. This was a case of just exporting the texture file. Prior to this you need to un wrap the UV's in Maya first! Once this was done you can use this texture like you would normally. There only needed a few tweaks to get rid of any seams, but apart from that this process was really easy and good to use.

Smoke testing

2009-03-03T06:15:00.001-08:00

I started testing out how smoke would interact with the cart as it going though a tunnel like scene. This was more difficult then expected. You can see in the video that the smoke from above hits and rolls over the cart as it goes past. Also I added smoke to the rear of the cart, which is meant to be a smoke trail.

Am still not initially happy with this at the moment but I will tweak parts for it too look rite.

Normal mapping

2009-03-03T03:43:00.000-08:00

I started to brush up on normal mapping in Maya for parts of the environments. I was looking through different tutorials on the Internet and some of them mentioned the NVIDIA Texture Tools. It showed them using a normal colour texture in photoshop and using the Nvidia plug-in to generate a normal map from this simple colour texture."It creates normal maps from height maps for per pixel rendering." This was a really quick process to get loads of detail from the original map.

http://developer.nvidia.com/object/nv_texture_tools.html

Below is what I achieved.

Another way I found from watching a tutorial was a programme called Crazy Bump. It works in the same principle as the Nivdia plug-in but it allows you to change more options. Also not only can you create a normal map you can out-put a displacement map, specularity map, a diffuse map and a occlusion map.

This is such a nice tool that will work wonders with the texturing process.

http://www.crazybump.com/

Here what I have achieved.

Scooby Doo Medieval References

2009-03-03T01:47:00.000-08:00

Before I knew that we might not be doing the medieval room I was watching Scooby Doo the live action film (2002). Within the film there is a little section where they go into a haunted house which is medieval themed. This had some great references that would be very nice for our animation.
I was hoping to show you a video clip of the film, but due to it not uploading to YouTube have taken some screen shots to show you what I mean.

An exterior shot of the haunted house that they enter.Suits of armor within the room would have been include in this section.Goblin like features of on the wall adding extra details which would have been nice.
More axes and suit or armor/ knights on either side of the track.The brick work style is very nice which would have worked well, possible little figures in the wall.
Here was a section like in our film where axes are swinging from ceiling across the path where the cart would go.

Maybe if we find time among our busy plan this medieval section could get done. Possible ??

skeleton

2009-03-02T15:45:00.001-08:00

I started modelling the skeleton for the medieval room but after a couple of days once it was mainly finished I was told that there might not be a medieval room due to time slipping past very fast. Though this wasn't to go to waste. There was to be a two skeletons that come out of the ride as the girls enter there in there cart. You are going to possible have skeletons in the grave yard, or out side the ride its self. All is not lost :D

Mine cart prop modelling

2009-03-02T15:14:00.000-08:00

Since I choose to start modelling the mine cart section of the animation first, I started to think of props to model to go within the environment.

This is a little list that I came up with to get me going;
Crates
Spade
Hurricane lantern
Rocks
Pick axe
train wheel

Here's a quick screen shot of the props altogether. This could be distributed around the mine scene.
By the way I didn't add the rock in the screen shot above as you know what rocks look like though they will be in the final scene.

More lava

2009-03-02T14:14:00.000-08:00

I wanted to start to get a sense of what the final lava would look like in the final animation. Here are the tests that I have done which are getting very close to what I want. It will be done with particles and animated textures. The particle system will be when the lava is coming out of cracks in the rocks and a lava-fall. The only thing that I need to do now is the slow the speed of the animated lava texture so it doesn't seem to runny! Then this will be sorted ! :D Yay really pleased with the out comes so far.

First attempt

Started animating the texture.

Second attempt

Getting the texture right for the lava with lava bumps flowing inside as well.

Third attempt

With this one I put it into a little scene with the particel lava flowing out of a crack in the wall into the lava below. Also I added textures and lighting. This one looks the best so far ! Really pleased with it, tho texture needs to be slowed down a bit so looks more like lava.

Hope you like.

Clay modelling

2009-02-15T11:25:00.000-08:00

After my much enjoyment of making a sculpture of kitty in Super Sculpey clay I wanted to model something else. I thought it would be a good idea to model the cart and a little section of the track.

I enjoy modelling as much as in Maya as I do with my hands with clay. Though I like the traditional feeling of a 'hand on' approach with clay with the model in front of you to move and mold as you wish.

This is what I have produced :)

Here I used foil to bulk out the cart so that I don't use too much of the clay and not too make it heavy.

Here is the wire structure of the track that I drilled into the MDF base and used milliput to bond the tops together.

Added the cay to the wire structure.

This is the finished model below.

I would have put basic models of the characters inside the cart but I ran out of clay :( but
overall I am very please with the end results. I might paint the model as well, but am unsure as of yet!

Research pictutres for the face

2009-02-09T02:03:00.000-08:00

I was looking at some picture from the Internet to look at the facial line where they lie on the face. I marked out what I wanted to look at in a white line.

Theses were really helpful in looking at the facial detail and all the wrinkles with in the face. After looking at these pictures I changed Kitty's face to look more human like. From the picture in the past post you can see the difference between the two.

Dynamic chain test

2009-02-08T14:49:00.000-08:00

For the fence around the ride there is a gate which has a chain around it locking it together. I was looking into using Dynamic for the chain so as the character come thought the gate the chain will rattle as they go though. . This seems quite simple in theory but harder in practice.
The first part was getting the chain to interact with its self, so it can be linked together. The problem that I found out was this only worked well if each chain link was bout 8 polygons, it didn't like anything higher than this.

I founds another way of linking the chains together through bones and parenting each link to a joint and trying it that way. The only problem with this was that is didn't really move link a chain.

The chain seems the move about unnecessary and doesn't look rite

It kinda works on this one, but its only a low polygon chain :(

Here is one where the links are parented together but doesn't really move like a chain. Though it gives the sense of chain like movement.

The next thing I will try is using cluster with a curve to make the chain links move. This will have to be animated by hand though as the gate opens. This could be the best way of doing this.
Just have to wait and find out.....

Kittys Head

2009-02-08T14:21:00.001-08:00

I thought I near enough finished Kitty's head but upon showing Dan Cripps he suggested to to add more definition to the smile wrinkle around here mouth. The picture below is where the new definition will be added.
Dan said to raise the smile wrinkle to where the green dotted line is and the red dotted line is where I had it at present.

This is what I achieved. On the Left you have the original version and on the right the new version. The white lines is what I have altered.
Thought the straight line on the left is an Error ! Whoops

Here you can see this more clearly with out the wire frame on. I also added more to define the nose so it didn't flow into the face, and more on the eyes

Some more pictures of Kitty's head from low poly to a high poly mesh

lol Whats a scary picture !

She had a full set of teeth and a tongue but hard to see at the moment.

These are to show how close the model is to the picture that was drawn by Dan Ryan

Kittys body

2009-02-08T12:14:00.000-08:00

Here are a few pictures of her body which is working in progress, so there not finished yet as you can see.
Things are coming alone quite nicely i feel and it shouldn't be too long till there done : )

Up to speed

2009-02-08T12:09:00.000-08:00

Right, lets bring you up to speed on what I have done so far. I have done a few prop modeling for the mine cart section and a little on the exterior. The main focus has been on kitty so far.

Also I have been working on another sculpture of the ride. Pictures will be up soon !

Dissertation out the way for now !

2009-02-08T11:50:00.000-08:00

Now that the dreaded dissertation draft is handed in for it to be looked at, now I can go back to what I love, Modelling ! yay
The next two weeks I can really concentrate hard on the film project getting things done. Well that's the plan, because I haven't done as much as I hoped, but now is my chance to make up for it !

Painting Objects

2009-01-25T06:06:00.000-08:00

For creating an exterior environment things have to look organic and not look like they have been place there by some one. I was looking at different tutorials on different websites and there was one that I kept seeing and didn't know what it was trying to do. I found out that it was for using the paint tool for geometry that you have made so you can paint this onto a surface.

This is the tutorial that I looked at.

http://en.9jcg.com/comm_pages/blog_content-art-113.htm

I thought I could use this as a way of making rocks or other objects that can be put into the environment more randomly taking little time as possible.

I got to the end of the tutorial and it still didn't work. It just wouldn't paint my objects that I made. I went looking for similar tutorials on this and there were no others. After 30mins of messing about trying different buttons etc I looked in the Maya help files. Normally there not much help but this time it was. In the tutorial they miss out one of the important part to make it work. I had made the object away from the center grid which is needed in order for it to work. So I redone the tutorial with the object in the center of the grid and it worked ! YAY ! hehe

Here's what I messed about with that only took like 1min to do.

To model so far

2009-01-25T02:59:00.000-08:00

The things that I am going to model so far are : The character Kitty, the mine cart scene and am doing some of the exterior props. Obviously there is going to be a lot more but this is what we have decided so far.

Mine cart: This will in clued the cave/tunnel, lava, rocks lanterns, the track, wooden crates, stalagmites/stalactites.

Exterior props: The fence, chain and padlock, grass, rocks, path, possible trees, and what ever will come up outside.

Once I have done these models they will be on the blog to show you all how wonderful they are !

Second week back

2009-01-25T02:42:00.000-08:00

Well its the end of the second week back into the the term and things are in full swing again. As a group we sat down and planed out what me, Anna and Dan R had to model in accordance of importance. Then later on we split some of these up to what we had to individually model. The main priority was to have the main characters model first as they are the most important.
I had started modelling Kitty over Christmas just starting to get things rolling slowly. I would say that am about 50% of the way there so far, but still a lot to carry on with.

Since I made a sculpture of Kitty over Christmas, this has really helped me look at her in a 360 degree view rather than a 2D image. So I will be using my sculpture as a very good reference.

Smash !

2009-01-11T05:31:00.000-08:00

I have now worked out a very nice way of having the mine cart crash though the wood going into the next room. It took a while looking back at the previous test Ive have done with the Blast code plug-in. The main problem I was having was adding gravity and making the particles collide with a floor so they don't go through. The other thing I needed to achieve was making it brake apart more like wood then bricks.

This is the fracture map that I made in Photoshop, so when the impact of the cart hits the wood, it will break up upon where the white lines are. This way I can produce how the wood will break up.

Once I had this fracture map it was easy to Uv map the texturte on the surface.

In these videos below this is what I have got so far. There looking a lot better then the first ones.

SuperSculpey Kitty

2009-01-09T12:31:00.000-08:00

After seeing the models that other people had done in the class, I wanted to do my own model of a character from our film over Christmas. Since I was going to model Kitty in Maya I thought I might as well model her so I can get a better idea of what she going to look like.

I drew some scaled pictures of Kitty from the front and side and set about making the armature. I was using some steel wire to make the bulk of the armature and some thinner copper wire for the arms and fingers.

To make the armature I was using John Brown work as reference to get an idea on which way would be the best.

John Brown website

http://www.figuresandfocus.com/index.html

I was using some of the techniques that he explains on the training DVD about sculpturing which was very helpful.

I really enjoyed doing the sculpture and I thinking of doing another one : )

Here are some picture of the sculpture.

Lava research

2008-12-04T18:11:00.000-08:00

Here are some peoples renders of lava that they have done, which I have tried to simulate in Maya but still working on that.

Research on mines

2008-12-04T17:52:00.000-08:00

Here got some black and white mine research picture for reference that are really good and two fence pictures that can be used for the graveyard design.

Contract

2008-12-04T17:44:00.001-08:00

This is the contract for our group that I designed. The point in the contract were made by Anna as the director.

Parrot

2008-12-04T17:30:00.000-08:00

These were designs for the parrot in Kitt's room. I started off with looking at a real parrot then on to cartoons then looking at more mechanical birds with stings that could have unique animated style.

Mine scene

2008-12-04T17:20:00.000-08:00

Here are a few drawings for the mine cart scene,where the cart goings off in a differernt direction through the mine.

Graveyard

2008-12-04T17:09:00.000-08:00

Here was some concepts for the graveyard testing our more different stylised grave stones and some different object that would appear in the scene.

Lava Test

2008-12-03T11:51:00.000-08:00

This was testing how the lava will flow if we are going to use it still in our scene. I think it works ok, but I think that the texture on the lava can be a little bit better, as it lifespan is too quick. Also needs to be more gloopy like lava.

Over the Rainbow

2008-12-03T11:41:00.000-08:00

This sort of rainbow design will be in kitty's room, and the way it animates will be similar to the finial one in her scene.

Graveyard/Mine jump

2008-12-02T14:26:00.000-08:00

This is an birds eye view of the graveyard. This will show the layout of the track, wheres trees and gravestones will be placed. At the end you will have the mausoleum. Its kind nice to have this to plan where things will go in the scene.

This is another piece of concept work which i done in water colours and then edits parts in photoshop.

Scooby Doo

2008-11-28T08:59:00.000-08:00

Well since ive had the day off today ive been working at home doing some more concept art work. While having lunch and watching TV, flicking though the vast amount of channels I start watching Scooby Doo.
You may think this has no relevance to the project what so ever and so did i, till there was a mine cart scene in an old gold mine where a miner was scaring people away from the town.

So here the clip from YouTube.
Enjoy, I did ! hhehe

Cart Designs

2008-11-26T06:09:00.000-08:00

Got some cart designs below and how the cart can join up with the second cart from behind.

Some ideas for Kittys room

2008-11-26T04:07:00.000-08:00

Some other little designs for Kitty's room. Ive been looking into palm trees for the island which has the treasure chest on and the red balloon.

Ive used pencils, water colours, oil pastels, pro-marker pens and Photoshop.

Looking at different carts designs

2008-11-26T02:55:00.000-08:00

Just getting ideas on different cart designs and looking at mine carts.

Got to have Lego ( just the best)

The one below I quite like as there are two two tracks joining up together in what looks like a cave/passage way, with rusty cart wheels on the track.

What idiots below ! lol

Cart coupling

2008-11-26T02:52:00.000-08:00

Here I was looking into how the cart can detach from each other and join back up easily. So here are some pictures of how trains link up together.

From looking at these pictures I started to come up with a design that would suit our cart on the ride.

Cave pictures and textures

2008-11-26T02:02:00.000-08:00

These were taken from the Summer holiday to Crete (2008) in Zeus cave.

The contrast in colours and the way the rocks have fused together have a nice appeal I think, These could be used in our cave for the part of the ride.

Stalactites in the pictures above
These can give us great inspiration for modeling the cave and the type of textures can be given to the walls.