Earlier this week I attended a workshop with Jon on how to film footage for 3D tracking, which would be one of my final shots for my showreel. Overall, there are many things to consider when filming for this specific purpose, the camera we used was a Sony A6300 which was connected to a black magic monitor which allowed us to capture raw footage, compared to if we had filmed on the camera alone which would have compressed our video, creating noise in the image, which would make it harder to track.

For the cameras settings we set it up as a high shutter speed to avoid blurring and as low an ISO as possible, to avoid noise in our footage. When filming, it tends to make it easier when you have objects or clear lines to use as tracking markers, for our first shot we filmed just outside of the MHT building, the floor there is consisted of large tiles, therefore making it a good tracking location.

One thing that Jon recommend that we look into was the effect of a rolling shutter, something I am slightly familiar with already, as you can plainly see the effects of a rolling shutter on very fast moving objects such as the propeller on an aeroplane.

“Rolling Shutter, usually found in CMOS sensors is a method of capturing image that does not expose the entire sensor simultaneously, but rather exposes different parts of the sensor in different points in time.”

An example of the effects of a rolling shutter

My next steps for camera tracking will be to attempt to track and composite the footage we filmed, once I can get hold of it later this week.

For my final artefact, I now have to lay out the details of what shots will be included in the showreel.

Modelling Showcase

I intend to create two detailed models within Maya; a Playstation 4 Controller and a Canon camera lens. I decided upon these objects for two reasons, one being that both objects small granular details that will challenge my modelling ability, since the objects will need to be highly detailed so that they will hold up in extreme close up. The second reason being that the objects are readily available to me to use as a reference guide. I will then take these models, UV unwrap them, then texture them within Substance Painter. Once the modelling and texturing is complete, I will composite the models into a still image using Blender.

• 30 Seconds
• 360 view of both models – Wireframes and Textured
• Still image render + Breakdown of Lighting and Shadows

Camera Mapping Showcase

For this section I will be mapping out a subway / train platform, I chose this environment since these areas tend to have a lot of sharp edges and different textures, which will help me when first lining up the perspective of the ground plane with the environment. I will map out and create the geometry for the scene, and then move onto baking out the textures and replacing them  edited versions or replacements made with Photoshop. Once this is all completed I will display the map by rendering a short camera move through the space.

• 30 Seconds
• Rendered camera animation moving through the map
• Breakdown showing the untextured scene, the original image and the edited / replaced textures

3D Track / Matchmoving Showcase

For my matchmoving showcase I plan on using the footage recorded from a recent workshop with my tutor. I will display my track by showing overlaying markers / grids onto the footage, as well as creating a quick model to be placed into the scene to show the accuracy of the track.

• Tracked footage overlayed with markers / grids
• Model tracked into the environment

The final showreel should fall somewhere between the 1-2 minute mark, going by a conversation with Escape Studios, who informed me that this was the average optimal length for a showreel.

I will also be recording my full process through these shots, which will be featured on my blog upon submission.

To further progress my skills in modelling, I wanted to focus on a model which includes a lot of edge work, my feedback from my last meeting with my tutor when showing him the moonshine model was that my edges need work and that I should experiment more with my use of the edge loop tool. I found a video from Mike Hermes that fit this aim quite well. The tutorial also fit quite well with the aim of creating another, more complex model, which involved a lot of different geometry.

Aims

• Improve my edgework within Maya
• Test out lighting and rendering a complex object
• Smooth my final model effectively after edgework

The modelling involved in this process was not too disimilar from my other work in Maya, what I will detail is my work with the edge loop tool as well as smoothing. The first part of the image I tried to smooth was definitely the most complex, the center wheel of the compass was quite difficult to get it to looko right when smoothed, but after experimenting with the edge loop tool I found the easiest method was to set it to ‘equal distance from edge and using the smooth preview to see the effect on the model.

Inserting my edge loops

Finished Smooth Preview

It took me a short while to fully grasp how close an edge loop should be to the edge of the mesh, cloes enough so that it retains its shape, but not too close so that the edges are too sharp and don’t catch light properly. Once this was completed I moved onto smoothing the rest of my object in a similar manner, here is the finished result.

This was created using the Arnold renderer within Maya, overall I am very pleased with my progress in edge work, for my final output this will be very useful as when I render out and light my image, bad edge work will be very evident.

Further Steps

• Use the skills learned in this exercise on my final output

Timelapse

Progressing further with camera mapping within Maya, I wanted to create a more complex image that would enable me to learn more about texturing my camera map, utilising photshop.

Aims

• Further develop my camera mapping skills
• Utilise photoshop to edit the image for more complex textures on my map
• Create my own textures to replace blank faces

Looking around 0n YouTube I managed to find a video that goes into great detail on the process of texturing camera maps, as well as how to replace faces with have no detail from the original image, a lot of this video deals with how to ues photoshop within the mapping workflow as well as the hypershade within Maya.

Before I started to model my scene in Maya, I first took my image and imported it into photoshop, with the intent of editing it so there would be minimal stretching on the front of the map when moving the camera from the initial projection. I achieved this by utilising the clone stamp & patch tools in photoshop. The front of the house in mym image was obscured by grass sitting in front of it, which had to be removed, otherwise would cause bad stretching when it came to mapping out the image. Below you can see the before and after of the original image and my edit.

Before Editing

After Editing

Moving onto the actual camera map, I first followed similar steps as my first experiment in camera mapping, I created my projection camera and matched its settings to the image using the exif data contained within it, after I had placed my editing image onto the image plane, I then moved the grid to align with the floor of the image and began to create the geometry for the scene. Most of the geometry was relatively simple to create, the only complex part to this was getting the windows to look right, I ended up creating some edge loops on my house model for the bottom and top lip of the windows, then using the multi-cut tool to get some edge for the sides, once this was completed I removed any intersecting edges on the windows, selected the faces and extruded the inwards.

Then going into the hypershade, I was ready to apply the projection onto my model, this involved playinng around with the settings of the nodes and linking my image into the projection node, turning the diffuse down and the ambient light all the way up enabled the image to be the lighting for my scene.

Following along with the video, I attempted to replace the sky in my scene, the way this would be accomplished was to take a sphere in Maya, cut it in half and reverse the faces to face inwards and then taking my replacement skybox and projecting it onto the sphere using a cylindrical projection, after messing around with the settings of the projection I got a nice looking sky replacement, sadly as I found out either my machine or my version of Maya really did not like this and repeatedly crashed whenever I tried to project my image onto the sphere, I did some googling to see if any others had this same problem but I assume because it’s quite an obscure problem I could not find anything, after a few tries I decided to move onto the next section of this experiment.

I was now ready to start replacing some of the textures within my scene, because camera maps can only work well with geometry within the projection view, anything outisde this view is stretched and looks quite ugly, making it difficult when moving a render camera around the scene. To remedy this I had to bake out the textures on some of my geometry, then taking the baked texture into photoshop, editing it using the clone stamp & patch tools, saving it and reloading the image node within the hypershade.

My baked out floor texture before edit

After Editing

Next I moved onto replacing the texture on the side of the building which could not be seen on the original image, because of this the process was quite different, first I created a camera facing the side of the house, rendered out an image and then imported it into photoshop, then I replaced the stretched projection with a concrete texture I found online by creating a selection around the alpha of the image, placing the new texture over the selection and creating a mask over it, as well as using a color overlay layer to match the color of the texture to the rest of my scene.

Before Editing

After Editing

I then exported this image out of photoshop and applied it to the camera facing the side of  the house using another projection node, I then selected the faces which I wanted to replace the texture of and applied my material. It definitely didn’t look seamless, but this was a useful exercise in how to accomplish replacing textures on my camera map.

Once I was comfortable with this method I decided that I would attempt to replace the roof of my scene with a cleaner texture.

Roof before Edit

After edit in Maya

In reflection, I’m very happy with this experiment, the map itself is quite messy and definitely would not be suitable as a final shot, but for the methods learned in replacing textures on my camera map, as well as techniques learned in photoshop it was quite a success, where I currently stand with camera mapping makes me very confident for my final output in this section. Moving forward, for my next scene I definitely intend on making the geometry of my scene much cleaner, for this scene it involved a lot of moving vertices in odd ways, causing some of them to insersect eachother and just looking overall quite ugly. Another point of improvement would be to ensure that the textures I use to replace the default map should match and integrate into the scene more, the roof looks okay but the side of the building is off in terms of color, to remedy this I should experiment more in photoshop as well as consider other methods of texture replacement.

What I learned

• How to effectively replace the textures of my camera map
• Improved my skills in photoshop
• How to bake out my textures and tie them to photoshop

What I need to Improve

• Make cleaner geometry for my scene
• Integrating my replacement textures better through color grading

Timelapse

Continuing my progress with modelling within Maya I decided for my next step I wanted to work on a model with a more complex shape, which would encourage me to use some more of the modelling tools within Maya.

Aims

• Create a more complex model within Maya
• Full texture model, utilising material editors in Substance
• Learn how to UV more complex shapes

After searching around on YouTube I came across another Mike Hermes tutorial, which focused on the creation of a moonshine jug, I liked the idea of creating this object as it would enable me to use a few more tools, especially when creating the handle, which seemed like more of a complex section to model, this tutorial also included the process of texturing with Substance Painter, which was usesful to me as it followed my exact workflow. As well as all this the tutorial goes quite in depth with UV unwrapping, since this is a more complex shape this was also very helpful.

In terms of process, the model started off relatively simply, taking a cyclinder and extruding the faces to create the underside of the jug as well as the lid and mouthpiece, once the intial shape was blocked out I then started adding in some edge loops onto the edges of my models so that they retained the shape of the edge upon smoothing.

After this I moved onto creating the handle for the jug, the way I did this was by using the bridge tool within Maya, I deleted two of the faces on the lid of my model and then played around with the settings of the tool until it achieved something that I liked. Once I had smoothed my model, I then I went onto modifying my handle by utilising the soft select tool and scaling edge loops on the handle, this is what enabled me to create a hand crafted look for the handle.

Finally for the modelling I did one more pass over all the edges to make sure they were looking good, adding in edge loops where they were needed, once all this was completed I moved onto UV unwrapping my model ready for texturing. For the sides of the jug they way I unwrapped them wa by using the cylindrical projection tool under the UV menu, I then added some UV cuts along the side of the model as well as two cuts where my handle joined onto the lid, once I had all my UVs blocked out, I used both the unfold and cut & sew tools to straighten out the UVs until there was no stretching that would distort my textures.

Now that the Maya section of this exercise was completed, I exported my mesh as an .obj file, and imported it into Substance Painter. Because I had seperated the lid and base of my model it was relatively easy to apply two different materials to these sections without having to toy around with the selection tools within Substance Painter. The textures of my model consisted of some smart materials within Substance, I applied a copper material to the top of my model and changed the color to my liking, as well toying around with the metallic and roughness settings. I then did the same for the base of the model, using a similar material but toning down the metallic slider and raising the roughness, so that the top of my model would be reflective but the bottom would would have more of a matte, rusted look. Finally, I painted a few X’s onto the side of the model, just to certify it as a moonshine jug. Once I was finished with all this, I uploaded my model and textures to sketchfab, ready for display.

My final textured model can be found here.

Overall I am relatively happy with this model, the only glaring issues I found is that the handle of the jug has a few sharp edges, I realise now that this was down to the fact that I continued to extrude and move the edges of this section after I had smoothed the model, which caused it to lack vertices towards the top of the handle, creating a bad sharp effect, in the future I will have to remind myself to either do another smoothing pass when editing my mesh or alternatively just use the previewed smooth option until the very last edit. The other issue I found was that towards the base of my model some of the edges were quite sharp and not catching light properly, moving forward I would like to work on a model that will enable me to learn a little more just how edge loops work to effect the edges of my model upon smoothing.

What I learned

• How to create more complex, organic shapes within Maya
• Further techniques in UV unwrapping my models
• The way mesh tool options work within Maya

What I need to Improve

• My smoothing workflow when creating complex shapes
• How to properly utilise the edge loop tool when creating smooth edges to catch light

Timelapse