Aims

• Test Arnold / Maya software for my compositing workflow
• Add geometry to my camera mapped scene and light it realistically to integrate it into the scene

For this process I ran into a fair amount of problems, but to start it went fairly well, until it got to rendering. The geometry I added to the scene was already correctly placed, since the grid was already in line with floor plane from when I was originally configuring the original camera map.

After this I moved onto adding some lights, instinctively I positioned the lights where light was already emanating from the image, one bright light at the top, and two slightly dimmer light in place of where the reflections on the tunnel wall were.

This was the result, I was (and still am) quite confused by this result, I tried to render in every renderer within Maya including Maya Hardware and Arnold but to no avail, I assumed this occurred since the lighting in my camera map came from the image itself, or that maya did not recognise the map as an actual piece of geometry.

Due to this confusion, I then thought that I could export the camera map as it was originally, place the footage into Blender, 3D track the scene, and then place some geometry into the track and composite the lighting and shadows that way.

Unfortunately, i soon learned that tracking a camera map is incredibly difficult since details in the scene don’t shift perspective with the camera, they just distort and stretch, I only managed to get 3 markers to stick to the footage after around a half hour of trying.

After all this I decided to simply go back to Maya and attempt to add some geometry to a still image, and add the light and shadows in Arnold. I managed to get a decent looking composite after a short amount of time, which can be seen below.

I spoke to my tutor and decided that I would wait for an upcoming workshop on tracking and compositing, where I will attempt this process again in Blender. As it turns out, according to various message boards in the Maya community, quite a few people are experiencing problems with Arnold not rendering lights correctly in its current release.

What I Learned

• Tracking a camera map is very difficult
• The basics of compositing lights and shadows onto a still image in Arnold

What I need to improve

• How to properly composite my camera mapped scenes
• The differences in light types in Maya / Arnold

Timelapse

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXK59BKcN9g

Aims

• Reacquaintance myself with Substance Painter
• Fully texture a model
• Utilise my knowledge of how to create realistic wear and tear on my textures
• Export my textures to Sketchfab for display

As part of my workflow i decided early on that I would be using Substance Painter, mainly due to the fact that I have had some prior experience in the software and also that I found that skills I had already learned in Photoshop (Such as layer stacking and masking) were easily transferred into this software.

Whilst I have already textured some models as part of this project, I hadn’t gone into too much depth with the software and mainly just applied a material and exported.

For my process I started off by using a steel smart material as the base of the gun, and turning off any preset effects within the material, such as scratches and dirt, with the intention of tweaking these to my liking later on.

Next, I began adding some more materials to the gun and using a mask as well as the polygon fill tool to only apply it to certain parts of the gun, such as the barrel and grip.

Once I was happy with the placement of my materials, I then moved back to tweaking the smart masks and generators within these layers, to try and give the gun a weathered, used look in areas where they logically would appear.

I came across an interesting way to achieve this by duplicating a base metal layer, placing it underneath itself, and then slightly darkening its color, giving it a water eroded type effect.

Overall, I was very happy with how this went, in terms of texturing my models, my mind is at ease simply due to how intuitive the software is.

The final textured gun can be found here.

What I learned

• How to create detailed textures and weather them realistically
• How to effectively use masks and generators on my materials
• Various shortcuts and keybinds within the software

What I need to improve

• Creating my own effect layers to a high standard
• How to paint directly onto my baked maps

Overall, the tutorial is very ideal for beginners or those looking for a refresher on the software, i’ve already recommended this video to a few of my peers. The only downside is that while it does cover most of the software’s features, it doesn’t go into much depth and is more of just a basic introduction.

Timelapse

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cs-ExYEGsdk

Sometime last week I had sent an email request to Escape Studios, a London based VFX school, asking for some advice regarding my options once I graduate this year, after some back and forth I managed to organise a Skype call with one of the tutors there. The call itself was about 30 minutes long and contained some useful information for my final output this semester.

I found out that when it comes to employability within the VFX industry, it’s typical for the graduates tend to start out in the runner role when applying for jobs in one of the big 5 VFX companies, with Escape graduates tending to be put towards the top of the ladder during the hiring process, which is especially beneficial as runner roles are highly competitive. Runners are split amongst different departments, depending on what they want to specialise in (FX runners, Modelling runners, Texture runners). When applying for smaller companies, new hires tend to be put into the matchmover role and once they’ve been trained enough, move up to a junior artist. While the runner role is highly sought after, it is seen more as an internship rather than a full time job, typically people tend to stay in a runner role for 3-6 months, depending on the department and training required. According to my contact at Escape Studios, the industry is looking for a lot of FX artists, especially those familiar with Houdini, and runners applying for that department tend to be trained very quickly due to this need.

After I felt like I had enough information regarding employability, I then asked what they would typically look for skills wise, when accepting students to study at the college, I was told that they specifically look for realistic models, as well as a camera track to show a baseline ability, he said that typically people will model a chair and then track that into some footage and that would suffice to gain entry into the school. Obviously this ramps up when applying for a career within the industry, upon graduating from Escape the teachers will continue to support you with your showreel.

Reflecting upon this call has definitely changed some of the ideas regarding my final output for this semester, instead of going with a Sci-Fi themed model I would now like to focus on real world environments and objects to showcase my ability.

Another skill I wanted to learn for this semester was Camera Mapping within Maya, Camera Mapping (or Camera Projection) is basically transforming a 2D image into a 3D environment which can be explored through camera movement. After speaking to my tutor I set out to find some tutorials that would help me learn this skill

Aims

• Create a camera mapped scene from an image found online
• Animate my camera to explore the mapped scene
• Render out my animation for future use and display
• Evaluate the quality of my camera map

One of the difficulties in finding tutorials for this was that most of those suggested by YouTube were often on earlier versions of Maya, or as I found, linked to project files that had long since disappeared. After some searching I found a very useful video from Matthew Randall.

 The tutorial follows along the basics steps of mapping out a tunnel, creating the perspective camera, adding an image plane, matching the perspective and geometry to the image and then mapping the the image onto the geometry created. The tutorial also contained some useful functions of the camera such as altering the sensitivity of the tumble and track movements as well as how to enable the undoing of camera movements. It was very easy to follow along with and really helped me to grasp the basic functions and tools required for this practice.

Linked below if my final rendered camera map, I was very pleased with the results but found that whilst the tutorial walked through the basics, it was a very simple geometry required to carry out the map, for the future I plan on researching further into this practice by attempting it with a more detailed scene that includes a wider array of geometry and objects. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTmnfNbSYYQ

Upon showing my work to my tutor, he made the suggestion that I should look into tracking my footage, adding some primitives to the scene and then have an attempt at adding lights and shadows to the geometry to match the scene.

What I learned

• How to match the perspective of my camera to my image
• How to align my geometry to the image
• How to then map my image onto the geometry itself and light it correctly
• The basics of camera animation and rendering

Further Steps

• Create a more detailed camera map from a more complex image
• 3D track my footage and add geometry
• Attempt to add realistic lighting and shadows to the geometry to match the footage

For my first steps in learning Maya, I decided that I would use the ‘Maya 2018 Essential Training’ course featured on Lynda. I have used Lynda in the past for other pieces of software such as Photoshop and After Effects, and had quite  a positive learning experience.

Lynda is however, a premium paid service, but in my eyes it is something worth paying for when first getting to grips with a new skill. Since unlike YouTube tutorials, they tend to be updated alongside the software.

Aims

• Learn the basic interface and shortcuts of Maya
• Create a basic polygonal model within Maya
• UV unwrap my model and create an export ready to be placed in Substance Painter
• Bake my textures and apply a material to my model
• Export my textured model to be displayed on sketchfab

Once I had gotten through the chapters covering the interface, basics of polygonal modelling and rendering, I decided that I would move onto to tutorials that focused on working alongside the videos, so that I had something to present and the end of my process.

After talking to my peers and utilising the Digibods Facebook page, I found a very useful tutorial that fit my basic workflow from Maya to Substance Painter.

The tutorial followed the basic modelling principles I had already learned on Lynda, starting with a primitive, extruding, moving vertices and adding edge loops to add some detail to my model. This part was relatively simple as the previous tutorial series had greatly helped me with navigating through the tools with shortcuts. Once I was relatively happy with my model, I smoothed out my geometry and moved onto the next section.

It then went on to describe and show how I would UV unwrap my model to get ready for texturing, however with some previous experience with UVs in Blender, I found that using the method shown in the tutorial resulted in some UV stretching.

After some tinkering with my UV, I found that the best way to get around the stretching was to take the largest shell of my UV, unfold it, then use the cut and sew tool to iron out any imperfections. Whilst it probably wasn’t the cleanest method I found that it resulted in a much cleaner UV with very little stretching, something that would not affect the quality of my textures.

After this I then exported my model as an OBJ file and imported my mesh into Substance Painter. For this section I only applied one layer of a copper material, texturing is a crucial part of my project but for the time being I want to focus on modelling and then progress onto a more indepth experiment with texturing. The UI and functions of Substance Painter are something I have worked with previously but I did find that my skills in the software were a little rusty and definitely could do with some brushing up. Once I was finished tweaking with my material, I then exported the textures using the built in ‘Export to Sketchfab’ feature, so that my model was ready to display.

The final model can be viewed on Sketchfab here.

What I learned

• The basics of polygonal modelling within Maya
• The basics of UV unwrapping within Maya
• How to export my mesh from Maya into Substance Painter
• How to troubleshoot my UV unwraps

 Further Steps

• Improve my UV unwrapping within Maya
• Improve my skills in Substance Painter
• Learn how to create more complex models within Maya
• Improve the quality of my edge work within Maya