the hardest part of this project

will be texturing.
a few attempts

Specific layout for the room

squared image, then roughed one. how they compare, and what parts look more natural.

Possible views and designs

Based on my rough design of the Personal Chambers area. I drew up some visual aids, to help with design and camera views.
This is also in the order that the camera will explore the location.

This image is the entrance to the hallway, here you can see some of the other rooms' entrances.

here is the entrance to Jamie and Jared's room. The room is concealed by a green screen (detailed with cherry blossom image).

Jared's room only consists of a mattress(including two pillows and sheets), books, clothes, pole and a stool. So the room is quite bare. However i feel that the few items are enough to show their personalities.

mood boards

The location of the scene in Host is in America. In a dormant volcano's cooled air vents.
So firstly i needed to research Volcanic rock, and can i just say, there is a ridiculous amount of different types. This is a collection of some of the types. I chose these types based either on their colour or poked texture.

The rock is described as a purple-brown and poked in the book, so i must keep to it.

I created another collaboration based on the shaping of the volcanic rock is described. In the book, the tunnels were mainly smooth air bubbles, shaped in tunnel form. Cracks were often in the ceiling or walls, to create light holes, and keep-sake places.

The natural smoothing in these images show the effect i am after for my location.

Decision on what room to make

So looking through The Host, i located the cavern rooms that had the most description. They were:

• The Main plaza
• The Kitchen
• The Personal Chambers
• The Storage room

Out of these four descriptions i created rough layouts and designs. Working through these, i found that most of the 'rooms' were just big empty spaces that would not take much modelling. However, the Personal Chambers, was more cramped than the others, and had different shapes/sizes. The lighting varied along the scene, and creating interesting images in my mind. Also, these rooms belong to someone and would have their personal effects in it, and also the inhabitant's personality. This makes this a better choice due to the viewer feeling more attached the the scene, because of it's personality.
So the room i am working on and designing is the personal chambers.

Terrain!

For today's lesson of visualisation, we was looking at different ways to create terrain in the 3D world. The first way we learnt was the shape merge button. Shape Merge merges splines to objects, creating new edges and polygons on the object. Here, i have created an s shaped path/crater, a hill in the top right and a small mound in the bottom right.

This is how it looked (in stylised Ink) It's quite convincing as a rocky terrain. Such a simple creation.

NEXT, we learnt the Terrain button. It's pretty straight forward. You draw the contours of a mountain in splines, move them to the appropriate heights, then Terrain them.

And this is what you get:

I then decided to make up my own lil Island. I name it Delano!

I submerged it in a plane of water, just because it looks nicer in the stylised coloured pencil.

There was one more way to create a terrain, which was displacement. I had not yet attempted that in the lesson, as i got carried away with my island.

Decided

I have made a decision for my visualisation project. I am creating a visual environment for the book The Host by Stephenie Meyer. I love the book, so I'll have no problems reading it again. However, a lot of the scenes happen in a volcanic cavern structure. So, I'll have to do a lot of research for the modelling of that.
I find that having the environment in a natural structure, creates more of a challenge, in comparison to a four-walled room. Overall, this product should be fun!

New Visualisation Project

So, for our new visualisation project, i have to create a 3d walk-through based upon a literacy extract. It has to be an interior design, although i have a strange feeling that Roma will make us create and texture the outside as well. At least i am allowed to choose my own story.
Not sure what to choose though. Some Jules Verne perhaps? Harry Potter? Maybe some Robin Hobb, she is quite descriptive.

Flickr Account

My Flickr account address is www.flickr.com/photos/dcmjones
Just wanted to post it, so Roma can find it.

how everything came together

yay!
Overall, it's good. I just need to work on my compositions. Something just bugs me about them. My original ideas of plain backgrounds are beginning to seem rather... plain. I may have to change that.

problems with texturing

I had to unwrap all of my objects, due to their particular designs and patterns. This was a newly learnt skill, so i wasn't particularly good at it at first. Each of my dolls was a challenge in unwrapping, as they never unwrapped the same way.
Due to the stretching of unwrapping/peeling, the designs were often stretched and distorted themselves, so that they would look correct on the doll.
I applied bump maps, in the correct places on the dolls. These were very intriguing in their effect, as the settings i used (20-30) went in fairly deep in the object. I've been wondering how far 100 setting would go. However the settings i used suited the dolls well.
A new thing i learnt how to do on this project, was using an opacity map for the fans. The fans had various carved designs in them, in which i was originally going to try and remove by the polygons. That would've taken me a very long time. However i used the opacity map to create the carvings. I wasn't sure how to apply them at first, and kept accidentally using bump maps instead.
Overall, I'm the most proud of the plain fan. I think it looks beautiful.

Texturing is a very time consuming practice and my laptop really doesn't like it. It even creates a lag in the Uni computers, so that goes to show that it's hard work. But it makes the end product much more beautiful.

positioning of the objects

For the composition of my pieces, i wanted to try the golden spiral and the rule of thirds.

I also decided to use the placement of the objects in the scene to draw the viewers eye to certain areas of the still frame. The Painting :Metalware & pottery by Francisco de Zurbarán is a good example of this. The viewers eyes will follow a certain path along the painting.

Metalware and pottery

 I found that the unfolded fan, draws attention to the eye, so i will be able to use them, in these instances.

progress with my modelling

As far as the modelling was concerned, the geisha dolls were fairly easy to manipulate and create. This was due to their circular structure, which varied in size and curvature. Although i did have a lot of trouble trying to measure them in the first place. I kept true to all of their measurements, which made everything loads easier in creation.
The fans were interesting to create, as i wasn't decided to have them open or closed. I knew if i had to open/close them in between still frames, i would have got very annoyed (due to me having to rotate each piece 5 degrees at a time). So i created two of each of the fans. One open and one closed. This made it easier for me to import and position swiftly.

Of all the things i modelled for this project, the thing i hated the most was the red geisha's sleeves. They were such an odd shape to create. They took far too long to create in the long run.

One decision i kept having to make was, to meshsmooth or not to meshsmooth. As all the dolls were smooth, in some instances the meshsmooth would deform the shape too much. So i applied it where i could.

Ideas behind the design

So i moved on from my original 'shelf collection' to geisha dolls and fans of the oriental variety. I made this choice as the original idea had no link or story behind it. There was no real meaning for the viewer to see. I changed it for the better, as the 'Japanese' Theme looks quite beautiful. I love it!
 I researched the dolls online. They are really called kokeshi dolls.


Sourced from wikipedia



They were originally created as gifts and toys for children. In recent times, Kokeshi dolls have become purely ornamental and decorative. I want to focus on Ornamental for this project.

sourced from thejapaneseshop.co.uk

eggcup thingie

We modelled this cup thing in class the other day. It was easy to do, with just a spline, outline and lathe. We'll be making a jug next lesson.

I'll apply a metal texture another time.

Objects

Recently i found some possible objects that could be used for my still life project. As you can see they are completely random stuff off my shelves. But i find that they show some of the intriguing parts of myself.
Here they are:

I am aware i have only chosen five out of my group, but i just didn't want any of the others. Maybe the small bottles will double up the count.