scene 1 (take two) - Harbour blog

I first started with a plane that had 100 segments. 

I then contemplated where in ford island i can place this harbour, at the corner or at the side, then i realised that the perfect place will be where all the action can take place which is:

So i went back and made a longer plane with 200 segments each side.

I then converted it to editable poly, and chose the vertex, I also checked on soft selection.  I then moved the z index up at the edges and added another plane to be the water.  I then added the port using boxes.  Unfortunately I pulled an area down too much and it looks like a hole and I’ve tried for half an hour to fix that problem.  This is because my laptop can’t handle that amount of polygons and is lagging  so without noticing I must have dragged it down too much. The result:

After several adjustments using the number system I am happy with the outcome.

Next thing i did was to add some water texture.  Luckily I already had one saved from the previous tutorial:  

Then I added the ships in the position according to:

With a few more modification to the land i was able to come up with:

I was tempted to be happy with the above picture, but when I zoomed in on Google maps it gave me an idea.  My plan now is to add as many features as possible on the island, such as trees and houses.  

As the picture above suggests, i need to model trees, so I started off with a cylinder (the branches), turned it to editable poly, and then i  selected the bottom, like so:

Extrude>selecting polygons> selecting the top of the branch>selecting rotate>rotating it a little>select and move> moved it.  The result:

I did this a few times.

Then i collapsed the end point like so:

Then i duplicated the end part and moved it around like so:

Then i copied the whole thing and rotated it like so:

i did this a few times in order to make it look like a tree’s branch.

After several attempts of draw the leaves i finally managed to get it right:

 I then extrude and then I raised the amount to 3:

I then made it smaller, made several copies and placed them on the branches.

My final production:

Now all I have to do is group all of the leaves and objects together, merge this file into the other file and make copies (some will be smaller in order to give it a realistic feel):

I plan on having some houses that and roads etc on it too soon as I get all the objects from group mates at the moment I’ve got all except one.

sources

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxTF0Tj1iag

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhuA7kL1Ooo

photoshop

In order to make the island more realistic, I thought about adding some texture, so I screen printed the picture from Google Maps of Pearl Harbour, and the plan is to get an accurate size so I could implement it on the model.

I got a picture of Ford Island from Google Maps and put on top of the other picture and reduced the opacity to 29% as you can see from the image below:

Then I adjust it to fit the island behind like so:

As you can probably guess the it's going to be pixelated because its been made to stretch.

I then add a layer mask and hide the layer.

Leaving me with to use the magic wand and selecting layer 2 and then clicking on ford island, deleting it unhiding it and switching the layers so it leaves me with this:

Then I added it using the material editor > bitmap.  The result is not that great as it looks half animated and half ‘real’ as well as pixelated:

So I thought of another way to do this. (then lead on to scene 1 (take two) & )

week 9 - adding texture

In order to make the island more realistic, I thought about adding some texture, so I screen printed the picture from Google Maps of Pearl Harbour, and the plan is to get an accurate size so I could implement it on the model.

problems:

The first problem I encountered was that the picture I got from Google map is too small compared to the image I used like so:



So with the help of the lecturer we had a mini group meeting where I asked how detailed the map has to be?  That way I can only do what is necessary, and we decided that it doesn't need to be too detailed when its zoomed out and it does needs to be detailed when its zoomed in.

To start off making it look more realistic, I changed the island colour from pink to green like so:

The initial plan was to add the picture below onto the model using material editor, like so.

The lecturer suggested I fully used the tools on Photoshop.  Using the warp tool I warped the image into position and then I used the magic wand tool to select the area (ford island) I wanted the warped picture to go in. Then I added the vector mask in order to mask out all the areas I didn't need.  The outcome:





Then I added it to the model using the material editor:

week 7 & 8

I was absent from the class and meeting, but I did contacted various members of my group members to see if we could have a meeting outside of class, they did not respond.  So therefore I am behind my personal schedule.

week 6

This week we had more recap of how we can fly the planes using path constraints and dummy.  All stuff I already know how to do from last semester.

Then we were left to get on with our assignment.

week 5

I missed today's lecture due to illness.

scene 1 & Week 4

SCENE 1

So after pondering and realising that the colours (black and white) were meant to be in blocks, and seeing how another student did in their presentation on week 4.

So I turned this:

 Into this:­

Did the displacement technique again and it worked:

The strength is up to 15.

Week 4

We first had the presentation and I realised how behind we are compared to other groups.

Then we sat through the particle systems tutorial, where the lecturer went through the basics.

Other examples:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zT2yNRc6YJQ&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-oxFMHMV95Q

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdQannsUGVA&feature=related

With the lecturer’s help I managed to produce the picture above.

Then we had a brief group meeting where we just talked about the work we’ve got to do.  Everyone was present.

Then I went back to playing about with the particle systems and trying to figure out what each option does:

NOTE: It’s only a 30 frame burst, which means if you play it shoots particles for 30 frames.

Modifier tab and then scroll down to ‘saved presets’ and select hose  then click on ‘load/save preset’.

Then scroll up and open particle system.

Emit start: means where do you want the particle start emitting and as you can tell from the picture below I’ve set it at -10

Emit stop: means where you want the particle to stop.  NOTE: these are all frames (so need to find out how long the fire is going to last for and plan accordingly).

Display until: is for how long you want your particles to display for, so even though in the picture below the i stopped emitting at 50fps it will still display for another 20 frames.

Life: how long the particles are going to live for, i.e. a smaller flame/smoke is going to need a smaller number

Variation: (ask tutor)

Then there is the particle size:

The above picture’s settings are at:

If I decrease the size to 10 it would render out like:

This is useful as I can create one type of flame, duplicate and change the settings to whatever suits a particular scene. 

Variation: not noticing anything different when changing the settings.  (ask tutor)

Grow for: how many frames the particle grows for

Fade for: how many frames the particles fades

Particle types:

If I have already modelled something and i want the particle system to emit that, then i would check instanced geometry and click on pick object, and check on mesh.