The Perils of Waiting Until the Last Day to Render Things (aka This Project in Retrospect)

As I said in the previous post, I had to render out my final rotation using the Maya Software instead of mental ray, hence the rather sketchy looking video. I have discovered that it actually does render out in mental ray, it just takes forever and makes it possible to roast marshmallows over the heat vents. At any rate, I will get it rendered out with mental ray. Until then, you will have to settle with this:

Sorry it's a bit underwhelming. At any rate, I'll use this to discuss faults I have with the final project:

The skinning still is pretty flawed in his mid-section, which I am still attempting to find a plug-in to fix.

Some topography around his armpits and near the corners of his mouth is pretty sketchy; there are a few wavy edges that I would like to fix.

I still need to find a good setting for the amount of photons, so that it will stop displaying those circles on the ground when I render with mental ray.

The skinning is by far the worst issue, though, and the other two are fairly minor. Overall, I am very happy with how this project turned out, given how it was my first time really trying to do something entirely on my own in Maya. Once I iron out the kinks, I think I will try to make an animation with Kopf (I would like to try to animate him next quarter, but I am still considering other options/ my inherent idiocy at using the software).

No matter what I decide, I'll find another project to do next quarter. I'll also probably post a blog after I fix (or at the very least attempt to fix) the issues I discussed after I fix them.

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Edit: I have now successfully rendered it out in mental ray (WOOHOO). Here is the final result:

He looks much, MUCH better when he actually has decent lighting on him. Something I realized that I haven't really addressed was my rationale behind creating Kopf the way I created him. I wanted to make a comical, cartoony character, but wasn't sure exactly what to make. I ended up seeing an Easter Island head during a Google image search, so I decided at that point to make something with a human body and an Easter Island head. I ended up dropping the human body idea, and creating a more exaggerated buff upper body with dinky little legs. I at first wanted to put him in a suit, but made a separate body model and separate clothing models, which resulted in problems when I began rigging him. Therefore, he runs around naked now. Once I had my idea, I started watching Lynda tutorials and applied what I saw to my own character.

Honestly, I found the most fun aspect of this process to be the lighting and rendering. Even though it takes forever to render and check your progress, watching the scene go from flat and colorless to deep and vibrant is kind of fun. I also think the lighting was the best part of this scene, because there are a few issues with the model and rig that I still need to work out.

During the class critique, the largest criticism I got was that the camera rotated too fast for a character demonstration. This is easily fixable, and it's really just an issue I overlooked in my haste. People actually liked the circles that resulted from a lack of photons, so I may keep them. When I re-render it with better camera motion (and possibly without circles), I will make yet another edit to this post with the final product.

Finally, I supposed I should cover what exactly I learned through this process. I learned how to model characters (and the fact that it involves a butt-ton of extruding, edge loops, and sculpting) and how to rig characters (with a skeleton/joints, IK/FK handles, and constraints), and how to render with global illumination in mental ray (WOOHOO INDIRECT LIGHTING). I already kind of sort of knew the basics of shading and lighting, but this also served as a good refresher on those. The biggest issue I had was weighting the skin of my character, since the fine-tuning takes FOREVER. If I had to redo something, I would probably redo the modelling process, since there were a few areas with really sketchy edge loops that I could have fixed by putting off the smoothing process until I had more basic topography done. Overall, though, apart from the skin weighting, I am rather proud of this project. For my first foray into character modeling, I believe I put forth a worthy effort.

Project Weeks 5/6: Lighting and Rendering

Even though I promised to make two different blogs for the lighting and the rendering, they really kind of go hand in hand, so I'm going to condense them into this single post.

Lighting is the process of adding lights to the scene (imagine that). I used a modified three point lighting system, which involved placing a point light, two fill lights, and a back light. The point, or main, light is in front of and slightly above Kopf, and is shining down and casting a shadow behind him. It is the only of the 4 lights to emit diffuse and specular. My two fill lights are located on Kopf's sides, and help to make the shadows on his body less intense so as not to obscure detail. The back light is directly behind Kopf and shines forward to help him stand out more against the background and add depth.

I then added a simple camera, placed its pivot point inside of Kopf around his mid-section, and set the camera to rotate 360 degrees around him over a span of 120 frames (about 5 seconds).

My lights from the back, showing the point light furthest away, the back light closest, and the fill lights in between

I attempted to render out in mental ray, a plugin which using raytracing to simulate natural light. However, given how OS X Mavericks seems to hate mental ray (and Maya in general), I was not able to batch render out my full rotation. I did, however, get this pretty sweet still shot.

He looks pretty nice when his spine isn't wrapping around itself

I used an additional setting in mental ray called global illumination to help with indirect bounce lighting, which is why you can see the tinge of red from the floor shining onto his lower body. However, this also created the issue of the red circles on the floor. The circles are created when the amount of photons being cast by a light are too small to accurately bounce light off of an area, but the Mac was already about to catch fire while rendering it, so I couldn't really push it further.

You may be asking: Where is the final rotation? Well, it's coming in the next post, where I will summarize my experience and point out areas that I still need to work on. It won't initially be rendered in mental ray, but I will find some way to get that done later. It will instead be in the (rather disappointing looking) Maya Software.

Project Week 4: Character Shading

As promised, here is the next update (this time only half a week late!). Shading took much less time than rigging, simply because there is much less work involved in the process.

Shading is just the process of creating the texture and color on your model. Given how lambert1 is rarely the most enthralling shader, I had to create a new shader, add a bump map to that shader, and then attach the shader to my character using a UV map.

At first, I created a Blinn shader, since I prefer working with Blinn (I think they display bump maps better, but that is mostly opinion). I then just altered the color to make it more stone-like, and changed the specular settings so that the reflections and eccentricity would not reflect much light.

Shader settings

After that, I added a bump map to create texture, so that Kopf actually looks like he's made out of rock instead of clay. I used a fractal bump map to make the texture kind of random, but still coherent, and set the bump value fairly low since the Easter Island heads are actually pretty smooth.

Fractal settings

Bump map settings

The final step involved mapping to shader to my character using UVs. Although the color applied itself without a UV map, bump maps cannot be applied without them. All I did was use the Automatic Projection tool, since I didn't have to worry lining up UV shells due to the fact that the shader was just a constant color. I had considered using a seamless rock image to make him actually look like stone, but the UV map was just too complicated to fix within my limited timeframe.

Model with shader

Overall, the result was pretty good. I may still alter the shader or bump map after I add lighting and start rendering, but this is a pretty decent start.

Project Week 3: Character Rigging

First off: I am a week behind at this point. Rigging is very, very difficult, and takes a REALLY LONG TIME. I'm still not even done, but I'll elaborate on that later on.

Rigging is, in a nutshell, the process of creating a manipulable skeletal system and control system, and then attaching that skeleton and system to the model. Creating the actual skeleton is as simple as tracing the outline of a skeleton (foot, ankle, knee, hips, spine, clavicle, shoulder, elbow, wrist, fingers, and neck are my major joints) with the Joint tool, and creating IK handles which make the skeleton move realistically when certain joints are moved (for example, the knees bend when you duck the hips down).

Creating the control panel is much more difficult. Using constraints to make joints move and rotate or track NURBS curves is basically all that you're doing, but keeping a clean hierarchy can be a puzzle at times. I used position constraints for things that would move like the feet and hips, orient constraints for things that would rotate like spine joints and wrists, and pole vector constraints for things that would bend in unique ways, like elbows and knees.

Attaching the skeleton and control panel to the skin is similarly difficult. Using the Smooth Bind tool, Maya will do a basic (read: pretty awful) job of making the model move with the skeleton. After smooth skinning it, you have to check the influence certain joints have on different areas of the skin, to make sure that joints aren't moving more than they should be (so that your chest doesn't cave in when you push the elbow closer to the body). Painting the skin weights manually takes FOREVER, so I am currently attempting to find a plug-in to assist with the process. (I'll include a link to the plug-in if I find one in an edit.)

So, here are the results of my labor:

Skeleton and control panel with transparent model

Skeleton and control panel sans model

I don't think wrists bend that way

DEAR GOD MAN GET THAT LOOKED AT

As you can see, I'm not entirely done yet. There's still some things to clean up, like overlapping wrist skin and that gaping crater in his chest that happens when he leans back. But that will all be allayed at a later date when I'm polishing, the brunt of the work is mostly over. Now, I get to begin shading the model. Given how I am horrendously backed up, I will work tirelessly over the weekend to catch up, and will attempt to get the next post up by next Wednesday.

Wish me luck. I will sincerely need it.

Project Week 2: Character Modeling

So I kind of sort of missed updating the blog last Friday because I was working until 5 o' clock on finishing Kopf's (which is his name, I have now decided) clothing. I apologize for the delay, but character modeling takes A REALLY LONG TIME, especially if you only have a cursory knowledge over the matter.

In a nutshell, all I did was extrude and match vertices and faces into the reference images from an initial polygon plane, and then fine tuned from there (AND THIS TAKES FOREVER). I used the Insert Edge Loop and Multi-Cut tools to create topography to add more edges and vertices to modify in greater detail. I created a separate head and body and connected their vertices with the Merge Vertex tool to create a neck (same thing with the hands/wrist). To create clothing, I just duplicated the body, deleted faces I didn't need, and used the Sculpt Geometry tool to pull the faces outward to create the different articles of clothing. Here are a few renders of the initial pieces, and one of them compiled.

The body

The head

The hand, after connection to wrist

Entire body, smoothed and connected

Body with clothes (the shaders are pretty sketchy at this point)

Again, sorry for the delay. But I overestimated my ability to actually be good at using Maya.

Project Week 1: Reference Images

After many nights of slaving over computer screens, trying to discover the intricacies of the human body and the Easter Island head, I came up with these (rather horrible) reference images:

There is a reason why I am in Animation instead of Drawing.

As you can see, they aren't the greatest. Their purpose is to give me a decent foundation to build the beginning of the character, which they will try their hardest to do. Once I get the foundation down, I can modify it free-form to make it look good.

I have more information pertaining to my character: he is an alien scout that landed on Easter Island and began to take the shape of the denizens he saw: the heads of the Moai statues and the bodies of rich corporate executives on vacation. He isn't actually wearing a suit, it's his skin. He has a larger upper section than lower section, relatively stubby legs, and hands with only 3 fingers. Why does he only have 3 fingers? Because hands are REALLY hard to draw.

I will post more next Friday, after I hopefully have his model finished.

First Quarter Project Planning

As a junior in e-Comm, the time has come for me to begin my first project.  As my first post regarding it, this will include my outline that I will follow.

My idea for the project is to model and rig a character in Maya, in addition to some basic lighting and rendering in mental ray. I do not plan on texturing the character, as I am afraid time constraints would limit my ability to do so.  At this point, I believe the character will be an Easter Island head with a normally proportioned human body wearing a suit.  Provided below are some images that inspired that idea, as well as my outline and schedule for the project.

(Images from learningthenow.com)

Character Reference Drawing (Due Friday, August 29th)
Create a reference image of the body and head of character (2 hrs)
Include top, side, and front view (2~3 hrs)
Blog: All of the reference images

Character Modeling (Due Friday, September 5th)
Watch Lynda Playlist: "Modeling a Character in Maya" (Done)
Create head (~1.5 hrs)
Create body/clothing (2 hrs)
Create hands (1 hr)
Blog: Simple renders of the individual parts


Character Rigging (Due Friday, September 12th)
Watch Lynda Playlist: "Character Rigging in Maya" (~5 hrs)
Create body skeleton (1.5 hrs)
Create facial skeleton (1.5 hrs)
Blog: Images of the skeleton system

Character Shading (Due Friday, September 19th)
Watch Lynda Playlist: "Creating Textures and Shaders in Maya" (~4 hrs)
Create shader for skin
Create shader for clothing
Blog: Images of model with shaders

Lighting (Due Friday, September 26th)
Watch Lynda Playlist: "Lighting and Rendering in mental ray" (5 hrs)
Set up lights (3~4 hrs)
Blog: Various renders of lighting

Mental ray Render (Due Wednesday, October 1st)
Create a few test renders (~2 hrs)
Final render (~1 hr)
Blog: Test setting renders, final render