Rendering - Ambient Occlusion

Hey, 

Just a quick blog post to show this awesome way to render out models which was shown to me by a fellow student. The effect is called Ambient Occlusion! Have a look:

Cheers!

Gavin

Two Useful Techniques

Following on from the previous post of blocking out... I would just like to share a couple of techniques I learned from the Sci-Fi Environment videos on Digital Tutors. 

Camera/Concept art

From what I've learned so far and depending on the company, a 3D environment modeller isn't required to create the concept art. They simply just use concept art as a reference to modelling the environment. A simple technique to use in Maya is to set up a new camera in the scene, position that camera to look at a section of the environment and apply the concept art image to the camera while decreasing the image's Alpha (making it transparent). When the camera is set up this way, the modeller can roughly match up the blocked-out level to the image. This helps for positioning, scale, and detail when modelling out the concept inspired environment. 

Camera/Concept image technique in Maya. 

Guides

Another technique for blocking out is using 'guides'. These guides can be objects the modeller creates in Maya and uses them for scaling, positioning and even angles. One technique I learned was to create a square plane and split the poly from corner to corner (X shape). At the time, I was modelling the Sci-Fi door (in my first post) and I used the guide to create perfect 45 degree angles on the edges of the doors. 

I've also used a guide recently in my block-out for the scaling the doors. By using the grid (set to meters) in Maya, I made a plane 2 meters high and snapped it to my model in order to get the correct height of the door. 

Guide for scaling door correctly

When I find myself learning and using different and new techniques, I'll write them up on this blog.

Thanks for reading, 

Gavin

Blocking out

I've started world building in Maya by blocking out half of my city environment. I need to finish the floor plan so I know how the other half of the city will be laid out which includes the park with a swing and roundabout, as well as some other buildings. 

The tutorials I've been watching up until now haven't talked about "tri's and quad's". I've learned from fellow students it's very important when modelling because of how game engines interpret the model. Basically if I don't follow these simple rules and build good and efficient (low poly) topology then I'll have problems when importing it into UDK later on down the line.

I have yet to get around to learning UV mapping and applying textures to the maps but the Urban Environment tutorials that I mentioned in the previous post cover those topics so I'll put them to good use.

Here is a render of my block-out so far:

Maya Render: City 22/11/2013

What's next?
I will continue to add some detail to the buildings I have at the moment while trying to keep it as low poly as possible. Then I will finish my floor map and block-out the rest of the city. After that I'll watch the videos (and some others) on UV mapping and texturing.

Cheers,

Gavin

Tutorials

I've been spending some time learning techniques on blocking out in Maya such as creating a 'snapping reference'. This technique acts as a guide for properly scaling and sizing objects or 'modules' in your scene. I've been using the 'snap to vertex' feature a lot in Maya and I've also created a square plane and divided the polygon diagonally to create perfect 45 degree angles which I used to adjust my doors. Furthermore, I also learned about the 'golden ratio' (1.618) which is commonly used in architecture and applied that to the scaling of my doors. 

I've found a new course on digitaltutors.com which is titled: Urban Environment Creation in Maya. That's not to say that the tutorials I'm currently using are now redundant but this particular new learning path is more relevant to my end goal for this module. The tutorials look at building an urban environment and cover everything from blocking out to UV mapping and texturing. 

I've been looking into an art style I wish to pursue for my project and my interest lies in Studio Ghibli's work who worked on a game called Ni No Kuni with Level 5 and Namco Bandi. I had a look for some images on Google and I've found a few that are of relevance to my city-based environment that I'll be building. 

Ni No Kuni Images

I'm going to spend the rest of my week going through all 48 videos of the Urban Environment tutorials so that I'll be confident in modelling my own city. My next post will probably talk about what I've learned from the tutorials and I'll show a screen dump/render of my finished urban environment. I'm starting to think that I'm spending far too much time on tutorials but I feel that it will be worth it in the long run when I have developed the skills necessary for making my own city smoothly without getting stuck and having to look up solutions. 

Thanks for reading, 

Gavin