CSCI 140 Final Gallery

3-D Computer Modeling 
CSCI 140 Spring 2003

Anderson, Jeremy

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Jeremy AndersonFinal Scene
Know Your Role
 
Inspiration/Story

My inspiration for this scene was a current project that I am working on.  I am creating a game with other students and any good game needs a cutscene.  This one came to mind of a dark night with a gang confrontation.  It ended up becoming a boss confronting one of his subjects with the boss's henchmen at his side.

The buildings I just picked up from looking at buildings around at architecture in San Francisco and decided on the brick building.  This was a task to create.  I also love the fire-escapes that come down from these buildings so I decided to add one in.  The second building was really fun to make because it was different then just a normal block.  It needed the intricate steps that wrap around the entrance which was fun to model.  Also the columns four columns in the front add a big building aspect to this model.

Although this is a rough draft for what I want in my game, I think it is a good starting point.  I would really like to add a lot more detail to what I already have in this scene, but since there is a limited time to complete, I could not put in everything that I desired to.  
 
 
Objects:Brick Building
 Office BuildingJeremy
 Sign attached to brick buildingJeremy
 Sign outside OfficeJeremy
 Lamp PoleJeremy
 Power PoleJeremy
 4 peopleJeremy using Poser
 HandGun (9mm)Jeremy
Sawed off ShotgunJeremy
 Fire EscapeJeremy
DumpsterExhausted Jeremy
 WiresJeremy
 Street/Sidewalk/LotsJeremy
 LampsJeremy
 Chain on DumpsterJeremy
 Porsche/Corvettehttp://dmi.chez.tiscali.fr/models1.html
 3rd Building Down Hillhttp://www.3dcafe.com
   
Textures:Full Brick Wall TextureJeremy
 Brick Building SignJeremy
 Street/SidewalkJeremy
 Office SignJeremy
 Office BuildingJeremy
 Parking LotJeremy
 PowerPole WoodJeremy
 Carshttp://dmi.chez.tiscali.fr/models1.html altered by Jeremy
 Dumpster TexturingJeremy referenced from
 http://shaderlab.com/mapcenter/sock/dumpster-1.jpg
 Door Texturehttp://www.3dcafe.com
 Single Brick Texturehttp://sprott.physics.wisc.edu/fractals/natural/brick.jpg
 Background Cityhttp://www.wapers.com/placennature/night/night21024.jpg
 
Problems and Solutions:

The biggest issue that I had in modeling was that of the brick building.  Originally I had made it out of individual bricks using the array tool over and over again.  This looked really nice once rendered but it was hard to edit with all the polygons around.  What I ended up doing was rendering a big texture of one wall of the brick building from a straight on angle and uniform lighting.  Once rendered I saved this texture and just used this as a planar texture on the one side of the brick wall.  This dramatically decreased rendering times and made me able to edit the wall easily (i.e. Windows in wall, etc.).

Another problem I had in modeling was actually using poser.  I had a really hard time getting the files to export right in to lightwave.  It took me a while but I had to convert them from an intermediate format in order to get them to import correctly.  Once imported they worked great and adding weapons to the two thugs was fun.  For the handgun I just had added a picture to the backdrop in modeler and spline drew around the outline and just added details from there.  

Once in layout I had a tough time figuring out my lighting scheme.  Its hard to simulate the lighting of street lamps so what I did was just have  a simple city scape (boxes on top of a flat plane) and played around with settings.  Eventually I got what I wanted.  I ended up with 22 lights in the scene entirely because I wanted a sense of reality to the it.  I think that it ended up being very well lit.

Another problem I had in layout was getting the backdrop to be properly aligned with the rendering.  Sometimes I would get a weird result depending on the pitch angle of the camera.  I just made sure to keep a low pitch angle on the renderings that required the backdrop in order to get the picture in correctly.

Unfortunately this is just a work in progress and I hope to finish it in the future to add more detail to the characters and the surrounding world.  I hope y'all enjoy it.