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Problems and Solutions

Francie:

My biggest problem was creating the small column because of the intricate detail that it has. The detail could not be created as a texture in the surface editor so I had to model all the detail on a point by point basis. Also, another thing that was difficult to replicate was the fact that the column fluctuates its shape from cylindrical the square in several different places. The way I approached this was by creating all the different aspects of the column on separate layers. Basically I was just manipulating the points and polygons by using the move and stretch tool a lot. The other challenges that I faced were creating a pattern for the floor that could be tiled and a bump for it.

Josh:

While most of my modeling was simple, the sword hilt was the most difficult part to do. My first problem was the shape of the hilt's counterweight. It is a very complicated object and so I tried creating it point-to-point. Then trying to cut a hole similar to the shape of the counterweight INTO the counterweight was the most annoying task, since it wouldn't do exactly what I wanted it to do. But finally I got it and copied the shape so I could use it (at a smaller scale) for the design of the blade guard. Then I had a little trouble after breaking the sword. The broken shards had no polygons where they were cut. I tried to select the points and click on CREATE POLY, but it always came out funky. Then Jediah showed me that I was selecting the point in the wrong order, so that fixed the problem very quick.

Jediah:

The first problem I encountered with this project is that every object that I assigned myself involved modeling something that I had promised myself that I would never attempt in light wave, notably both cloth and a human figure. The second problem was getting all of the models which various group members had created to fit together the same way that they did in the reference scene. And our third is that lighting the scene in a way that recreated the feel from lord of the rings proved difficult in terms of color and creating the correct highlights to objects, without obscuring other models in the scene.

In response to these problems I went about solving them in much the same manor that I always have before. Which is by throwing both time and old tricks at them. Every object that I created was made with nothing more then the Move, Rotate, Scale, Create Point, Create Polygon, Knife, and finally Subdivide tools. This means that they are both relatively low in polygon count, and very ugly when not converted to metanervs most of the form that the objects have was created by the simple alteration of how points are arranged, with slight twisting stretching and other tweaking of individual polygons. Unfortunately this doesn't lead very well to making a tutorial which other students could follow. If I were it would read something like this: Step 1, select the pen tool. Step 2 draw a face. Step 3 cut it up into squares and triangles. Step 4 convert to subpatches, and start tweaking it if it looks funny

After my objects were created the step of putting all the pieces of the room together naturally caused more problems then I had anticipated. The first problem was that in delegating which objects were in the scene there was one object which we forgot to account for the backdrop. No end of trouble would have been saved by creating this object first and giving it as a reference to everyone who was creating their own objects instead in the end a backdrop was to be created and then all the objects tweaked to fit within the backdrop. Ultimately this threw off our scale and one aspect of realism that we had planned on from the beginning was thrown out to acuminate for getting the project done before the due date.

My problems with lighting were ultimately solved by continuing to add lights until I had a look I was happy with. This meant throwing out theory about how shadow would actually be cast from a light source across the room but then again our scene is a replica to one from Hollywood and I know for a fact that it was not utilizing natural lighting which may have been why replicating where their shadows fell was difficult. Ultimately I added point lights in areas that I thought were too dark, and after a couple hours of tweaking realized that the ambient fill I had taken out in the beginning actually did add much of the feel which I wanted into the scene.

T racy

I created the three paintings that are along the walls across from the statue and the railings. Most of my portion of our scene was pretty easy, all of the modeling itself was fairly simple. The more difficult part was getting all of the bump and image maps to work properly. I couldn't find any of the patterns I needed for the bump map online, so I decided I would just draw them myself and then scan them in. One of the problems I had with the bump map was that the pattern I drew had to have such a high setting to sink the pattern into the stone. Because of the high setting, I couldn't put the stone bump in also, since that would make both the pattern I drew, and the stone bump at 10,000%. One of the other problems that we all shared I think, was getting the colors in our scene to look right, since the light is bluish. Also I had a ton of differently named surfaces, and in the future I need to figure out a better way of naming surfaces, so that other people can figure out which names belong to which surfaces.