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2007 Spring ->3D Computer Modeling ->Galleries ->Group Gallery ->Uber Pwnage
| | | Josh Gabriel | | Group Scene | | Steve Beyers | | | | Valerie Rodriguez | | | | Andy Long | | | | | Mech Pwnage: The Last Days of Earth | |
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| | Inspiration
The Future. Mankind has built up their machines until they’ve taken on a consciousness of their own; the robotic warriors that humans constructed for their wars have decided that their creators are the problem and are now waging war against them. Faced with a revolution of their own technology, the countries of the earth are forced to rely on their older weapons to fight the Mechs. These are grim scenes of manned tanks and AI mech warriors fighting their last battles in a destroyed city.
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| | | Objects | The Ground | Andy Long | | | Street Curves | Andy Long | | | 3 Big Skyscrapers (v1) | Andy Long | | | 4 Big Skyscrapers (v2) | Valerie Rodriguez | | | Ruined Facade | Valerie Rodriguez | | | Ruined Wall | Valerie Rodriguez | | | Sky (Skytracer) | Andy Long | | | Rubble Piles (1, 2, 3, 4) | Valerie Rodriguez | | | Giant Gear Bolt | Andy Long | | | Tank Chassis | Joshua Gabriel | | | Tank Chassis (Destroyed) | Joshua Gabriel | | | Tank Turret | Joshua Gabriel | | | Tank Turret (Destroyed) | Joshua Gabriel | | | Walking MechWarrior Revamp | Andy Long/ Steve Beyers | | | Mech Warrior (Standing) | Steve Beyers |
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| | | Textures | Bronze_statue_Detail | www.planit3d.com/ .../metal/ metal.html | | | Camofluage_Gray_Metal | www.planit3d.com/ .../metal/ metal.html | | | Heavily_Scratched_Metal | www.planit3d.com/ .../metal/ metal.html | | | Metal_ | www.planit3d.com/ .../metal/ metal.html | | | Metal_Gray_Scratched | www.planit3d.com/ .../metal/ metal.html | | | Metal_Ribs | www.planit3d.com/ .../metal/ metal.html | | | Metal_Rusty | www.planit3d.com/ .../metal/ metal.html | | | Patchwork_gray_metal | www.planit3d.com /.../metal/ metal.html | | | Lightwave Presets | Lightwave | | | Concrete1 | www.freedigitalphotos.net | | | Concrete2 | www.freedigitalphotos.net | | | Rusty_Metal | www.mayang.com |
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| | Problems and Solutions
Val:
When I first began making the ruined walls, I was having trouble modeling the crumbling sides so that they looked like real concrete and not strangely jagged. The solution was to subdivide the top layer of polygons and then use the drag tool to move the newly created edges around. Also, I learned that it was easiest to deal with the walls if I sculpted them as a flat surface first, and then extruded them to create the thickness of the wall.
The rubble piles were also rather challenging because it was hard to make the rocks look like they were resting on each other. I took a lot of time to maneuver each piece into position and did a lot of test renders to make sure that they seemed realistic. The fragment of concrete wall with rebar was especially challenging in this way.
Josh:
The biggest problem I faced was not with the modeling, but with the texturing. I tried to add metal-looking textures in the form of cubic projection images. However, when rendered, the effect wasn't real enough and the reflection wasn't convincing. So I added some diffuse and bump mapping of cubic images and some fractal noise to give the effect of metal. This was better achieved through the layering of textures.
Steve:
The MechWarrior textures were smoothing the edges, so I took off the texture-smoothing option to keep the sharp edges. Also, the textures were being stretched on the planar axis so I changed them to cubic and that solved the problem.
Andy:
The Ground was very tricky. After working with the tutorial I discovered how difficult it was to make everything look smooth and leave no holes splitting the polygons. If I ran into such a problem I ended up just redoing the entire Ground element until I was pleased with what I had created.
Sky Tracer is still difficult to use as the rendering time made progress slow and vague. I ended up having problems making a believable atmosphere that would fit the environment within the scene. The Sky Tracer continues to change with each render as the render time turned to be too precious to lose as the time took longer over time. The only solution I could come up with was to make sure the sky was a little brighter than the ground itself if possible. The other objects had their own problems but the solutions were easily fixed with cutting, moving, and replacing with maybe a rotational fix. The Sky and the Ground proved to be the most frustrating to work with in this assignment, but I believe I succeeded in the end.
The largest issue for me was lining up an object; believable lighting, corrected textures, and making the scene look believable. I actually had a much larger area created first but discovered how impossible it was in achieving a battle scene. I gave up the idea and rebuilt the rendered stage 3 times over. I finally settled on a smaller but higher in object-count scene, that seemed to have a more believable atmosphere. With the more objects however, the time it took to render grew immensely. The biggest challenge was finding out where to put the objects so that if the camera or audience were to look at it from any angle they would get the best shot. The objects also had to be carefully placed over each other without sliding through each other. Finding the lighting and fitting the textures was the most difficult part of this assignment. Given the teammates had their own textures - some textures unfortunately didn’t look believable when rendered. I went over every texture in the scene and did my best in making sure nothing stood out too much from the scene; if anything stood out from the scene it SHOULD be because that it was from being dominating (ex. the walking mech warrior). Fortunately the texturing worked out alright. The Lighting was a constant struggle and making the scene look like fire, or the glow of it, by making sure the lights weren't flooding the scene. Otherwise it wouldn't look right. The Camera itself had some tweaking as I chose to zoom the lens a little to make sure the shots were a little more chaotic. In all the Rendering process was incredibly demanding and constantly being changed. Not one render looked like the next.
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| | | Time Frame | Ruined Facade | 3 hours | | | Ruined Walls | 2 hours | | | 4 Big Skyscrapers (v2) | 4 hours | | | Rubble (1/4, each) | 20 minutes | | | Rubble Pile #1 | 2 hours | | | Rubble Pile #2 | 1 hour | | | Tank: | 1 hour | | | Planning and sketching | 1 hour | | | Modeling Turret | 10 hours | | | Modeling Chassis | 5 hours | | | Texturing | 2.5 hours | | | Mechwarrior | 8.5 hrs | | | The Ground | 8 Hours | | | Street Curves | 2 Hours | | | 3 Big Skyscrapers (v1) | 6 Hours | | | LW Sky (Skytracer) | 7 Hours | | | Satellite Dish | 1 Hour | | | Random Giant Gear Bolt | 1 Hour | | | Walking Mech Warrior Revamp | 2 Hours | | | Test Rendering | 2-4 Hours at most | | | Final Renders: | 3-4 hours each |
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| | References
Several tutorials on the class website.
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