Learning About Materials And Texture Maps

I recieved a great video explaining what Physical Based Rendering – PBR was. It is made up of a bunch of different materials which consist of: Base Colour, Metallic, Roughness, Normals, Height and Ambient Occlusion. Below I will what I have learnt from this video and list what each of these do along with how this had progressed my learning.

Base Colour

The Base Colour also known as Albedo or Diffuse is the literal colour of areas on a given space of your textures. This consists of green for leaves, blue for sky or brown for mud for example.

Metallic

The Metallic map is the ability of your surface to reflect the imagery around it. This basically consists of a black or white overlay over texture map to signify reflectivity of light. For example a sheet of smooth metal would be fully white to have that reflective surface but a rock would be black because it doesn’t mirror light as well unless it is wet.

Roughness

The Roughness map is the ability of your surface to reflect or absorb white light. For the texture map white would mean the more light is betting absorbed and black would be the light getting reflected therefore taking in less, so the white is rough and the black is very smooth.

Normals

The Normal map determines the illusion of depth and features. It tells the computer which direction the light needs to be bounced of the object. Telling it how to behave as if there were polygons to modify the flat shape.

Height

The Height map is the fake depth or height of areas on your map. The larger the difference between the white and black the larger the difference in distance it will appear on the object. It is quite similar to normal maps but they used to be called bump maps.

Ambient Occlusion

The Ambient Occlusion map determines which areas are inherently darkened to simulate shadows. Anywhere that is white on the map will not recieve darkening but wherever is black or greys will recieve darkenning accordingly.

 

These all helped my learning and understanding of the basic requirements for a high quality texture well. It allowed me to get a clear insight into what different materials were needed just to make up a normal every day object. It amazes me the amount of detail which is involved and what is needed to build up in order to create the desired realistic effect. I will need to delve into this topic matter more in order to get a greater understanding of it all along with practice for when I want to create a realistic texture.

Completing My Scene Render And Export

A few days later after completing my scene and starting the render it was eventually done. I had 1325 individual images to render out and it took over 4 days to do! This became a massive limitation for me which I hadn’t thought about before because of the time consumption it took. Now that it has finished and rendered I can finally place the scenes together into a video and allow for a visually moving showcase for my scene building work.

Firstly, what I tried to do with the rendered images saved in one big folder I opened after effects and dragged the multitude of them into the software. With the files being a .tif sequence it allowed for an easy transition into the software and also to create a smooth scene with all the frames included inside. Which is what I learnt wasd the correct way to complete this task if all the files were rendered correctly and ordered in name.

Unfortunatley along the way I had restarted the rendering sequence so the files started to name themselves differently to the first batch. With the files unorganised and split in the middle I needed to give them all the same name again. I did this by renaming all to an individual name and allowing windows to duplicate them automatically. This became a huge dilemma and I thought that I would never be able to rescue my scene from what I had done.

Once done I went back into aftereffects and luckily had a clip which stayed close to the original camera movements with only a few slip ups throughout. I exported my after effects video and brought it over to premiere where I could modify the clip footage. I moved around the sections of the clip which weren’t in the right locations and thankfully again there wasn’t many. Once everything was in the correct order I played back the clip and gladly it all worked. I set up the sequence settings and went on to export my Mountain Scene.

Overall I really enjoyed creating this scene and exporting it into a clip, I feel ast though now that I have done the industry way of exporting a render at high quality once I won’t need to do it again because of the time constraints and how long it really took to do. Along with this I will make sure to not stop the render halfway and allow for all of my files to be named and numbered correctly so it is easier for the clip building at the end. With the 1325 image files my errors could have gone a lot worse than they did and I might have had to start the whole rendering process again or at least go through every single image file and number them correctly which would take just as much time.

A few things which I noticed with the final export was that some of the shadowed locations made my scene look a little too dark than it naturally would, another thing I spotted was that my fog layer at the end of the scene was cut off and you could see the edges. Another few things was that the rocks had water going over them and it created a glossy look which I didn’t want to create and finally the cave contained brighter parts down the middle where the splices must have had holes in or something. I will be able to make sure these errors won’t happen again if I am ever creating a scene. The last big thing I noticed was that the speed of the video was too fast, I am unsure with how that had happened from the playback through Maya but it turned out to be the case. I tried to slow down the footage through premiere but it messed up my current timeline and glitched up my frame placement again. Unable to fix it I decided to leave the speed how it was with the final export but just remember that it was something which needed to be improved on for the next time I create a production like this one. With all that I have created and researched I have learnt a lot and been able to teach myself a lot of new things through the trial and errors of my work and production.

My thoughts for the future would be to make scenes which contain less realism, this would save me from the software lag and allow me to be more creative and thoughtful when designing my scenes. Along with this, after creating this scene it drew me closer to wanting to creat fantasy and unrealistic designs so the unrealistic versions of scenes would match with this perfectly. If I was to use realism again I would only use it to get a few nice visuals for advertisements or showcasings, this would save the time of exporting hundreds of individual frames and allow for a more smoother approach for any future productions when it is just me working on a project and not an entire industry.

You can find my Mountain Scene Final here!

Upgrading My Scene

Today I focused on improving the overall aesthetic of my scene, I decided to fix up the cave which I added including the overall camera movements which would showcase my scene. Below you can see my processes through this, unfortunately my screen grabs didn’t work but below you can see my camera movements along with the newly added props on the scene.

Firstly I increased the length of the tunnel so it went straight through the mountains and out of the other side. I also added another mountain into the scene which would act as the base for the whole setting. I placed this at the end of the cave to show that we were high up. I went on to fix the UV’s inside the cave because they got distorted with all the stretching. I did this by cutting the edges away from the rest of the mountain then moving and transforming them until the inside looked realistic. Finally at the end of the cave again I place a plane which would act as fog and cloud because of the height of the scene. Below you can see my render of this.

Next I added my extra props consisting of rocks and a tree. The tree was placed ont he island and the rocks were placed in the water on the way to the cave entrance. After placing these is the correct locations I was ready to set up the camera. I used just over 1300 frames to show off my scene which equals just over 50 seconds. I had the camera fly in from the back of the mountains come down onto the lake fly around the island and go up onto it. Then the camera went over to the tree flew around that went back onto the island across the stones and into the cave. Finally it went through the cave looked down off the edge on the other side then it fell off into the fog/cloud below. I feel as this was the best route because it portrays my scene the best and what I have created on it the best too. I am really happy with how it turned out. I have included a playblast and some visuals from within the clip below.

While testing I found out the scene was too dark so I had to increase the intensity of the directional light below you will see the difference between the brighter and darker visuals from different angles.

Darker Visual 1:

Lighter Visual 1 (With Texture Fixes):

Darker Visual 2:

Lighter Visual 2:

This is the link to the playblast clip!

Improving My Mountain Scene

Today I had another attempt at fixing up my mountain scene, I managed to add the water with help from the ‘Water Shader‘ video again and texture every one of the mountains in the mountain range along with adding some previous ones which I had created as props.

Firstly I added my water plane to the scene which went around the island, you can see this below being transformed to the right size. It started off as just a polygon plane.

Next I changed its settings and made the water transparent, and reflective the the light which you can see below. The skydome texture also reflects off the surface that is why you can see the blues and whites ontop.

After I added waves from my first testing they turned out too big and went over the island so I had to re-edit them in the settings. You can see this below and why they won’t be able to be used this high for my scene.

I then lowered the waves so that I could see the island again, what I got is shown below. This is one of my tests which I carried out and you can see the water a little in the cave so I had to try again.

I lowered the waves even more because some were showing into the cave, I didn’t want this to happen below you can see the outcome. For now you can’t see much on the plane because the frequency for the waves is so low.

This is another angle of the lower style waves I included this so I could see which I would prefer for my final shot on the scene. Again you can’t see the waves because the frequency of them is too low.

This is a shot of my waves higher again from the other angle, I also used this to count towards my idea for the outcome for the final render and export on how I wanted the water to look.

Below you can see the higher waves with a much higher frequency. I am glad they turned out the way they did but unfortunatley they are too high for a peaceful mountain lake.

Below you can see the same frequency shot being took with the waves to the lower setting. I think this looked great because it matches with my theme of being a calm mountain lake.

Here is another angle of the lower waves, I took these shots to make sure I knew which setting I wanted to have my body of water on.

Here is the same angle with the waves higher again. From this image I had decided that I liked the look of the lower waves better than the higher ones so I stayed with them.

Finally with the lower waves I decided to also lower the frequency a little to make the lake look a little calmer and below you can see the effect that I chose.

Here is another angle of the lower waves with the lower frequency. With this image and my final tests I was happy with how I wanted to make my lake look in terms of shapes.

Finally to increase the illusion of depth I duplicated the place and set another surface on it as a blue colour. The test below shows the effect this had on my lake.

From the test above I didn’t like how I couln’t see through the water at all and I felt like it removed some of the realism from my scene so I decided to make the second layer a little bit transparent.

Finally is another shot of my lake with the blue plane below it. I feel as this matches my scene well because it allows for my water to look clear and peaceful because of it being out of the way at the top of some mountains.

After a lot of scene altering, changing and adapting below you can see all of the mountains added in and textured. I didn’t grab any captures during this unfortunately but basically I split the mountains in the scene up texturing them differently with the 3 different textures I had gathered. I also added the 2 mountains I had created as props previously into the scene. With them in the background it really built up the illusion of being in a mountain range and allowed my scene to look more full. I don’t have any captures from the view of the island but I need to make sure I keep the theme of realism and not step into the fantasy theme instead with my scene design.

Overall I really like the effect I had created, when I set up the camera and have the view coming from the same height of the island the effect will deepen and it will make a much nicer visual. With this from looking at my work I may need to increase the size of the island so I can fit more objects onto it and have more detail along with making the cave deeper so I can add more detail there too. Finally I couldn’t fix the project switching from 2019 Maya to 2020 but I have managed to work out how to do the tasks I was looking for yesterday on this version now which is good.

Adding To My Pre-Visual Scene

Today I started to add more detail and design onto my pre-visual scene, I did this because I wanted to see what I was creating could turn out like how I had imagined it to be by the end of it. Below you will see my processes through my work I have produced today.

Firstly I sourced the textures which I was going to use for my landscape and mountains, along with adding a skylight texture to include a sky onto my scene. Below you can see a screenshot of my first attempt at adding grass onto my island. I couldn’t get the bump map working with the 2020 version of Maya so I had to revert to 2019 and build my scene on there.

After the conversion I added my skylight texture and a large plane for my scene to sit on which you can all see below. I had reverted the texture I added on my island too unfortunately. I also added some length and growth to the underneath of the island to reach the plane. I did this because it will allow for a smoother texture transition and also a more realistic visual when I add my water plane, it will stop my island from floating.

Next I applied my island texture again and set up the UV’s on the object, the automatic setting seemed to do the trick so I kept with that and just modified how large the UV image was on the object and by zooming it out I managed to create the effect below. Another thing I did was apply a dark soil texture to my plane underneath my scene. This was going to be underwater and I feel as a dark soil texture will look really nice under my water plane when I create it.

Next I changed the ramps of the island that are going to be underwater by selecting the individual faces of the shape. You can see below how I did it and chose the same texture as the overall plane.

After a bit of UV editing below is what my overall scene looks like so far, I have textured the island and the soil for the flooring of the scene. I have still got to add my cave, texture the mountains add the water then include all the detail I am visualising.

Next I set up some directional light and enabled shadows so I could have a sunlight effect when rendering. I also chose a mountain to add a cave into then added my splicing points which you can see below. Before I reached this stage I came across some set backs which were due to my previous splicing placements. What I did was I didn’t join the cave semi-circles together so they got covered over and when I tried adding them prior it crashed the software. That is why when I re-attempted it you can see the spider web effect below so it doesn’t cover over the openings again.

Next I transformed all of the points backwards and into the mountain to create the effect of a deep space. For now all it does is go backwards but once nearing the end of my scene creation I am going to probably build something inside of the cave to increase the overall visual effect of my scene and bring it more to life.

Finally this is my render of my scene so far with the lighting included. From looking at it I will have to modify some of the handle on the inside and outside of the cave in order to reach a smooth effect for when adding texture onto my mountains.

Overall I am happy with the progress of this scene I have made today, I was a bit disheartened yesterday with starting something from scratch and with the way iot looked but when building on this today I am excitied to continue adding to it. So far the requirements on the software are very low and the file size is also substantially lower than it was on my other scene. Finally I have noticed the project keeps switching to the 2020 version of Maya instead of 2019 and I will have to change it back or figure out how to use bump mapping on the newer version before I texture the mountains and add the water on my next attempt of creation onto this scene.

Starting My New Scene On Maya

Today I also started production on my new idea for a scene in Maya, this would be acting towards what I mentioned in the previous post and avoiding the limitations which I mentioned too. Below you can see my processes and steps to how I created the first steps.

Firstly, after setting the project, creating my polygon adding the splicing points and transforming the shape I created my island. This was the main feature of the scene so I had to add detailing to the design. It wasn’t very elevated and was close to being flat, I made sure that any elevation was smooth all over without any sharp edges.

Next, I created the background. This is going to consist of mountains surrounding the island. I added a huge amount of connector points onto a polygon cube and tranformed it into the image below. This time around I wanted to try with a different type of mountain and allow for a type which would fit more in a mountain range.

With this I duplicated the original mountain and modified it a little bit to look different and have some chnage in the scene. I then duplicated them both again transformed them and placed all the mountains around the island. The shot below is a pre visual of what it will look like inside of the mountain range.

This image below is a shot of my whole scene so far, it shows all the mountains I used and how they are set up to surround the island to create the visual of the mountain range.

Overall I think the scene will look very good once everything is textured. With the amount of handles added I will probably have to modify some of them once I have applied the texture. From looking at the pre-visual pictures the mountains have a lot of bumps which is what I wanted so I am happy with that, the only thing now is to see how it all looks with textures applied then I can move on and improve my Maya scene.

Finding A New Idea, Updating My Statement Of Intent And Critical Text

Today I started completing some more work again and I went onto Google Images to find a nice real life setting to base my new scene off. After my setback last week and finally now understanding what my limitations are I can now choose a setting which will match what I am capable of creating. I may have to create some more props but if I can find something which I can create or remaster in to my own edition. I will show examples of settings I like below and my limitations on each, I will also summarise below what I have chosen to base my work off with reasons.

Overall I loved the mountainous settings, I have always loved these and I really wanted to create one. The image below gives a perfect example of a setting which I want to recreate in Maya. This image could be remade because it doesn’t contain trees that I can see so it may be possible to recreate. But on the sheer size of it I feel as though it will require a lot of detail and my Maya will not be able to handle it.

I found this image which also matches to what I want to create, it fits into the side of being too demanding on my computer and Maya and I couldn’t possibly attempt it at the stage I am now. It is similar to the landscape I tried to create previously with the river going through the middle with trees and mountains around it.

Trying to gain some progress I looked into settings which wouldn’t be as demanding so I thought of a field like you can see in the picture below. Thinking about it I could attempt this but would have to create some very basic trees in order to reach a vast amount to create a forest whilst also preventing Maya lag.

I found another image of a mountain and this didn’t look too bad, it was an open scene with a huge lake in the middle. It was really open with no trees in sight, quite vast however but no where near as large as the first image. I really liked this image and kept it as one of my main findings.

I then looked into some caves and thought it would be great to get lighting effects like on the image seen below into Maya. Having created a small cave for my last scene I could just base my next project on a giant scene inside a cave and make sure to add the lighting and rock detail as seen below.

I found another image based on a cave and this one contained a lot of water within. I loved the effects and reflection it creates and it boosted my idea of creating a cave scene. This would be a good idea because it wouldn’t be too demanding because I can do the majority of the interitor with just one giant polygon cube with a lot of splices created for the transforming.

Finally I stumbled across this image below, I loved the island in the centre being separated from the surrounding areas. I loved the sunny atmosphere along with the peaceful water surrounding it. At first I thought ther was to chance to re-create this with the amount of trees in the background but then I thought that I could recreate it but in the centre of a mountain range. I thought about having a cave to enter into the range which could include what I saw above along with the island once out the cave surrounded by the mountains making it a secluded space. I really liked this idea so I am going to attempt to create what i have explained above and hopefully I can create this without any issues.

Next, it was time to update my Statement Of Intent, I decided with all the changes and progress which I had made throughout my production it needed to be done. Along with being told it is a living breathing document and should always be updated this will suit my workflow well. I included what my overall plan was in more detail along with updating the topic by only having natural substances along with giving more corresponding examples to what I wanted to have included into my scene. I also updated my limitations to match what I had discovered during my production along with explaining how to prevent it from occuring again and how I am going to work around it for my final product.

Finally, I went along and added more information onto my critical text to make it more current and close to what I am doing and have changed. I added a section at the end to cover the final section of the pipeline which consisted of exporting. I explained how to use the .tif method which I got explained to me in a lecture. It contained how to do it along with what the purpose of using this method was. With this I had covered the full modelling pipeline in Maya and was just waiting for corrections if any were needed.

I am glad I got all of this done because it has cleared my mind a little from being completely lost and not knowing what to do after Maya couldn’t handle what I wanted to create. With this done I can move onto a previsual of what I want my final product to look like.

A Set Back In My Work

Today I attempted again to make the Maya file become less in storage and also get rid of lag. After reading about the instances yesterday I was excited and ready to try them out for my scene. Below you will see my processes and learning.

After reading about the instances I was ready to try them out. They require a lot less processing than just duplicating the original prop. Below you can see what I wanted to multiply.

Once the tree was selected I was ready to start. To create the instance of my prop I had to go to this tab under the ‘Edit’ section on Maya.

This brought up a pop up menu that you can see below, this menu allowed me to modify the amount of multiplications created along with the distances apart and rotation of the new objects.

After creating a lot I found out that the more and more I did the laggier the software got, this caused my computer to crash and restore to a previous version when I had fewer props. Below you can see a render with what I have before the lag starts. I really like how it looks but the instances and duplications don’t work so I can’t finish off the scene how I wanted to.

Overall I am most likely going to re-create another scene in a different area of design. I love what I have created as a first draft but through my practice I have learnt, understood and found what my limitations will be for this project. My next scene I will make sure to create as a smaller area not a wide open space. I am planning to continue to use my same props but just make sure I can fit the required amount into my scene before crashing and lag occur within the software. The last thing I could try and do to save this scene is to create a brush with my props and test if that will work. The issue with that is when I tried to create one I could’nt find the right place to go to for the creation. Maybe it was the tutorial I used or just me not being able to find it, but next time I have ago at my project I will research more into creating brushes too and try and have a working brush for my tree.

Fixing And Adding Detail To My Landscape On Maya

Today I fixed some things on my landscape scene and added some more detail to it overall. I will show my processes of what I have done below, even though it was a short attempt at the scene I feel as though I got a lot done in terms of learning and development to my skills and project.

Firstly when previously modifying this scene I preffered the old water colour, I managed to fix this by addigning a new surface shader onto the lake and river in order to set them back to being the colourless liquid instead of the blue tinted one.

Below you can see the difference in the waters, I noticed there has always been an issue with the lake when viewing it from affar so I went on to try and fix the issue of the misssing sections of it.

After a lot of playing around I moved the water to look as best as possible, below you will see my outcome. I couldn’t fix the issue with the water so I am deciding to cover it up with props instead. This will allow me to have the camera set up only show the nice parts of the lake when flying around.

Next I added my cave to the scene, I placed this to the end of one of the rivers. I had to delete the extra objects which came with the scene and I once moved into position I transformed it in order to match with the water. I also placed water into the cave entrance in order to create the visual of water flowing out of the cave into the river. Below I have contained an image.

After this I started to add some trees to my scene, I dragged the original file in and noticed that the program started to lag heavy. With this I duplicated some of the trees and made a small gathering of them around a really large one. With this the software nearly became unusable. I decided to make everything within the scene smaller. If I was only to have a camera flying around it would make everything easier and require a lot less power and storage to have my scene like this. After doing this it turns out this wasn’t the case and it still required the same amoutn of storage and requirements. I went and did some research into how to make the project file take up less storage and I learnt about an ‘Instance’ instead of ‘Duplication’. To do this I had to select the objects and group them. With the group selected I have to go to Edit > Duplicate special and click the settings box. In the options panel I have to select the ‘Instance’ option, And finally define any transform values for the new instance. I will make sure to take this into consideration when I re-enter this landscape and start working on it again. Below is a render of the trees I have completed so far.

Creating Another Tree On Maya

Today I wanted to create another type of tree on Maya, my previous trees created have been a test then a birch, this time I wanted to focus on basing my tree off an oak. Along with this I though oak trees would best suit my landscape scene successfully so I needed to create one. Below you will see my processes and learning through this.

I started by setting the project file adding the skylight and a plane for the tree to rest on then finally creating a polygon cylinder for the basic trunk.

This cylinder had too many subdivisions so I halved the amount from 20 down to 10, this allowed for a more productive and edge orientated tree.

Following this I split up the sections of the cylinder using the splicer tool and modified the vertex’s on the shape, I made the top of the tree become smaller as it went up to create a more realistic effect. Compared to my last method used for my birch tree, this took a lot less time and it allowed me to use my new skills learnt to create something entirely by myself with no outside help.

Next, using the main trunk as the base I made multiple small branches. I did this by duplicating the base then bending sections of it to add some difference. I then rotated and added more of the trunks transformed and shrunk around the branch piece.

With a basic overall branch completed I could then duplicate that and copy it all around my tree rotating and transforming as I went in order to differentiate them all. After going around the tree and checking to see if everything was connected I moved onto texturing the bark.

I textured the bark by finding a seamless bark texture and applying it to a lambert material. With this I went to the UV editor and set an automatic cut and sew map for the object. After understanding the basic look I modified some handles to keep consistency throughout the tree then growing and shrinking others in order to create the optimum effect. Below you can see my UV map for the woody parts of the tree.

This is a screenshot of the tree and its bark unhighlighted so that you can get a nicer and better visual of what I have created and accomplished so far.

Next I moved onto my leaves, I started by flattening out a polygon cube and splicing a leaf design over the top then deleting the other edges to leave a flat leaf shape to texture. Below you can see my finished leaf shape.

I didn’t capture the texturing stage but after applying its material I started to duplicate the leaf over and over again. With this I transformed and rotated it each time to differentiate the leaves and create the illusion of them all being connected to a branch. I had to keep grouping and duplicating to save time and speec my process up. With this I had to create a mesh and delete the old groups in order to prevent the software from lagging by creating more. Below you can see a finished leaf section.

With these leaf sections I duplicated them all around the tree placing them all around onto the end of the branches which I had created. I also added some smaller leaf sections to the end of the stand alone branches underneath and inside the tree. This allowed for the highest realistic visual for my creation. Below you can see everything which I have done rendered, after I viewed this I realised the base was to straight and it needed to change in order to match with the rest of my tree.

Below you can see two images of my final product with everything fixed and completed. You can see an outside of my tree rendered along with the inside looking up at the branches for a different visual angle.

Outside:Inside:

Overall I loved creating this tree and I am glad I did because it allowed me to see my own progress and how I have improved from my last model. A few things which will need to be fixed are that the file which contains the tree is quite large for maya and is 50MB. The issue for this is that I am wanting to create a forest with this and if I duplicate it a lot of times it will only increate and eventually be too much storage to keep. I will need to find a way to limit this or maybe create a brush of my trees to save storage and keep my file sizes low but I will need to do some research to figure out how to do these things.