Project #2 - JR Week 13 Update - Final Renders

     
      These are my final renders for the final project, including my re-done building from Project #1. These are the images that I'm going to submit for my final project, including all of the necessary information, such as the textures, normal/spec maps (if applicable), polygon count, unity screenshots, etc. There weren't any drastic changes made to the objects since their original final renders, but I did improve them by adding specularity and normal maps to some of the textures, making them higher quality and giving them nicer details. They also imported into the Unity game engine without any trouble. I also have some close-up images of some of the props that will be submitted with the final project, but they were too large to fit onto this blog. Overall, I am very happy with how these turned out, and the normal and spec maps really added that final touch.

Project #2 - JR Week 12 Update - Building Redux

        For the level design/area portion of the project, I decided to expand upon the room I made in Project #1 instead of making something entirely new (the props I made were designed for this room anyway). While this was originally just a room, I decided to expand it into the entire building, including the roof and area out front (that large white plane, which I plan to texture into a parking lot with a wall of pond reeds surrounding it). Most importantly, however, is how I redesigned and remodeled the main base/walls of the building. The original walls were four rather uneven rectangle polygons, with the door and windows cut into them via booleans. In order to clean it up and to make adding windows,extra floors, and a roof much more easily, I modeled a new set of walls from scratch using box modeling (a giant cube that had the same general dimensions that the original walls covered). I was able to cut out the roof area and windows using edge loops and the interactive split tool, while filling in the holes with the extrude tool on edges and the merge tool for vertexes. One of the problems I had with my first project was lighting, and it was probably caused by the walls not being made of quads, so remodeling them from a single object should fix these problems.

Project #2 - JR Week 11 Update - Finished Burger Prop

     This is the final product for my hard prop, which is a burger on a plate. Since last week, there wasn't much modeling left to do aside from making the plate, whit was surprisingly easy to make. It was modeled from a cylinder, with pseudo edge loops on the top and bottom being warped to create that plate-like shape. I intended to make a shiny-looking texture for the plate, and I was surprised with how good it looked when I applied it in Maya. Aside from that, the rest of the work was done on making the remaining textures for the remaining pieces. While some were rather simple, I had to export the UVs of others (such as the lettuce) into Photoshop in order to model a texture around them. Overall, I'm very happy with how this turned out, even if it doesn't (yet) use any special kinds of specularity.

     For continuing to the level design portion of the project, I plan to improve upon and expand the room I made for Project #1, adding part of the exterior as well. Also, the walls weren't attached to each other and may of the objects were not made in quads, so some objects in the room will be redone with edge loops and quads to prevent lighting problems when importing into unity (along with making the models cleaner overall)

Project #2 - JR Week 10 Update - Finished Feather and In-Progress Burger

       This is the (probably) final version of the Golden Feather powerup, which is the medium-difficulty prop of the project. I like how the colors went together, and even though I didn't have time to add specularity/normal maps to the project (saving time for other props), I'm still happy with how it turned out. Though, if I have some extra time, I'll make further improvements to it.


      

          This is the current state of the hard prop, which will be a burger on a plate. I chose this to be the hard prop due to the amount of pieces it contains, and the difficulty of combining them correctly. The cheese and both buns have already been textured and have their UVs set (the simple/cartoonish textures have the upside of having less seams to fix), while the tomato has a texture applied to it (but isn't UV'd). The cheese and the lettuce were the most interesting parts to make, as they were both sculpted from a basic cube polygon. I made the angles in both (especially the bending effect in the cheese) through the rotation and movement of vertexes and faces on the corners of the object. Furthermore, I used the interactive split tool and edge extrude tool to give the lettuce a rounder base. For the burger atty, I hope to either add small sculpt indents to make it look more like ground beef, as I was unable to find a good ground beef texture to make a normal/specularity map. The top bun was another case of more complex modeling, as I modeled it from a basic sphere (chopped it in half, filled the hole that it created, and restored the edges using the interactive split tool. Afterward I bended the edges and vertexes to make it look flatter without making it wider, which resulted in some face deletion and hole-filling on the top).

Project #2 - JR Week 9 Update - Finished Spatula and Near-Finished Feather

          Here is the final render for the spatula. I finished texturing the object and smoothing some of the edges (though, the object uses a lot of greys, which makes some of the textures difficult to distinguish from Maya's default gray). I plan to try some specularity mapping on part of it later on, but for right now I'm very happy with how it turned out. The mesh is in two parts (the handle and the grill/flipper), but I'll find a way to combine them into a single mesh later on.



        

           
        This is the current state of prop #2, which is a golden feather (one of the game's power-ups). The texture was made specifically for the shape of the feather, but the texture was still fun to make. I was able to model the "stem" of the feather from a long cylinder and some well-placed edge loops. The more difficult part was making the feather itself (which it why it is the medium prop instead of the easy prop), but I was able to receive help in turning the curve into a polygon, using Maya's conversion tools, the fill hole function, and edge extrusion. I also had to use the interactive cut/division tool to turn the surface of the feather into quads, and the way the vertexes were placed on the object makes it look a bit like a cocoon when edges are visible. In order to finish this up, I plan to give a good texture to the "stem and" to add specularity and a normal/bump map to help it look much shinier and golden.

Project #2 - JR Week 8 Update - Near-Finished Spatula

    This is the current state of the first prop for Project #2, which is a spatula. For the most part, this is completely textured, aside from the main shaft of the spatula (this will have the same texture as the end of the spatula shaft behind the rubber handle) and the back of the flipper. For the most part, this is complete, but I haven't yet added the textures on the two areas mentioned earlier because I still need to connect them. I'll probably ask for some help in connecting them "properly", as booleans aren't usually the best idea for merging polygons. Aside from that, I've also started part of the model for the second prop, and everything is going smoothly.

Project #2 - JR Week 7 Update - Project #2 Plans

 

         These are the three game props I plan to create for the project, going from least complex to most complex. The spatula and burger are meant to be restaurant props while the feather is one of the game's power-ups. The burger image was used as a reference for a couple of projects in GDD 110, so I decided to re-use it for consistency in the art. Even though these objects will be cartoony-looking models, I'll be able to easily form them and upgrade the overall quality with some of the new Maya tools I have recently learned. The texture style will remain the same style as before, but I plan to implement a few normal maps onto some parts of the objects (such as a faintly scratched metal texture on the spatula to give the illusion that it has been used, or a soft feather texture on the main part of the golden feather, or even a vein texture on the burger's lettuce).