Assignment 2: Final image: As Time Goes By

As Time Goes By

Assignment 2: Bringing it all together

I brought all of these images into ‘Photoshop’ to create the scene that I had envisaged. I needed a long canvass to get the landscape shots that I wanted.

On the right hand side the head will be placed and the rest of the cliff scene with spitfires will spread out to the left hand side. The head and hat I wanted to be the size of the full height. so this was the first element to place. Around this I laid down two ‘letterbox’ lines above and below this.

From here, I could then mark out the lay out a little bit better. The cliffs render is effectively a horizontal line, so this was the next element laid down with my sky and the water attached to it.

Finally the spitfires were brought in and placed.

spitfires

In photoshop i replicated the spitfires, reduced the opacity and then transformed them so that the shadow effect was created. Shadows were rendered in houdini however it did not look as good as the photoshop shadows (something that I need to consider and work on for next time).

I finally added text of a title “As Time goes by” to complete this image. I was happy with this look but as a last touch I wanted to get the sense of time moving so Have de saturated two areas of the images so there is a time flow: from now-then-now-then.

Assignment 2: Hat Badge

On my research and reference images the badges that are featured on the hats are of flying wings. The issue that I had with this is that I really want to convey my concept and with just flying wings I was not sure that the idea that this is a pilot would be strong enough. I have therefore decided to create a “RAF” badge that will sit above the peek of the hat.

I built this in Houdini. Laying down ‘font’ and editing these as appropriate. The font used here was a traditional ‘Times’. A font that is used on some RAF logo work. These characters were then extruded slightly, not a lot of depth is needed otherwise it would not look accurate on the hat.

These characters were then textured with a metal feel, which had been coloured golden.

Assignment 2: RAF Hat

To create the sense of this man being a pilot I wanted to add some extras details to his character that complimented this idea. My first addition was to create a RAF’s pilots hat. I first had to research the design of these hats:

hat 1

hat 2

 

The key elements was the flat top, leading to a circular band round the middle and then the peek.

The build up for this happened quite smoothly. The top of the hat was a capped tube tilted and re-sized. This had a cylinder underneath it and a cone placed below that which created the peek. The edges around these connecting parts were smoothed so that there was less of a harshness.

What needed to happen now was coloring and texturing to give more of a cloth feel to the current crispness.I searched for textures that may work and set about testing the rendered outcomes.

blue texture

This texture has the correct colouring and also a grain and material covering which the render was able to pick out.

The main problem to be rectified from here is to lower the lighting and make the blue areas of the hat less shiny and give the material more grit and matt effect.

Assignment 2: Texturing

The sculpt of the head when I moved it as an obj. file from ‘sculptris’ to ‘houdini’ was a lot heavier than I had predicted. The final count was 999,999 polygons built up the old mans head. So in should this made texture quite a tricky process. After a few experiments I wanted to test out the painting tools.

paint test

3D Assignment 2: Testing the face

3D Assignment 2: Spitfire

Wireframe

Flat shaded

the basic geo

3D Assignment 2: Start of the background creation

The background will be made up of three structural elements. 1) The Sky 2) The Sea and 3) The White Cliffs. To create these successfully I am going to use a combination of ‘Houdini’ and ‘Vue 9’.

The process is very similar in both pieces of software. Start with the basic shape of the cliffs in a 2D format. This is then extruded to a range of different heights and sizes. In Houndini I had to flattern the tops of the cliffs slightly more than in Vue.

One version of cliff generation

The colour tools in Houdini, I found, did not quite have the texturing range as accessable as it is in Vue.

test 1

test 2

test 3

test 4

Spitfire modeling

The modeling of the spitfire at first I thought would be quite tricky. I wanted this to be a purely ‘Houdini’ creation without the use of any other software. My starting point was to research the structure of a spitfire and how it is built. Looking at these types of images an plans shows me that in the most simplistic form a spitfire can be broken down into a series of geometric shapes and then fitted together.
I planned that the main structures would be:
– The main body (this being from the back end of the plane to just before the tip.
– The wings (at the moment I am planning on having the wings as one geometry piece that is symmetrical)
– The vertical tail
-The horizontal tail
– The tip

These will provide a basic structure, from which I will be able to add texture, detail and other elements to make it more realistic.

3D Assignment 2: Starting to sculpt

I started this sculpt with two key features of the face, this is some I could lay down some markings to guide the rest of the build. These two features were the nose and the chin. I started creating the sculpt in ‘symetry’ mode so that to start with the face had quite a solid shape to it. The main bulk of this type of sculpt was basically removing and adding the largest areas of the face.

Nose and Chin

From here I started to define the mouth and lips, and also to start building up some features around the mouth. As an addition to this, I started to create the neck and some of the heavy detail that goes with it, such as wrinkled skin and bone structure.

Lower face

Lower face side profile

These two images also show that slight indents have been made to mark out where the eyes will be placed and sit. The brush sizes and the change between adding to the sculpt or sculpting out of the main piece have allowed me to start the process of detailing the creases in the lower part of the face.

Use of smaller brush sizes

I knew that the eyes would be one of the hardest elements of the face to sculpt and detail accurately. I therefore took the process slowly and did not try to create the eyes all in one action. I started by bring out the clay the outline  of the eyelids and taking away the some of the object underneath the eye socket. This also effected the structure of the top of the nose. I tried to make sure that the placements of all the parts to the face are as accurate to real life as possible. For example I know that structurally the eyes should be inline with the thin, top part of the nose structure.

First steps to the eyes

After the first mapping to the eyes was created I developed this, using the same techniques so that the arc under the brow is starting to be formed and also underneath the eye is indented more. With the work underneath the eye not only does that effect the nose structure but it also started to define some cheek bone structure.

Greater eye detail

Closer view of some eye detail

The work shown in the above sometimes distorts other elements of the face, therefore the nose here needed some more work.

After some work around the eyes on the actual structure of the eyes I then went to work on adding some extra detail. Wrinkles and laughter lines are key details that I want to include.I am using a small brush with a strong indent, in order to start the wrinkling. The next details that I have created are wrinkles on the forehead. These are thicker and stronger than those found around the eyes. So to get the best results I used a thicker brush and lowered the sharpness but set it to extrude instead of indent.

The brow line was also coming into definition much better now and there I am able to add some detail of eyebrows. I did not want to sculpt the eyebrows too much as I feel it would be more effective if I used textures and other 3D elements to create some individual hair work.

More detail

Eyebrow work

Side profile of eye work

Next in this process came one of the largest sculpting challenges, this being the ears. This needed a lot of extrusion and moulding. Due to the fact that ears are an odd shape, it took a lot of redoing and smoothing in order to get shapes that could possibly pass as ears. One of the problems that I have at this point with the ears is the angle in which they project. An issues that I have found with this tool is that manuvering individual elements on a pivot point or angle is not an easy process. It is easier to break down the element and then rebuild it rather than any other method.

First look at the eyes

Ears close up

After the ears looked passable, I moved onto adding some extra detail to the chin area. Beinf a male face I needed to have some element of roughness around the chin to represent stubble or growth. I created this with a small brush, with not a very large strength factor and randomly stroked and dotted the chin area, this gave a basic indentation to work with.

Chin

The next part of the process is to keep going over all the different elements that complete the face as a whole and add extra detail. The area that I wanted to be the most detailed was the eyes. The use of different sized brushes and pressures was the key element to getting the tiny details added.

Detailed Eyes

I am quite happy at the moment with this sculpt, and particularly happy that it seems to have turned out resonably well even though this is a first attempt. Below are some views of the sculpt so far:

Front View

Side Profile

Top Down

For the moment I am happy with this and I am now able to export this out as an obj. and bring it into ‘Houdini’, while still having the ability to return to this sculpt and amend it.