Image two: The second planet

The main planet has taken over approximately a third of the total canvass, so there is a lot of open space that needs to be filled. I moved onto filling this with a second planet, this one however had rings around it. The Planet was built exactly the same way as the main planet, however, the shadowing is on the other side as I will be placing a light source between the two planets.

Two planets

To make the rings around the planet I previously used noise/stars on a layer and then placed the ‘twirl’ filter onto it in order to get rings however, the stars were not as solid as I would have liked. I therefore experimented with other renders and found that if I rendered clouds and then placed the ‘twirl’ filter onto it twice I had a far more dense patter in which to create my rings from. After using the brush tool to mask away the harsh edges and the enter of the twirl I could start the transform. I scaled the circle down and then moved it into position around the planet with a slight tilt to it. After masking out the back of the rings to suggest that they were all around the planet, I generated some noise to give the ring a slight grain.

Rings

After some looking to see if there could be any more improvements, I found that embossing the rings slightly gave a bit more punch. Also I used a new layer and brush to darken the edges of the ring that goes into the shadows.

Embossed rings

Image two: Starting the main comp

Background

The background is plain black, and as with the tests before, I am using the noise filter to create some basic stars. They are then duplicated and for the first layer of stars I singled out and enhanced the brightest points. On the second layer I changed the opacity to around 50% so that the stars were still present but were not detracting for the brighter ones. The one issues that had to be faced with producing stars was the effect the size of the canvass had on creating the star map effectively. Due to the fact that the canvass size is A3, when working in ‘Photoshop’ and viewing the canvass in full, I am only seeing it at 16.6% of the actual size. This means that after I kept enhancing the stars, because I could not see them, when I finally zoomed in to actual size I had an abnormal star field completed filled. I was able to reduce the star field back to an amount that looked good for the actual size canvass and not purely going on the 16.6% view. Thankfully I realised this issue at the very beginning and therefore was aware of it for the rest of the process.

I wanted to have some more drama going on in the background. something that was not too strong but still had some impact. My best thought on what to do for this was to create some galaxy clusters. The way in which I approached this was to find a stock image of a degraded wall, what I actually found was an image of rusting metal (http://browse.deviantart.com/resources/stockart/?q=rust#/dcu5ve). I laid this down and inverted the colours, which gave me an interesting and successful texture and background.

Inverted background

This was a good start to a background and I felt happy to move on knowing that I could make easy amendments if necessary.

Main Planet

I wanted the planet to be quite large so I built it on a separate canvass and pulled it into the main image.

Again the the process that I used to create the planet was the same basis as the development planet. This time however I searched for and found an image that I could use to get a thicker texture. I had to consider the colour scheme at this point, as the colouring of the planet was the key element that defined the whole compositions colour palette. I first choose oranges and reds to give a very fiery feel to the image however, I felt that it would be a little over powering to continue for the whole composition. I moved to a darker blue theme which worked really well as a glow for the planet. With the thicker texture the embossing worked much better. I slightly increased the height which added a little bit more depth. Again i duplicated the layer so that there was two layers of embossing the first layer was picking out the light and the second layer was enhancing the shadows. To get a smooth dark shadow on the whole of the planet I reselected the circle that originally was the basis for the planet, filled it with black and the moved it slightly down and to the left. On this circle I also added a feather, so that the light and dark merged together smoothly. I choose this method rather than simply masking with a brush because it creates a more defined shadow, which is how it would realistically be.

Background and Planet

Starting

The set up of the comp is: 1920 x 1080 with 12 frames per second. The choice of frame rate is so because it will give more of a stop motion effect to it.

I started with a blank canvass (white) and then added the music piece to the comp. For now I am making the length of this piece the same length as the music itself, in this case 32 seconds. the first effect that I am putting on is a ‘Audio expassion’, what this will do is when I add a solid that is slightly smaller, and pair it to the effect, the edges of this solid will then animate in time to the tempo and beat of the music.

Audio Expansion

With this I was able to decide how the sollid played out this beat, either, with moving shapes, lines or spikes. Once all of my settigns were added, such as the thinkness of the spikes and the softness, I was abble to move onto texturing and getting a ‘paper’ effect onto this.

I had to copy this comp into a new one and making sure that they were linked so that I could change the content of the animaton but still keep the paper effect.

Once the texture is added here the effect that it has is any white areas on the first comp, when in this new “paper stage”, has a paper texture applied to it. At the moment there is only the outside and the break away areas of the audie expansion, but once other elements are applied I will be able to se the paper effect correctly.

Paper texture

Image two: More space research and development

Planets

When looking at other images of planets it is clear that some of these have a higher quality of realism, that is not massively detailed but has excellent lighting that creates the illusion that there is more detail present. To try and replicate this I went back to my planet prototype and had a look at the layers. The layer that has most control over the finer points of the planet is the ’emboss’. To give this some enhancement I duplicated this layer, which overall just darkened the embossed areas and didn’t actually show anymore detailing.

My next test then was to play around with the levels, much the same as the highlighting of the stars that I had tested previously. I therefore kept the two embossed layers and on the first I changed the levels so that only the brightest elements were left. On the second layer I moved the levels so that only the darkest areas were left. Both of these layers were then adjusted and merged together so that the dark and light had really been picked out.

Dust and particles

I wanted to play around with some ‘space dust’ effects and found a relatively simple way of creating this. Using the pen tool I made a large and curvy shape which I made a selection of and gave this a slight feather. Within this shape I took the colours back to their default and rendered clouds. After deselecting, I could then use the brush to mask out some of the harsh edges to give more of a plume effect.

To make some dust particles I added a light noise filter and masked areas that I did not need. After I had the shape and texture I could play around with the colouring effects. On a new layer and with the soft edge brush I was able to brush on colour selectively. With each colour layer I experimented with the layer mode so that the right balance of light and colour was created. On the whole the layers were a combination of ‘Screen’ and ‘Soft Light’ with differing states of opacity.

Music

I found a piece of royalty free music that I liked and thought had some interesting musical cues that I could work with. The piece is 32 seconds long and called ‘A_Little_Bit_Of_Wax_Never_Hurt_Anyone’.

I need to note down all of the time frames of when the main objects in my video will kick in. Entrance for each instrument: Drums, Trumpets, guitars etc.

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.

Image two: Coming to an end

My first thoughts with this image was to combine the stock photo of the shouting man with the space elements I could now produce, in order to get a solar themed manipulation. I experimented with a range of elements from rings around his head to planets in the background. Unfortunately, I could not settle or see a direction to continue this in.

I have gained a lot of confidence in producing space elements and I think that it is best to create an image that is solely based on that and say goodbye to the shouting man.

 

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.

Image two: researching space

Even with the image of the shouting man in the mix I still feel that I would like to create something with a space theme. Although I have researched and viewed many photo manipulations on space, I still need to work on my starting techniques and what elements can be most effective in a scene.

After looking at how some of my mood board images were created and the elements within I set about experimenting with differing ways in which to create planets, particles and other space related objects.

I started with a planet, I didn’t want to simply find stock imagery of a planet and use that because that doesn’t necessarily have the quality and 3D effect that I am looking for. So building a planet from scratch was my next option.

I started with a simple circle which I coloured from dark to light (bottom right to top left) with a soft edge brush. I knew that I needed a texture to give the circle a planet type feel. After testing out some of the images I had found that had some interesting textures I found that once overlaid there just wasn’t the feel and look I was hoping for. To try to overcome this issue I searched for some texture brushes that may have been better, however, finding ‘planet’ like brushes was not an easy task. In the first assignment of the module, in the ‘clock-fire’ image I had learnt to create my own brushes (a process easier that first thought), this was therefore the next experiment for me. I took part of one of my texture images and converted that into a brush. Due to the fact that I then had more control over the laying down of the texture as a brush I was able to get an outcome that was a lot closer to what I was looking for. I then looked at layer styles and modes to see if any more improvement could be made. I finally settled on having the layer mode set to ‘linear dodge’.

This was working well so far but on the whole it was still looking like a basic coloured circle. To give more of a 3D effect I applied a filter to the circle called ‘Spherize’. After undoing and redoing some of the settings I finally gave the circle a realistic globe look. The only problem that came from this was the fact that the texture on it looked rather flat. To make the brush work stand out I applied an emboss filter, it didn’t have a large ‘height’ setting to it but enough I to just add an edge and bring it to life a bit more.

My next issue was to work with the lighting. As this was simply a test I just aimed to have the light coming down from the top left leaving the bottom in darkness. With a black background laid down behind the now ‘almost planet’ I masked out the areas that needed to be in darkness and used a soft edge brush to allow a gradual move from light to dark.

I have not worked with glows a lot before but to give some more depth and punch to the planet I felt that it was needed. I experimented with inner and outer glows to see what type of effects they would have and finally settled upon some light coloured glows. After this I felt that I had quite a good attempt at a planet, and a basis to move forward from.

Stars and Rings

To create some stars I had a plain black background and added a noise filter to it. This worked quite well but there was a little too much ‘regulation’ to the patterning. I masked out some parts of the noise and then duplicated the layer and masked differing areas to create some disruption. Again, this was effective but in a star field all stars are never the same size and brightness, so I needed a way to brighten the stars up. My first attempt was to use a small soft edge brush set to white and to brush over random stars in order to create a glow around them… this worked but was not as effected as I had hoped. After having a look at some techniques used else where I tried the following: The first layer of noise I added an adjustment layer to it and amended the ‘levels’ so that some of the noise when out and other parts were highlighted. when this was combined with the second layer there was a greater mix of brightness, size and randomness.

Creating planet rings worked almost straight away for me. I had my star field which I applied a ‘Whirl’ filter to. After only one ‘whirl’ it didn’t feel strong enough so I simply applied the same ‘whirl’ again. Some of the edges were not appropriate so I masked them out with a soft edge brush. This gave me a perfect circle of rings, in order to fit it around a planet I transformed the circle and squashed it down so that I could mask out areas and put it round a planet.

Finally settling

This is excellent visually, I really feel that this is a great concept and an overall successful piece. However, the method of doing this is very tricky. In this visual it is paper cut out, filmed and then put together as a stop motion piece. I think that I can create this effect using ‘After Effects’.

I also like the idea of pieces having music that syncs perfectly. So from these to ideas I am going to create an animation similar to the ‘My Paper Mind’ but that is also a music representation.