Baking the Star Wars Turret on Maya and Xnormal

In this lesson we had with Robin, we were going to add detail to the turret on Maya and then take it over to Xnormal. This will give it the detailed effect that we desire. We will also add some effects of our own once the turret has been fully detailed.

The Xnormal set up.

One of the first things that we did was select the model that we had in the original posts. Once we had got it, we imported it into Xnormal, Robin had told us the settings that we needed to have set in Xnormal in order for it to make it detailed. The settings that worked for this turret are shown above.

A finished rendered version.

This is what we end up with once we have rendered the image. It takes all sides of the turret and makes them extremely detailed. This is quite a long process to go through, so while it rendered we had a ten minute break and came back and it still didn't load. On average it takes about 15 to 20 minutes to completely finish.

The new "Skin".

Once we come away from Xnormal, we are left with two files, one being the Photoshop image of the skin taken apart, the other being the finished Maya turret that we had previously. We can already see, compared to previous models, that this has greatly improved the detail on the turret, making it more realistic and believable.

We have to apply the Photoshop skin over the top like you would do with any other object on Maya, which if you look at the fish tutorial, you can see me doing this.

Looking up images.

As we apply this over the top of the turret, we can alter this to make it look different on the turret. For my turret, I wanted it to look old and scratched, so I went to Google and typed in "scratched metal".

The Photoshop file.

Once I had the image that I wanted, I set about placing it over the puzzle pieces of the turret. There were several ways that you can go about doing this, for example, you can place the image of the metal over the top and turn the opacity down. From here you can delicately cut around the different edges.

I feel I'm quite experienced when it came to Photoshop, so I knew a quicker route around doing this and which would also make this more realistic.

I created a new layer, placing the image of the scratched metal over the top. You have to make sure that it is the top layer and drag the scratched metal to cover this new layer. I then changed its layer type in the corner box located on top of the layers, it says "normal". I experimented with the different types of layers until I settled with one I liked. 

This meant that all the areas that I wanted covered on the layer below had scratched metal on them, whereas everything else was blank.

The turret with Scratched skin.

As you can see from the image above we have our turret looking even more realistic, like it had seen a lot of combat, but I felt we hadn't finished here, I wanted mine to look more individual, more original.

I'm extremely interested in history and of that, especially World War 2, I think maybe as I have so many relatives that fought for the allies, such as grandparents and others, I wanted to incorporate it into my turret. I remember, while searching through old images in a book, I came across the image below.

It is off an American pilot, who displayed a Nazi flag for every single enemy plane that he had shot down. This was seen as an insult, displaying how many of them that he had killed, making sure that they saw it when he continued to battle them in the air.

I thought that this was a great piece of inspiration and I really wanted to include some form of kill count in my piece.

"Kill Count" inspiration.

I went back to the skin that I had before in Photoshop and got an image of a tally. With this tally, I had altered it and moved it around, then duplicating it and doing the same thing until most of the skin was covered.

I made the tally fairly small so I could fit a lot onto the turret, making it look menacing.

My finished piece in Photoshop.

 Once I had put the Photoshop file onto the turret it came out looking like this, with scratched metal and a tally, you can tell that this turret has taken out some menacing foes.

The final product.

In the end I'm quite proud with what I ended up with. I think that the small tally idea was great because it looks well with the scratched paint, again, like it had taken on quite a few enemies.

Today, I think that I had learnt a lot, like how to use Xnormal and make a realistic looking model. If I can create something like this by myself within the next few months, then I would be very happy.

If I were to do this again, I would add my own tallies, instead of repeating the same one and changing it up in scale and leaving it. I would go onto Photoshop and do several hundreds lines to make it look that much more realistic.

The Apple Tree on Photoshop

Our next session was Steve was all to do with Speed drawing. This is a process on Photoshop, where you have very little time to create a concept and show it to a team. As I'm quite new to digital drawing, i'd thought that I would have a time with this lesson. Below will be a step by step guide on how I done the drawing in different stages. The image is a copy of an image all ready digitally drawn.

The background.

I thought that I should start this off with just the background. This was simple and easy enough as in the picture we are copying, its a clear blue sky, all I had to do was simply select the paint bucket tool and fill the page on a separate layer. I also wanted the moon back light, so I selected a gradient of just white, turned the opacity down and put that in the corner that I wanted.

The mountains were next.

I decided that I would start from the back and would work my way through. The next part was the mountains. They were pretty simple to do as there were only two colors in there but it gave the illusion as if there was more.

I used the lasso tool to put out the sharp edges of the mountain. Then using the paint brush, I colored in the out line a brighter blue, this makes the image look further away. The next thing that I had to do was to put on the extremely bright blue. This makes it seems as if there is cuts in the mountain and gives off a brilliant effect. This was also done with the lasso tool. 

At this stage I was happy to stop because of how much I liked those mountains, but decided to continue on to the next stage of the painting.

The trees were next.

The next thing to do was to add in the trees. I thought that this was actually quite difficult as the trees had so many different shades of them and the shape that they had was really difficult to replicate.

I first started off with a light green for the tops of the trees. With this color I choose to do the silhouette  and over the top I would paint the different colors. I then proceeded to to paint the brown and dark brown. On the trees at the back I would use a dark blue, so that they looked way more off in the distance. To finish it off, I topped the leaves at the highest point in the trees with a white. This was to show the moons beams shining onto the trees.

The next stage.

There were several bits that I proceeded with next. Firstly I started off with the tree in front. I liked this as it put more emphasis on perspective as if the trees in the background were far away. As the drawing of the tree was drawn in such simple colors, it gave it a very simplistic but graphical effect. My favorite part of this was the creation of the apples. They weren't hard to make but look of such high quality that I even surprised myself.

The other things that I ended up doing to the picture was creating smalls bumps to show the raising of hills in the left corner. I also put in the silhouette for the fence. This was a bit tricky in trying to get the shape right, in this area, I really had to improvise a lot as my fence came out slightly different to the originals.

Addition of the moon.

The next change was small, in this section, I added in the bright reflection of the moon. I did this in a pure white, changing the opacity up and down depending on how far away it was from the original circle. I also ended up covering it with a half circle similar to that of the sky.

In the background I set the opacity down and painted over so it looks as if fog has consumed parts of the landscape.

Adding the two girls.

There were several things that were down here. In this part I added the two girls, some stars and shading on the lamp posts. 

I first started off by doing the stars. These were easy enough to create. All I had to do was get a white color on the paint brush, turn the opacity down to 10% and dot the brush in various places in the sky, some more than others. 

The next part was the lamp posts. again all I did was simply paint pure white into lamp posts to simply capture the moons gaze. It gives it an interesting effect.

Lastly we come to the girls. I had a lot of trouble getting the shape right with theses two. I started off with the one at the back. I used the posts to measure her body correctly and then proceeded to create a silhouette of her. Over this, I shaded in her core colors and over the top, also added in the moons glare.Once this had been done, the rest was pretty simple, adding in her skin tone and such. Now using the completed girls body as a way of measuring, I went through the same progress with the girl in front, except instead of white for the moon beams, I added a little bit of blue into the mixture, to show her T-shirt.

Darkness helping set the mood.

To finish the piece off, I decided to combine all the layers together and set the brightness down, as I mention above, it helps set the mood of a misty dark night.

Overall, I'm pretty impressed with myself. I can already tell, after being on this course for only a couple of weeks that my drawing is improving dramatically and as long as I keep going, I should be at a decent level eventually. I'm also starting to really enjoy digital painting now and would love to generate a decent piece of work.

Chair on Maya

We were set a homework task to complete a Lynda tutorial on how to create a chair. At the moment, I am really liking the tutorials, as I feel that they slowly take you through each step, while learning a great deal myself. In this tutorial I had to create a two chairs and a table.

Although this task sounds really difficult, I really am looking forward to getting started and posting my result.

The bend tool in Maya.

The guy that was teaching us was mentioning a lot about the bend tool. At first I had a bit of struggle trying to find and use this tool. It wasn't until the help of Google and a classmate that I fully understood it.

Once I knew how to use it, it became second nature. Simply all you have to do is select the deformation tab at the top and click on the bent stick.

This is what it looks like.

I had to create two long sticks and use the bend tool, only slightly as the two back chair legs had a slight curve in them. Once I had done this, I could then proceed onto the other two legs and the seat. 

The other two legs were really simple, all I had to do was create another two sticks, this time they would be half the size of the other legs. Using the interactive split tool, I could cut into the chair legs and create a slight edge to my chair. I would then go on to delete where I cut and then fill the gap as it then leaves a flat surface.

The seat was even easier, all I had to do was to create a cube in polygons and make sure that its a perfect square and only a couple of centimeters high. This needs to be matching the other legs so we then have the basis of what the chair will look like.

The outline for the chair.

Next we will add a significant amount of detail to the chair such as the back support, the linking of the chair legs at the back and the seat support.

First I went on to do the back support, This was a little tricky and required a fair bit of time to get used to it. I had to put the bend tool back to use again as the back legs had already been bent. I created a a rectangle that would be the right size for the back of the chair and used the bend tool. Once I had got it to the right shape, I had slotted it back into chair, Then by simply pressing ctrl + D, I had copied it, placed it above the previous, then repeated this process once more.

The next thing that I had to do was add the top of the chair to the back, This was a much easier process. I had created a rectangle which would slot in nicely at the top of the chair and was able to rotate it so it fit in place. Then by using the insert edge loop tool, I created several subdivisions, meaning that I could move and adjust the object to my liking. The subdivisions that I add, the more detail I could put in. By selecting the vertex, I dragged them up and put them in the right place.

Moving the vertex to my liking.

The next thing that I had decided to do was do the seat support. This was extremely easy to get past. All I did was create a rectangle that would suit my chair. I lined it up making sure it was the right size and pushed it in a bit to give it depth. Then I duplicated this 3 times, rotating two so that they fit the sides.

A finished chair.

The only thing that I had left to do was to make it seem as if the chair seat had been molded to sit a person. Again, I already knew what I was doing, all I had to do was use the insert edge loop tool and select the pieces that I wanted to lower, clicking on the vertex. using the move tool, all i did was drag them down to get this effect.

I can honestly say that I am really happy with the results that I got with this chair and this is by far, the best thing that I have created on Maya so far. I can only hope that I can carry this onto my next chair and table. Its also been a lot of fun, I really am enjoying it so far.

The round chair.

 The next thing that I had to do was to create another chair, only this time, I will be giving it a different structure compared to the last one. 

I started off with a cylinder, this was the sit available for a character to sit on. Doing that was simple enough, the next thing that I had to do was create a torus. I had to make sure that this was not too thick otherwise it would ruin the plans for the legs and support.

I had cut the torus in half, selecting the faces and deleting them. I then had selected the end edge and had extruded it on both sides. The image that you see above is evidence of where I got to.

A completed round chair.

From this point on it was much easier to proceed. I had to use the bend tool that I had used in the beginning of the wooden chair. This was because I wanted to get a round frame to support the back of whoever would be sitting on the chair. On each of the different sides, I selected the straight part of the rounded pole and used the bend tool. From here, I went on to add curvature. This made the legs bend but in the wrong direction. From here I used to rotate tool to line the legs up properly and ended up with perfect chair legs.

The man who was taking the tutorial then proceeded to skip the whole section on how he made the rest of the chair, so it was up to me to do it myself. The way that I did it was I took the last rounded bit of the legs and deleted the rest. I then separated the two legs so they were each one leg. I then rotated them into the right position, all the while scaling them down in width, while looking at my references.

The only bit that was left of the chair for me to build was the bar holding the legs together. This again was simple as all I had to do was create a torus and line it up into the right position. I had to still make sure that it was all in proportion. 

Now that the whole of the chair had been built, I had a little bit of tweaking to do. This only took me a couple of minutes. I started off by selecting the circle that we called the seat. Once all of the faces of it had been selected I simply extruded them and scaled them again. Then by pressing "G" I repeated the extrusion and pulled the seat out ever so slightly. This gave it the realism that I was looking for. The last bit to do was to select all the legs and the round bar and smoothing the edges. This actually made the bars seem like metal and again added realism.

Starting on the table.

The next thing that I was tasked with was to create a wooden table to complete the set with the wooden chair. I started this off by creating a long plank, this is then duplicated 6 more times with the last one being rotated and sitting under the block. I made sure that the planks of the table were visible by separating them by half a centimeter. The next thing that I had to do was get the plank that was sitting under the table and rotate it 90 degrees. The thing I had to do was add an extra 2 edge loops into the new plank, then, by selecting the edge loop and moving it around I managed to get this effect to make it look like half the planks side was looping in.

Adding the legs and the support.

This next bit was quite easy as all I had to do was create a long rectangle coming out of the blank below the table. I then selected the vertex's at the bottom and and moved it in line. This stage was then repeated for the other side, the only difference being that I had rotated it, so it looked the same on the other side. After this I had to create a a bridge in the middle to hold the legs together. Again all I did here was create a long block and stuck it directly in the middle of the two legs. The last thing that I had to do here was place the legs in the right place and duplicate them and do the same on the opposite side.

The finished product.

The one thing that I had left to do was to put the last block to hold the table together, again this was just using an extended cube. The table was all finished but to complete it, I had to add a circle table for the circle chair. Now this was actually easier than it sounds. I first started off with a cylinder and selected the top and bottom faces. I was then left with a circle of faces. The next thing that I did was match each edge to its opposite by using the bridge tool. Then I separated them and made them look like planks, just like the other table. The last bit to do was to add the legs. All I did here was copy the planks and legs off the previous table, but bought the legs in even more so that they didn't go over the edge.

The finished tables.

I was then tasked with trying to texture the chair and tables, this was extremely hard. I copied what the guy was doing on the tutorial but it would let me place a blinn on anything, so I could not set it up suing the checkered boxes. The next thing I tried was to place the wood material onto the chair. Again, this didn't work and I ended up with just a plain looking table and chair, which infuriated me. I tried looking up people who had the same problem on the internet, yet nothing came up, so this is what I ended up with.

I did enjoy this task, well, until I got to the texturing section. My aim to set myself is to learn how to overcome this problem, whether it be by asking a teacher or by working it out myself. Its a key skill that I need to use.

Monsters Concept

This weeks assignment was to create a monster in any fashion that we wanted. This was due to this week being Halloween. I was really looking forward to this task, another way for me to get my drawing skills up, even further.

I really liked the idea of a scary, dark, monster, something that used to freak me out when I was a kid was the the humanoid monster. Ones that had the body and average features of a human, but the face and/or voice of them would horrify me. One that particularly stood out was the female lead from the movie "The Exorcist".

"The Exorcist"

In the movie, this little girl gets possessed by a other worldly figure and starts to act strange. Next thing you know, she is climbing all over the walls and is cursing like a mad man. The mother of this child calls two priests who work their way through to the thing that has possessed her in an attempt to free her from within.

Just the picture above alone scares the hell out of me. Its like what I was explaining at the top, something so natural, yet defies the laws of physics is something that is terrifying. I think we, as a people, find this scary because, in our minds, we think that it actually could happen.

My monster mood board.

I started off the whole project by creating a mood board, This gave me helpful influence that I needed in creating my own nasty creature. Here I gathered many dark, twisted creatures that used to haunt my dreams as a child and stuck them onto a page to create a collage of nightmares.

The features of a monster.

I then decided to do a little bit of research, deciding what makes a scary monster. What I ended up doing was creating a mind map of features of a monster. This includes the height of a monster, the eyes, the environment and the normality (stuff that makes the creatures look like one of us.

Different types of monsters.

After this mind map, I wanted to create another mind map. Here I would look at the most famous monsters of all time. By looking at this I have found out what are the main features of a monster which makes them so recognizable. Also gives me inspiration to draw off of when I create my own monsters.

My favorite monsters part 1.

My favorite monsters part 2. 

The last piece of research that I decided to do was choose my favorite monsters in films and games. Though there were many classics to choose from I decided to go for the ones that truly scared me as a child. They are not ones that are well known, but ones that at the time, I truly felt fear.

I then went on to draw my rough ideas. These were quite interesting, as from a young age, had always had a fascination with the supernatural, I used to spend a lot of spare time drawing ghoals and such, so this was a way for me to relive that time.

Two  quick sketches of monsters.

If you select the picture, you can see the back story that I have created for all the monsters that I had created.

The other two sketches.

I then proceeded to create a final design based on my roughs. The way that I came up with this idea was actually quite different to what I'm used to. In the life drawing class that we had, we had the model pose in several different monster positions. One of these positions, he was sluggish, like he had given up, I'd really liked that pose. As soon as I got home, I scanned that picture in and opened it up on Photoshop.

By using a combination of several tones, I managed to achieve the ghostly colors that you see below. One thing that I wanted to do was make it seem as if you the viewer are  a character itself, that's why I made the sketch first person. I used the circle tool on Photoshop to create this flashlight effect, which adds realism to the piece.

My ghostly creature.

I was quite happy with what I had ended up with. In my opinion, if you were to see this creature running at you, you would not think twice about turning the other way round. I was proud of the life drawing that I had of him and incorporated into my piece. It just goes to show that my drawing skills are getting better doing life drawing and hopefully, that will continue.

The "Make Live" button on Maya

Today Robin gave us a tool in Maya that he said will greatly help us. This was called the "Make Live" button. What this does is that it creates objects on other objects faces. This saves a lot of hassle because we don't have to move  the objects into the right position as they are already there.

The brilliant thing about this tool, is that in my level that I am designing, I require a lot of time placing things on top of each other and so forth, so just by simply clicking on two buttons, the item can appear on the wall, almost instantly.

How to select the "Make Live" button.

On the picture above, I have selected the "Make Live" button by clicking on the modify bar at the top of the screen and choosing "Make Live". Its really as simple as that. The only thing about it is that you have to make sure that you have selected an object to put stuff on top of, otherwise, it will be ineffective.

The object appears on top of the shape.

Once the button has been clicked, you are now able to put objects on top of others. This is very useful, saving a lot of time when it comes to Maya. The other thing to remember is that to move the original object around you have to make it "Not Live" by doing the same process.

I took this process into my Star Wars Death Star Turret that I had made earlier and this is what I got.

2 out of 4 sides.

This was an extremely easy process to go through in Maya, it only took me several seconds to learn, and in my opinion, its one of the most important things that I have learnt so far on this course. The pictures above and below just go to show how easy it is to use it.

To cover the turret it took me a maximum of ten minutes, I can safely say that it is fairly detailed. If I were to really go for it and spend a fair amount of time doing this, I can honestly believe that I could create some wonderful things in Maya. 

Another 2 out of 4 sides.

My Maya skills are really coming along for only being in the course for a couple of weeks. I'm actually having a lot of fun with it and see it more as world building game like Minecraft, than an actual program set for designing game details. I think by playing Video Games, its given me a creative mind and I have a basic concept from this as to what a game world should look and feel like.

Texturing a Zombie

Today we had a rather fun activity (not that they all aren't fun) and create a walking zombie in Unity, designed by ourselves, just to get us into the Halloween spirit for this week.

We first started off with a texture map of this woman. Its like she had been folded out of her skin and clothes, they were just lying there, on a square, colored in and ready to use for on a model.

The skin and clothes being pulled apart.

The original woman walking about on Maya.

As you can see, this freaky piece is what we were given. We were then told that using a variety of different methods, we can change her clothes and the colors of them. So that's what we did. Using my fairly wide knowledge of Photoshop, I set about changing the color of her jumper.

We were then instructed to go onto the internet and find a well lit face. We would use what we had learnt to place an image straight over the one that we already had.

Not finished here, we had to then make this woman seem like a zombie. Using different skills that we had learnt the past couple of weeks, I had decided to make her skin grey, like the blood had been sucked out, I also gave her grey eyes, with no color and blood splatters all over here jacket. Another feature that I had created was the blood on the face, such as scratches and nose bleeds.

"Zombie girl"

The zombie girl walking around on Maya.

I really did enjoy this project and had a lot of fun. It was good to see that the skills that I had learnt in the course are starting to settle in. If I had a lot more time in the lesson, I would go about, using the same technique that I had used for the face and create cracked skin and more blood gushing out. I will say though that I am most proud of the way that the face has turned out and how it has merged with its new body almost perfectly. It feels like I am advancing more and I have to keep this up.

Life Drawing - Lesson 4

For this drawing, we had to use the side of the charcoal to draw the body, this was difficult.

Again using the side of a charcoal, we drew at the moment.

(Apologizes if the picture is upside down) here we had to complete color the page with charcoal, the using a rubber, had to rub out what we had saw.