Primary Research

I conducted some primary research on my chosen research topic. I used 10 students around the campus as I wanted it to be a small scale experiment.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1fbWmA-ZOjN3ZgXmO2pD9Ti-domRdr5VYSv7PcmepRj4/viewform

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1fbWmA-ZOjN3ZgXmO2pD9Ti-domRdr5VYSv7PcmepRj4/viewform

these are the results and the questionnaire that I conducted around the university. this was an interesting experience as I have never gone around asking people to fill out a questionnaire its always been through the internet. I learnt that face-to-face communication is much better rather than talking to someone over the internet. face-to-face communication tends to build more trust with the person you're interacting with.

more environment props.

I decided that I didn't want to just create a scene catering to the trailer, but also creating a full environment, which is why I created a toilet and a sink as part of the isolation cell.

I felt this was a necessary component for the environment as it was a cell and it should have basic necessities. as I was building these models I learned that I was slowly getting a lot better a modeling, my polygons were more refined and organized from what I had modeled before. The pipe under the sink was modeled by using Nurbs that is the part I found the most difficult, as I don't have a lot of experience using Nurbs geometry. I do like the outcome, I used a basic anisotropic shader to give it that metal shine. I think it could have been much better If I had more time to spend on it.

skin trial

this is the the normal map for the skin I tried to apply however it didn't blend well with the actual model, I felt it was too small and the normal map seemed more similar too an elephants skin rather than human skin, I did learn to start having references to get a better Idea of what things look like.

Mattress!

I decided to build a mattress as I wanted to pose my main character on there, even though it wasn't going to be in the scene I thought it would still be better to build one as it would give me a bit more practice. 

I built this simple model of a mattress it was a simple cube and i indented the vertices on the geometry to give it that mattress look.

This is the UV map for the mattress I found it slightly complicating as I didn't know how to approach the different segments that were created.

 I wanted the mattress to have that dirty and grimey look as it was going to be placed on the floor, in slimey environment.

This is the normal map that I attached to the texture, I left the texture on as I thought it gave the right amount depth to the image, however when applying to the texture to the the mesh It didn't show any significant changes.

This showed me there is a lot more to UV mapping and texturing that I need to learn. as for the final result of the model, I didn't really complain as I knew it wasn't going to appear in the trailer, but I still wanted to give it a go!

Pipe Texturing

This is another UV map I created, this was specifically for the pipes on the drain, I thought as they are going to be a focal point in one of the scenes it would be a good Idea to make them look as good as they can.

This was another normal map I had created using Ndo2 however after seeing the final results I decided not to use as the detail was to intense.

At this point I was getting more and more use to the process of texturing using UV maps although I was only doing it on simple obejects, I still needed to challenge my self with something a bit more complex, I still need to learn to adjust the intensity in correlation to how it will appear in maya.

modeling wood planks

So I decided I want to include more props into my scene so I decided to add some planks of wood to the scene. the model was just a simple cube that I reshaped to look more like a plank of wood. I decided to start texturing it using regular UV's rather than applying substance textures.

I managed to get a picture of some wood from google images I duplicated the main faces so the would look identical I cut out a portion of the original image and added it to the edges of the plank.

 This is the Normal map of the plank of wood to give the final look a lot more detail. I used Ndo2 to create the normal map as it is a time consuming process to create the normal map from scratch.

I learnt a lot from the process of UV mapping and texturing as I have not had much experience texturing and UV mapping, although it has made me more curious to the practice although the problem with this particular texture/uv map I think the detail was to intense which that wood texture look unrealistic.

Rigging

This was probably the most tedious segment of this project, I attempted to rig my own character. I started from the bottom by adding IK handles to the ankle area. 

 I then started to rig the bottom half of the body adding all the joints (hip,knee, ankle, foot and heel) I then went up to the rest of the body and the head, I did the arms and fingers as well, I only did one side as I was going to use the symmetry tool to mirror it over to the other side.

 After Mirroring all the joints I decided to attach controllers to all the joints to allow me to move the body a lot easier. as you can see from the image below.

I decided to abort the rigging as it started going haywire certain controllers werent operating properly where as others weren't binding to the mesh in the way they were meant. this meant it was a huge problem as I had to look for another solution, although I do not regret going down this as it too me more about rigging as I only had done it once before. (Character Design Module Year 2)