conclusion

so here is the final thing, like i mentioned before unfortunately i have had to tak screen shots of my render in the render view window because of technical difficulties.
here are some images of the final textured model.



















i am pretty happy with how it came out but there is obviously room for improvement. the main areas being, making my own shaders for the paint on the van, i can do this by researching and practicing. another way i could improve on this is to model the full interior of the van, for this project all i modelled is what was going to be on show in the shot i was working from, but i would like to develop this further and attempt to model the full inside of the vehicle, i think this would be useful as well as quite fun and interesting. next up is to try and find out why it didnt render properlly, im not quite sure how i'd do this but i suppose i could ask on some forum goers, or what i was thinking of was sending it to my friends dad who's a bit of a whizz on Maya to take a look, but he's in canada so it's a bit hard to get hold of him at the moment.

but on the plus side i think i've done alright. for hand in i have two main pieces of work. the original team orientated animatic that i created at MGV productions in Soho, and then my 3D modelled camper van referenced from the animatic artwork included textures etc needed for the shot in question. These two pieces of work i hope show that i can do more than just one thing, but i mainly enjoy the modeling side of animation. I found this project interesting and useful, whether it was working in London within a creative team to create something for a client or trying to model something i'd never tried before and apply realistic quite complicated textures to it.

i think if i had more time i'd like to model the whole thing again. i know what i did right and wrong and i think the 2nd time round would be a lot smoother process and ultimately let me create something that i am even more proud of.

camera, lighting and rendering

yeah ran into some problems with this
set up the camera in the right place fine, simple lighting to show off the van nicely, and to show of the two main textures (the paint and the chrome wheels. this was all fine.

but when i came to rendering this happened



its bloody see through. i looked through all my settings and they were all fine, i even got some other people to look at for me, there was no explaination! so frustrating.
the most confusing thing is that when i opened render window it looked fine, it looked the way i wanted it to, no see through-ness. so unfortunately instead of handing in nice well rendered images i have had to take screen shots of the render view which is so disappointing.
i think this is really the only real problem ive had on the second half of my project.

interior and texture

so this was the last session i spent on this model. it was a fairly long day trying to figure out how to do the textures etc. lots of forum etc.

also i haven't posted here for a while just because ive been collecting the footage i want to use on my show reel and been doing contextual studies and E&E.

anyway, i feel like ive completed this model, for now. I may bring it up when i have more time to devote to it and complete the whole model including a full interior.
the interior wasnt too hard to create, the angle i'm using shows the back of the interior, which is a bed with a cover on it, the steering wheel and top of the seats.

to create the bed, all i did was create a cube, match the vertexes with the vans using vertex snapping, beveled the edges, this gave me the simple base for the bed.
the douvet is just a plane and i curved the edges off to make it look solid by using soft select tool i plumped up the plane to make it look fluffy and plumped up.
the steering wheel was the most simple thing i think ive ever made in Maya, its just a doughnut thinned out. the seats are beveled then smoothed shaped cubes.

heres the low res douvet



this image applies more to the last post i made but i thought id include it in here.



now that i have made everything i need to mirror and connect the geometry to make the complete model.




Texturing!

when it came to texturing i wanted to try something i'd never done. I wanted to create metalic car paint with what are known as candy flakes (small reflective pieces that make the car sparkle. i stuck to the original red colour but then i expected the colour to slightly change due to the texture.
to create this i went on a few forums trying to find advice or instructions, unfortunately some were quite hard and certain parts weren't working the way i wanted them to so i had to download a shader to sort top off what i had already created. I know this is slightly cheating and i do plan on creating my own shader for this paint effect. I think it came out quite nicely.

i UV mapped the douvet i used a stock image of a checked pattern and i think i came out quite well, and thought it was a nice touch though not a big part of the shot it just helped it seem a bit more believable. the rest of the interior was pretty simple, mainly just straight materials from Maya just tweaked to give the effect and look i wanted.

Next was to do the badge of the car and the wheels. I UV mapped the tyres and added a rough texture to the tyres to make them look a bit used and not so clean cut. The badge and the rims on the van, i wanted to create the look of chrome, for this i searched forums on how i would go about doing it. Turns out its pretty simple. i followed a tutorial, and within about 10-15 minutes i had chrome!

http://www.swinburne.edu.au/design/tutorials/maya/texturing-building-a-chrome-shader-maya-tutorial/42_Chrome_Shader.html

now all i have to do was place everything correctly, set up lighting and render out the images.

modeling part 3

the next step in my model was to create the grill, lights (front and back) and the rear of the van.

to create the lights i went about it a bit like the windows but only moved it in slightly, just to give the van a bit of diversity when it came to shape.
so once i had done that i selected the faces that i would need to use as the lights, added an anisotropic material, changed the colour and changed the opacity. i then placed a plane behind so you cant see inside the van.

to create the grill i used the split polygon tool to divide the grill area leaving a circular space for the badge. i selected the right faces and moved them inwards to create the grill on the front of the van.

though the rear isnt shown i really fancied creating some details just to keep myself happy.
so i made some back lights for the van. made from cylinders, a lot like the wheels, i used the soft select tool to make protruding rear glass then using the extrude tool on the outer faces to create the metal housing for them.
i then created a boot for the van, using the split polygon i created the shape of the boot door, then manipulated it so there is a dip in the bodywork along where the boot would seal. Then added a two hinges where the boot would open.




unfortunately the only screen shot i took for this was the one above.

next step is to do the visible interior and start the texturing.

modelling continued...

...next step on my model is to make the wheel arches.
not too sure how i was going to do this so i just tried something out, sometimes trial and error is the best way.
i started by deleting some of the faces in the area where i am going to be putting the wheels. then using the split polygon tool i added more vetexes and went about moving them and creating a round wheel arch. then by selecting the vetexes on the edge of the arch i pulled them out beacuse the arches on cars usual come out further than the rest of the body to hide the majority of the top of the tyres.
i have also started the windows in this picture. I selcted the faces where the windows would sit then moved them inwards just to set them in a bit, then lowered the opacity not so much they are totally see through but enough to still give a glare from lights.



luckily this worked, next step was the wheels. I started by creating a cylinder selecting the faces round the edge of the cylinder and extruded them to act as the tyres on the wheels.




then selected the middle vertex and using soft select pulled it out. Soft select allows you to select a vertex then it has a drop off level which means it will not full effect the area around the vertex but will still move them slightly. this means i can get a nice rounded bulge on my hub caps of my van.
i want them to resemble the wheels that are usually on a Nissan Figaro

similar to these ones



so after i had made the arches for the wheels i then duplicated the wheel and put them in place.

next up is the grill and the lights.

modelling

first day of modelling my camper van
so far so good, but i think its going to get harder.

I started up with a cuboid added subdivions, set up an image plane and started work.
firstly i did the side angle of the van following the image plane. After this i obviously switched to front view and started to model that angle.
This never really is enough, so i went in closer and started fiddling with vertex to create a slightly more round edge to it. But not too smoooth because on some of the slightly older cars i've seen the angles were nowhere near as smooth as they are today.

a handy tool for this is the Bevel tool which allows you to select an edge then it will split into two along the edge creating a face in between which acts a type of smoothing effect. This can be manipulated to however many divisions and faces you want depending on how smooth your object to be. I'm probably only going to use one or two on this model just because i don't want it to be too smooth it looks like an egg with doors.








to make the mirror i extruded the face that's in the right place then used split polygon tool to create more divisions so i can model it to the right shape.

next will be the wheel arches and the wheels

development

after speak ing to one of my tutors, we discussed the idea of carrying on with project and developing it further.
The options i have thought about are animating a scene from the animatic or modelling something that is in the scenes.

I think i want to do the modelling, i dont mind animating but i know its not one of my strongest points especially seeing as ive been focusing on more cinematography, modelling and texturing this year.
So i have decided that i am going to attempt to model the camper van in the advert. I aim to have the outside and the inside parts that are visible in the shot its used in modelled by the end of term for submission.
The reason why i will not be modeling the inside is because im modelling for a certain shot. the shot being this one



It's not a terrible amount of work but along with my animatic i think it would be quite a good diverse submission, proving that i can do some of everything.

this is the only image of the van so might be quite hard so i'm going to do my best and use other images a loose reference material.







this should be quite challenging but quite fun at the same time