Its been a hectic couple of days. My task for this week was to complete my modeling section for Friday 21st Nov so it could be added to the final street layout and passed on to Dan who could use the weekend to begin texturing.
My buildings are quite detailed and I have always wanted to achieve a variety of architectural looks in each to keep it looking interesting for the audience and also to challenge my up until now limited modeling skills. This has meant my modeling has taken more time than I initially planned to spend on it, but I was determined to complete my section and to a standard I was happy with. I have been offered help from Dan and Yaniv in terms of completing and destroying the buildings and whilst Im very grateful for this, Im very aware of how much the others in the group have to do themselves and am in the mind frame if everyone else can complete their section I can therefore complete mine on time. In any case I've been pretty confident I'll do it and I new the exact look I wanted to achieve (lot of I's there!)
*ahem* Anyway, I worked on my file solidly and up Friday at 5:00am to resume work I was determined to have it complete so I could meet the group in the afternoon to hand in and discuss the next step of the project. It had got to about 12:30 and I was doing quite well (apart from Maya crashing no less than 10 times PAIN) with the modeling when GRAVE (i.e big pain) my booleans tool stopped working which meant I couldn't continue destroying the buildings as I had been doing by differencing shapes into the geometry. Pulling vertices and sculpt geometry tool will only get you so far and the buildings so I decided to complete the buildings as much as I could at home then booleans what needed to be done at college (I have had continual problems with Maya on my mac laptop and believe something to be wrong with the err.....not entirely legal copy I have *ahem*)
As if by magic...the shop keeper appeared, eeeer I mean my producers rang me. Firstly I spoke to Producer Dan who asked how the work was going. I told him the issues i was having and (perhaps a little to kindly) he said I could hand him my file Monday. I knew straight off this wasn't on as A. my deadline was Friday...this Friday, today in fact B. I'd taken long enough as it is and any longer would be taking the mick (to put it in polite terms) C. I really wanted to complete this and move onto the next section (not that I'd stopped caring but I want to animate damn it! I said "Dan, now I know thats not good enough and neither do you...I WILL have this file to you today, latest Saturday morning" Straight after talking to Dan, I spoke to producer Matt and reiterated what was said to Dan and that I would arrive at college 3:15 (bearing in mind its an hours drive for me).
GRAVE! As I was leaving (literally just got up the road) my tyre goes BANG and it appears I have a puncture *thumbs up* NOT and I manage to drive my car up a hill with very limited control. After throwing myself to the road screaming WHY?! for a couple of minutes I ring the AA who GRAVE tell me they'll be with me in about 1hr 15mins. I ring the producers to give them the low down and tell them I'll get there as soon as I can. Dan had to go to work, but Matt was going to stay on and meet me. After a nice man appeared and fixed my tyre adding "you've done a good job on this one" meaning "love you fudged it up good and proper" I was on my way once more after GRAVE needing petrol then GRAVE being at a stand still whilst some idiots had decided to crash into one another on the A249. I had been in continual conference with Matt over each of these graves and told him he could go home and I would drop off the file to his house when it was ready.
I arrived at college just gone 5pm (just about when everyone else was leaving) and worked on the file until I was kicked out of college at 7pm. I'd literally kicked matt out of college about 6 and told him to go home. Apologies for this but I was A. conscious of how long he'd waited for me and B. able to work better knowing Matt wasn't there, therefore feeling less pressure (no offense Matt)
Kicked out and work continued on the file when GRAVE struck once more as I discovered parts of the building had gone missing even though Im now a paranoid saver. I then had to remake parts and booleans difference as importing old versions of the geometry didn't allow booleans to work.
9pm: I rang Matt to tell him I was on my way and once round his house we composed the final street layout...you guessed it....GRAVE one of my building structures wouldn't import in to the scene. We tried saving it as different file types, saving just the structure on its own and reimporting but it still wouldn't work. Then a further GRAVE Maya now crashed every time we tried to open this now HUGE file (check out the lunchbox main blog to see how the bear now made the file smaller and more manageable) kept crashing. Matts laptop out of the picture, the file was composed on my Mac and we called it a day at 11pm. What still needed to be done? Weeeeeell, I'd noted from Matts occlusion render tests the scaling of the car was not right compared to the buildings, so this needed to be sorted. Also, more rubble needed to be added to the scene now that all the buildings were in. Matt would complete this over the weekend and give the final updated elements to Dan on monday.
Now it was my job to hand over the final file which was being held catpive on my mac over to Master Grigsby. I was unfortunately unable to get hold of him via the phone and by the time I had returned back to home, Dan had rung and we agreed Saturday to ewxhange the file.
Saturday 12:30: after battling with the christmas shopper traffic I arrived at the bears resisdent to give him the final street layout. The file size worreid him as its massive without texturing, lighting or even animation information. This needed and since then has been sorted (thank you Dan) by deleting history and a general file clean up. I updated Dan on Matts decision and then helped Dan to list what he needed to do this weekend and left him to continue with the work without me yapping on in his ear (I....talk....loads? pffft surely not)
SO....wasn't this an interesting tale? Possibly not, its full of plot holes and Im not sure it'll get published. BUT, it does show that there are elements in life AND with software that will go wrong and delay you no matter how much you plan your time out. Its annoying...a total GRAVE but these matters test you and I've certainly learnt a lot of perseverance lately and Im glad I kept on going as I was able to fulfill my deadline and keep the project rolling. I was only to happy to chauffeur the file back and forth because I knew it was my fault these matters had gone wrong (even if some were beyond my control) I just wanted things sorted so everyone could move on. Thankfully I can say...this has happened and Im looking forward to the next stage...and any challenges it decides to throw in our faces
WE ARE TEAM LUNCHBOX, DONT YOU DARE TAKE US ON!
Enough talk...let's look at some lovely pictures to sooth that sore brain of yours. Heres some screen prints of my modeling section:
The full monty...er...section. 7 lovely houses, which will you live in? I've tried to include a mixture of houses as well as shops/pubs to give some variety to the environment and give the sense that it was used/live in. Im pleased I've managed to achieve a number of different looks as well as widths and heights to the buildings. One of my feedback notes from producer Dan was to break up the linear quality of the buildings to give the sense of destruction which I think I've been able to achieve here.
Damage to the buildings has been created by a mixture of pulling vertices, sculpt geometry tool, booleans difference using a variety of shapes from soccer balls to ones I have made in polys as well as the CV curve tool. 
The shattered glass is made from simple poly planes. I have about 5-10 different varieties that are rescaled, rotated and duplicated to create numerous looks and the effect of damage throughout my section of the scene. The only curves left are the balcony ones, everything else has been converted to polys to help Dan in terms of applying textures.
Environment animation: I have left the street sign intact (apart from dents and cracks) as the group decided they would like have it swinging in one of the shots.
Overall, Im very pleased with the final outcome of my modeled section. Im proud I was able to complete it on time and get artistic with the details and damage. I enjoyed creating new ways to damage my buildings and feel this shows in the modeling. I feel my piece will contribute to the group environment and convey the feeling of a post apocalyptic street.
No comments:
Post a Comment