BrynWilliams UCA.CAA

  Rigging Situation Changed Originally, at the start of my rigging journey with Lobe`ous, I wanted to create my own rig. But after running into many small issues even at the start of creating the rig, I simply wanted to get on with the project and not be slowed down by the frustrating small problems I was having. The blend shapes and skinning was done almost perfectly for the character and I was happy to continue but it was the controls and IKs that were the issue. Therefore, I put on an auto rig which works great moving the character. But the issue was, it is very hard and awkward to animate using the auto rig feature almost as if it was just made for posing the character. I tried to convert the rig back to a manual one and tried adding my own controls but I was struggling as they seemed to blend together and break. I needed help from a tutor which helped a lot and brought me back on track, meaning I could re-do manual controls from scratch. The issue with this is that the blend s...

  New Lighting Approach 3 This has been quickfire blogging, but again, I have played around with the lighting situation. I tried out with a cylindrical area light in place of a point light, and it works great. It doesn't over expose close points and gives a really good fall off. Paired with the dimmed background lights it works really well, then when I added a light blocker, paired to the area light, with full density and a ramp fall off, the desired effect was achieved.

  New Lighting Approach 2 I have played around a bit with trying to implement the two lighting approaches. I have turned on all the original lights and turned the intensity to .1 each so they appear, but only very dimly. Then I turned back on the point light on the character and saw the result looked pretty good and close to what I wanted. I think when I play around with the camera settings working with the lights, i will be getting the result i want.

  New Lighting Approach After speaking to a tutor, I wanted to try a different approach to the lighting. This way gives me the perfect effect I wanted, however, it does mean the lighting I already have spent time completing, can only be used sparely... I have attached a point light to the same point I added the rivet constraint. I played with the exposure and had to turn the intensity to around .2 due to the floor where the character stands, being majorly overexposed.  I want to figure out the best way to implement the good lighting that I have already done, so I can create a really cool effect. 

  Lighting for House Environment I am pretty happy about the outcome of the lighting for the house environment at the moment. I have added the skydome, area and directional lights to create the effect.  With altered exposure

  Lighting For Lobby First Pass I have been working on the lighting for the Lobby and I am finding it harder then the cryo room. It has a much larger space to fill however I think I have effectively done so, so far. SkyDome Door Lighting Outer Area Lights Inner Area Lights All together

  Polished Lighting for Cryo Room After getting to the point that I did in the last post I revisited the lighting. I saw that the scene was completely the same red so I wanted to break it up. The first thing I did that has made a big change was to dim the over exposed walkway that you saw on the last image. After that, I wanted so add lights that focus a stark white to break up the colour. I did this and altered the settings so they work together. After, I added highlight light, warm and white focusing only on the cryo chambers using the relationship editor. Walkway DeIntesified White light White and Warm Cryo Highlight Half and Half End result so far...

  First Lighting Tests I have spent the night playing around with lighting and testing renders to see what results will be best for my scene. After doing research by watching a gnomon tutorial, watching a professional explain there work was very helpful. I have started with the cryo room in the space station adding lights layer by layer taking into consideration all the research that I did.  Here are some results... The final image is a high quality render of all the lights together.

  Lighting Research I will be updating this blog post if more research is done... The first steps include finding an image HDR of something close to what you want the scene to be lit like. Look at the tone difference and shadow values to see if it is similar. Play with the exposure of that image to get the desired result.  Start with an ai skydome and plug the image in and be sure to set it to the same desired exposure.  use a chrome ball - standard surface shader with IOS set to 2.5 and a small amount of roughness. This shows a good representation of how the scene will be lit including where the main light source will come from.  The next steps include setting up a localized light source. E.G. Area light - Set to disk as it gives a more natural fall-off compared to the default rectangle. Spread is the softness of the light Using light blockers in the attributes of the light means you can add more of a focused light. Set the density to under the value of 1 otherwise ...

  Lobe'ous Textures Render Test I have imported the textures created in substance into maya and have tested the texture using a simple directional light and the render view.

  New Character Rig After finding more and more problems with the rig I was creating and getting more and more frustrated, I have chosen to go down another route for rigging Lobe'ous. There were too many little issues I was having, and with more time to play around, I would definitely be more then happy to iron out the kinks, however, due to the fact I just want to get on with and start the next stages of the animations, I have opted for an autorig. This is a feature in maya that I did not understand before properly sitting down and trying it out. I first created my skeleton that was from my other failed rig, and then plugged in all the bones to the controls in autorig so it recognises the positions. Then I created the control rig using the same feature and then played around with the skinning so when the character is moved, it looks natural and smooth. I managed to save the skinning and blendshapes from before which is a bonus as they took a long time. 

  Lobe'ous Textures Done for First Pass I have done a first pass of the texture for my character. I am happy with the result however I want to go back over it in the future to add more detail.  I used 2 shades of the same material and added masks to make the difference, then added my custom-made material and only used the normal of it to create the bubble texture. I started with the bigger bubbles but after playing around I opted for the smaller ones.

  Textures imported to the Space Station Environment Finally, all of the textures have been imported, and all objects MASH'd correctly and I am very happy with the look so far.