This week I will be refining the environment model including lighting. I will be building upon the environment that I have made for the previsualisation. This will form the base of the environment. I have a very limited amount of time for this, considering how I had intended to start animating by now. According to the timetable I set out at the start. Considering this, during the summer I have prepared a huge collection of models from online, anticipating that I would need externally sourced models to fill my environment. I wish to include many personalised decor, that shows customised character additions. However, I will not have the time to model all of these by hand. Therefore, these online assets will be essential to save time.

See the images below. I have included extra rooms to fill the places where the character will open/ go through doors. This required a simple cube mesh, with reversed faces. I used edge loops to erase a face for the doorways. I also erased faces for the windows, in anticipation for the physical sky light that I will put it, to let in even a small amount of ‘natural’ light that way. Though I also intend to add area lights to these windows, to produce natural lighting.

As you can see, I added boxes around the rooms in some areas. This is because when I rendered, these areas seemed to be light cracks, letting in light in-between the panels of wall. Even though these wall panels do not have any gaps in-between them.

Props or Individual personally made Objects

Apple pie

I used a 3d scan of an apple pie that I found online, used quad draw over the top, and edited the UV to match the scan. The outcome was this:

This is not the best outcome that I had intended, there are visible lines and it looks unrefined. If I have time, I will restart this model.

Vases and Umbrella

Types of vase material options that I experimented with. Including the glass in the background. I initially chose the marble vase material, from a setting within Maya aistandardsurface. However, I noticed that the texture moves as the object is moved, within the play blasts and renders. Therefore, I substituted this for a simple image texture file instead.

Flower Prop

Staircase 3D Model

I used a model of a staircase from online and manipulated it to fit my scene. Taking away unnecessary parts and adding a simple banister.

You can see the changes that I have made to fit the online asset to my scene.

Main Environment

As I have described in previous blog posts, I intended to implement the symbology of the forget-me-not flowers in many places. In accordance with this, at this stage I have begun by adding a flower pattern to the walls. Although, in this version, the wall normal map is too large in relation to the UV maps. There are a few other later alterations I wish to make, such as the door frame or carpet colours. I have found that the line work is not clear enough on the light background. Although, I want this pattern to be subtle, it should still be comprehensible.

Lamps

This lamp lighting is also sourced from online. I learned a new way to make lighting work. To tick the checkbox under geometry called ‘thin walled’ and then increase the subsurface scattering. This would allow light to pass through the lamps. Another option is to add an emission map, just can be seen in the image below in hyper shade. I recently learned how to input this map into the hyper shade, as you can see it is quite simple. The emission map worked perfectly for this purpose, so that I had subtle light emitting from the lamps, without the need for in-scene lights. To give the illusion that the lights were on-to a certain extent.