Using the Trax Editor

To test out using the Trax editor I try it out on the dream catchers that are going to be blowing about in the tree. Its quite simple using the trax's are as you can edit things really easily in a non liner way.

Heres what ive done

Week 8 i think

Well the last couple of weeks have gone soo fast i dont know where the week have gone ! Slightly panicing a tiny bit as every one else is, but am sure we will get there in the end, I hope. Mainly this week and the last ive been texturing and modling afew stuff really, and normal mapping the objects from Zbrush into maya.



Doing the normal mapping was just hard and very frustraing as it can take a while to bake the normal map and with the pc at college they keep crashing all the time which wasnt good at all, as kept losing the work that i had just done. Mayb it was just the computer that I was on, but all so Dan Ryan computer kept doing the same.



Doing the texturing this time round is has not taken as long last time, in the past project, as mainly I know what there is to do and how to go about doing this, but still it take up alot of time, The Results are very good on the objects that I have done and they are fitting in well with the environment.



With the project needing to be compleatd by next week,I think that the next couple of days for all of us are going to be really stressfull and really tiring as there is many things to be done still. Like puttng all the stuff in the environment scene and animation, lighting and other stuff. HELLPP !!

more Z brushing

Here are a couple more screen shots of part of the secene.


Here is the tree which when I tryed to make it all out of polys it was getting too high, so i came up with a good idea. I wanted to make the branches look like branches but from just using planes and not actual models. So I tryed painting the branches in photoshop but they just wasnt loooking as they should. So I took some free models off the internet that had lots of branches that I could use to make a texture out of. To make the texuture I redererd what I wanted to use as a texutre and in the render options changed that to alpha map and saved that image, going back into photoshop changed the colour and made it have a transparent background so you only see the branches. The just moved these all round the tree. With doig this it lowers the poly count and it still has the desired effect.


More of the fence that I shaped in Z bursh.
At last here is the final Teepee that I was happy with, but previously it wasnt looking right, but now its looking as it should.

Rough drawings

Here are some little drawing that I drew and used these for reference to model them in Maya.

wicker basket testing

With the wicker baskets, I made them from polygons and duplicated them up to get the shape of them and the holes inbetween. They looked really good with all the different shapes, but again the problem was the poly count was too high. I didnt know if just using a cube and changing the shape would really work and just using a texture.


Here in the foreground is the textured one and in the background is the ploy version I think it works to some extent but i could have made the texture more transparent inbewteen the wicker which i can change at a later date.

Here are the Uv maps for the baskets and ive also made the texture abit lighter.

Dream catcher test

I wanted to do a little test for the Dream Catcher in the trees, but I knew Anna really wanted to do this, and didnt wanna take over, so after I made it I show her to see what she thought of it, and she really like it, weather she was being kind or not I dont know, (soz) but this was just a test really too see about just using textures instead of modeing it. I took one of the default trees from 3D studio max and imported that into Maya and looked for a texture for the dream catcher edited that in photoshop. From doing the transparence on the buffalo skin I used the same process for the dream catcher and put that in the tree. This is not the treee that we are going to use but as it was a test I wanted to use some quick as easy so show the use of it.

The Camera never comes that close to the tree so they wont be seen in much detail but I think they look really from a distance.

Buffalo Skin

Well this looks really simple to create and it was, but to get the buffalo skin texture transparent around the edges was alot hard then I thought as I forgot the process of how to create part that were transparent. I asked around a few people and they help me out. :) This didnt need to be overly deataild as its in the background.

Watch Towers_rock and fence

With these watch towers I have had to make a few alteration in the design slightly from at first in looking really skinny with the high poly rope which i really liked but this did add a hell of alot of ploly has each rope was around 200 + times that by 8 and well thats too much that can be done with out. so thats gone now.
Also the Dan R and Anna said they need to be more chunkyer as they looked abit flimsy which i totally agree with!


Below I made the poles more tree like as that looked too planed and manufactured where below it looks more natrual as if they have been cut down from a real tree with branch stumps and digs where they have been chopped down.


Here the rope has gone and I have added soem rocks that will be in the scene. In the background there is the fence for the buffalo pen where the skeletons wil be placed. I have changed the ladder, as this had lots of rope which really need to get rid of and alsothe rungs of the ladder more uneven in the lengh.

Teepee Updates

Well since starting on the teepees a while back they have been quite a few little tweaks to the shape and how it looks in genral. Here are the process images from starting out to nearing the end out the model. This was the first attemps at the teepee's and they were ok but still room for improvment. I show it to the rest of our group and they liked it : ) but they pretty much said they were too round at the bottom and needed to be more like where you could see the structure of the wooden poles under neath it. Also I thought the tops of the wooden ploes were too uniformd as well, they need to be more random.

Ths was my next attemp at the teepees but the only thing changed really was slecting every other vert and moving that out wards, + I added just the structure where once a teepee stood which I think works really well as the camp is very old and no one has been living there for a while.

What I did here was deleted every other of the vertical edges on the teepee which gave it more of a teepee looking shape and not soo rounded either. I also changed the lengh of the surport poles at the top which dramicly impoved it

From the picture above I duplicated it then this was going to be the high poly version for doing the normal mapping and I also add some colour to see what tis going to be like, instead of gray.

The small ornage rounded teepee in the background is the high ploy verison that I used to create the normal map.

Here are the Z bursh imaegs that ive been working on the last coulpe of days.

Z-Burshing !

Well its my trun to get stressed out over Z brush, lol and how ive been righ. I dont see why people have made it soo complex and hard to use this piece of software. Its like no other software that ive ever used that requires loads of thinking to do simple tasks.

The menu of all the buttons seem to be all over the place, the mouse controls seem to be quite hard to get use to and when you have been working in Maya, then go into Z-bursh the first couple of mins use start to use the controls from maya and obvouisly they dont work, so have to get use to the differnt set-up.

As Jared would say " Made for aliens by aliens " which is soo true because its is Very unfriendly to the user!

Well enough of slagging off Zbrush, I have been getting use to it now and have been getting some really good results with it ! You can get loads of definition into the model as compared to maya and lots of different brushs and and texteure to use to create different storkes to the model.

Ive have seen what other people have done in Z-brush and the results are "Amazings" as Elisha Would say, and it is very inspiring to get better and hopefully be as good as the other people in what they have created.

Fom looking at the images that I found for the skull here is what I created in Z bush.

Making the entrance and buffalo bones

For our scene we have a buffalo pen and a massive rib cage that surounds the entrance to the camp.

I had to do a little resreach for the buffalo skelons as i ruffly know what it looks like but i wanted to get an idea what parts I was to encule in the model as I need to keep it low poly as possible.

Here are some picture that I used for reference with was very usefull !

After looking at these pictures it gave me a better undstanding of the structure of the body and the shape of the skull and what sort of texture it need to be for later on in zbrush.

Render Images of the models + screen shots

This is the low poly model of the Buffalo which is going to be in the buffalo pen inside the camp.
Am quite please with what I have done here trying to keep the count as low as possible. As you notice it is standing up and obvouisly is Not going to be like this in the scene, but for the purpose for seeing what its actually looks like and to get the size and scale of the buffalo I arranged it like this. In the scene it will be on the ground and parts inside the ground where is has died and sunk into the ground over time.


Here are a small slection of weapons that ive reworked as they were far too High in the poly count. So I had to remodel some parts and reduce the count but losing some of the shape, but thats fine as there really small, and there not going to have any close up of them.


Some of the instruments that are going to be left around the camp near the teepees where the people use to paly them.



Form the pots that I made early in the week I strated to experiment with smashing the pots as they wouldnt be prefectly all new, as over time people would have droped them and and generally got older and weathered.

Here is the entrance to the camp with the massive rib cage leading inside with afew bones around it, but these might not stay there as they higher the poly count and may not be seen.

Blend shapes for Tala

Week5/6 ahhhh !

This week and last week have been quite stressfull as there is so much to do and soo little time to do it. As well as doing this project we have also had to balance doing the Affter Effect project which is almost there really so not worring about that too much, But this stupid presentation work is soo getting in the way of every thing and take up soo much time. Though its got to be done so just have to deal with it and work harder. The start of last week the animation was going ok but there was still area that need to be fixed when doin the walk cycles. This where DanC was helping me and showing me how to improve the animaion and making it flow better. Toward the end of the week I began to start modeling the bits that Anna had gave to me on the friday then over the weekend I finished them off to show them to the rest of the group on the Monday to get feed back and what need to be chanege.

Modeling obects in the environment

As we are running out of time Anna and Dan R decided to give me some of the environmentaly objects to model. These aint really the main objects within the scene, apart from the teepees, but they need to be in the scene as would look too bare.
The things that i have model are the Teepees, watch tower, the jem, the entrence to the camp, the buffalo skeleton, pots and baskets, weapons and untencil and instruments.
These didnt really take too long to do, but getting the defromation in the objects and keeping the poly and tri count down was really hard, at first as the model was too high and going overt the poly count for the whole scene. ! !
After I show them to the rest of the group they all said that they need to be lower in the poly and tri count. and some need to be aultered in the shape to lower the count.

Pictures of the first attemps on all the objects are as shown below.