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.