Production - Part 1
Wait. Not so fast...I actually have one thing to test out first. I want to have an animated match burn and I want to do it all in 3d. I think I can do it with an animated displacement reveal. It shouldn't take too long to test out so here I go. First off, I'll model and rig a surface similar to the geometry I'll create for the final character model. Ok, that didn't take long. Now at this point I thought I'd just bring the geometry into something like Mudbox or Z Brush and model a crispy version and save it off as a displacement map, but nope, I'm having problems modeling a square surface into a round surface in these apps. I don't have too much time to waste, and as this is just a test, I'll go to plan B and use Maya's Transfer Maps utility instead. I hand model the crispy version and place it on top of the square geo and go to Lighting/Shading>Transfer Maps... and open the dialogue box. I load the square geo as the target mesh, the crispy round geo as the Source Mesh, and bake out a displacement map. That was easy. Now I take that displacement map into my compositing application and do a animated reveal over some arbitrary length of frames, save off a colour and spec pass of the same reveal, and load them all as Image Sequences piped into a standard Blinn Shading Group. I hand animate the joints (rotation AND scale) and voila, I've a pretty cool and somewhat realistic match burn. Check the scene files here. I'll go more in-depth with this approach after the animation is done.
OK, Now Production - I'm going to start production with the modeling of the set. Why the set first? Well, I have my reasons. After working on numerous personal projects I've found the order of doing things is probably the most important decision I can make for the successful completion of the projects I choose to waste my time on. My logic is thus, after pre-production, I start with the set as it gets me into modeling and texturing. It's not really that much fun, and it does seem to take a while but I'm still excited enough at the start to see it through. After warming up with the set, I then move on to the character. I love character modeling, and this stage usually goes quickly. I also like UV layout and texturing, so those also go quickly. The rigging stage is when things get annoying but by then, the character is far enough to start becoming alive, and I've started to get excited about the animation stage. Animation always takes me a while and I always start to generally burn out on the project near the end of it, but by the time the animation is done, all I've left to do is light and render everything out. Being so close to the end always motivates me to finish up the last of it. I found that if I start the character first, then take a break to model the set, I start hating life mid production and it's hard to keep the motivation up. Anyways, this works for me personally, so I'm going to start modeling the set.
The Kettle. First up is the kettle. Why you ask? I have no idea, other then it seems like a good a place as any to start. The first thing I have to do is think about what kind of kettle I want to make. I know roughly the shape, as I'm going to follow my initial concept work fairly closely but I've yet to decide on the details. So, to start, I draw a rough template of a kettle to have something to model to in Maya. I learned long ago that these rough sketches do not have to be perfect, as I'll be making a lot of decisions as I go in 3d. I do want a classic look, with asymmetrical wires and a wooden handle. Once my rough sketch is done I open Maya and officially begin production. I make sure I name the scene properly, based off the naming conventions I decided on before. I call the scene "mat_sc00_sh00_ketl_v01_r01 .ma" and save it to the project directory. Make sure to ALWAYS save in .ma ( mayaAscii ) as you can edit it anytime if you want. Oh, here are all the files you need for the kettle to follow along.
Now back to Maya. I create a poly plane scaled to the same dimensions as my template and assign the template texture to it. I do this instead of using a image plane because I can scale, move and re-proportion the template way easier as a poly plane then an image plane. Next I dictate the scale of this entire project. I'm planning on making the scale 1/1 real world so I look up measurements for kettles and decide to start at a height of 13 cm. I create a distance tool (Create>Measurement Tools>Distance Tool) in Maya and scale the template to that height. Once that is done, I start modeling. Now, I'm not going to go that in depth with the modeling as, well, it's pretty straight forward, and everybody has their own methods. In this case I start with a revolved surface (polygon of course) based off of the profile of the template. Once that is done I extrude the spout out from the body then back in again. I'm a stickler for making sure objects have a thickness as it IS called 3d for a reason. I follow that with a nice thick rim and the main body is done.
Next up is the two widgits on each side where the wires meet the body. With shapes like these I tend to model a un-bent form first, duplicate it to the side, THEN bend the first into shape. The reason I duplicate it pre-bent is that it's easier to lay out the UVs on a un-bent version then transfer them to the bent version. It saves a bit of time. After the widgits I create a guide curve for the wires and extrude a poly shape for each side. I delete the history and cap the ends of the wires because, well, this IS 3d, you know. Lastly, I revolve the handle shape from a profile curve I drew based off the template.
After all the geometry is modeled it's time to re-proportion the kettle so it's a little more aesthetically pleasing. My initial template sketch was a bit too tall for my liking now that I see it in 3d, so I squish the body while maintaining the upper part as it is. Ah, that's it! I am finished the geometry! Click on the picture below to see a render of the final model.
The UVs. Not much to say about UVs. For organic stuff I tend to use the plugin Roadkill, as it does a great job and is quick, but for non-organic stuff I do everything by hand. The challange with UVs is to try to maintain a one to one ratio with the polygons in terms of size without introducing too much streching. I tend to do a lot of sub-projections and stitching, and eye it out as best I can. I also tend to try to layout one entire object in one UV space, so I can texture it in one go, and not have to many texture files per object. When dealing with a HD frame (1920x1080) this means that the textures might be quite large, but most new renderers can deal with large textures pretty effeciantly now so I don't get too concerned about it. As for the kettle, the UVs layed out pretty easily since it's a pretty simple shape. A few hours work and I have what I need.
Texturing Part 1 - Ah, now for the fun part. I really like the texturing process, as it is pretty straight forward and offers a lot of chances to be creative. When I texture I tend to use both hand painted and photographic elements, sometimes a combination of both. I love detail and find that it always adds so much to the quality and feel of things. I also try to add a little character to everything I create just to make things interesting. For the kettle I've decided that I want some hand painted flowers on the side, similar to something my grandmother had. I don't really care if they are painted great or not because if I remember correctly the kettle my grandmother had wasn't painted well at all (it was charming though!). So the first thing I do is output the kettle's UV map as a Targa file and open it up in Coral Painter IX and get to work. I can do this in Photoshop or even in Maya but I really like the natural feel of Painter and would recommend it for jobs which require a traditional art feel. I use a oil based brush and start painting in layers until I finish painting some badly done classic folk art flowers. Great!
Lining Everything Up - I open Maya and assign the flower texture to a Lambert Shader. I throw that on the kettle to see what it looks like. Hmm, not too bad but a little bit too big I think. I'll have to adjust the size and placement later, but for now it's ok.
Texturing Part 2 - For the rest of the kettle I'm going to be using photographic elements. So, first thing I need is photographs! Luckily, I live in Vancouver, and it has lots of grey rainy days perfect for photographing textures so it's easy for me to snap some shots of a kettle I have laying around. What I like about this kettle is the large dent where it was dropped. The paint has chipped away to reveal the metal underneath, which looks pretty cool. I also like the fact that the surface is pushed in. I love changing the surface of geometry to accentuate textures. There is lots of other details I'm interested in as well, including the brown stains and the wear and tear around the end of the spout.
Bringing It All Together - I import the kettle's UV set into Photoshop and start hacking and slashing at the photographs. I sample the white base first and clone enough to cover the body. I then lay in my flowers I painted and scale and place them were I want. I take some time to make sure that they look like they belong on the base. I then sample the brown spots and clone them around the spout. Next up is the dent. After placing it where I think it should be I duplicate it and use it to texture the interior of the pot. Next up is the wires and the widgits. Again, I sample from the dent and clone enough coverage. I do the same for the upper rim as well. I clone in dirt and wear along the top part of the body where it meets the rim as this part is important. Lastly, I use some wood texture I have in my texture bank. And voila! The kettle is textured. I didn't bother with the burn rings around the bottom of the body as you'll never see it, but would be something I'd of added if I had more time.
The Final Adjustments. At this point we are pretty close to being done with the kettle. I've a few more important things to do, however. I first want to make sure everything is looking good in 3d. As I was texturing in Photoshop I was going back and forth between Maya for placements sake, but this final check is to see if there is anything lacking or if there is anything I want to change, adjust, or add. Ah! the inside of the body is the same as the outside of the body! That won't do. I duplicate the body and try a Push Flood using the Sculpt Geometry Tool (Mesh>Sculpt Geometry Tool>Push>Flood). Maya's being a bit finicky and won't do it so I end up just scaling the duplicate down a bit. I then lay out the copy's UVs so that they fall within the metal dent on my pre-existing texture map. That seems to work! It's a bit messy for my tastes but I don't have time to be picky so I'll let it ride. I'm also going to hold off on pulling the points in around the dent until I place the kettle into the final scene and start lighting as I want to make sure you can really see the indentation. The last step is to work on the temporary shader for the kettle.
Shading Up A Storm - This is a pretty basic object and as such will have a pretty basic shader. I use a Blinn Material as a base and do up some variations on the colour texture I created in Photoshop. I save out a specular map, a bump map and a reflection map. I don't need a displacement map as that would be overkill and I don't need a normal map as that would be a waste of time as the painted flowers do not stick out that far. And as everything is just metal and wood I don't need to get fancy with any custom material properties like fresnel reflectivity (whatever that is) or anything yet, but I may get funky later during the lighting stage.
A Mighty Fine Kettle. The only thing left to do is render a rotation out and see how it looks. I turned reflectivity on and just threw some lights in to get a quick feel. These rotations should be pretty fast so I don't use GI or anything as it just takes too long. My feeling is that if a model looks good with basic lighting then it'll look great with advanced lighting. If you are doing something for a client then go to town on it but for stuff like this, it's not too important. One thing to note, the reflectivity on the body of the kettle isn't proper right now but it's hard to gauge something like that out of context so I'll hold off on mucking around too much with it now. I tend to do a lot of texture adjustments during the lighting stage as well so what I have now seems good enough. Click on the image below to see the kettle in all it's glory.
One Down. That's it for the kettle! I plan to do up some flowers to put in later but I'll get to that after I model up the counter and see if I have room. So one model down and a whole whack left to go. Isn't 3d fun?
On to the counter top!
