Golden AK Environment

New Blog

2009-01-19T10:47:00.000-08:00

Upstairs Render so Far

2008-12-22T06:02:00.000-08:00

Upstairs render from Vanguard. It's missing a few frames where you can see the film flashing, but we can batch render those frames out when we get back. I can't re-render the downstairmansion part because the Vanguard isn't submitting jobs.

Its been good...

2008-12-14T09:51:00.000-08:00

At the moment were waiting in hope that our renders have been done over the weekend on the render farm. But looking back on the term as a whole I can see how far we have come on an individual base, as a team group and a class as a whole. I have really enjoyed the term and working on the project I did with Ashley, Josh and Spencer. Im really happy we got together as a team and wudnt have changed the project we chose to do for the world because it set us a challenge which I feel we have pulled off really well. It will be dissappointing if we cant render our main room scene in time for tuesday's deadline but it wont be the end. It will be more upsetting than dissappointment because of the sheer amount of effort, time and dedication we have put into the project as a group. Also looking back, we can see how much we have learnt such as texturing, modelling, animating, lighting and some effects. Also, through working with Josh, Ashley and Spencer we have become better friends. We never through our dummies out of the pram (lol) and always backed each other up when one of us had a problem. Also, that we took a relaxed approach to doing it. Instead of just sitting down and working we were able to have a laugh with ideas and sounds (looking at you Josh RAAA) but still produced what we have done. Im really happy we got together as a team. As a class I feel that we have been successful as we are now able to help each other out. Even if we're not part of a team, but we're still willing to give advice if needed. Its been a successful term and I'm already looking forward to Term 2 (apart from contextual grrrrrr :@)

see you guys tomorrow for.......just another Manic Monday!

could anything more go bad this year???? plz god render our render farm scene

2008-12-13T06:57:00.000-08:00

this week was very harsh on me and on our team as a whole :( i also had work this week which wasnt at the best of times as i could of used my pc to render =( the monday and tuesday we spent the main of it lighting all the rooms i finished off the textures in the main room so that was all done. on the wensday the lads came in to start rendering the scenes. unfortunely ive been so busy i havnt had the time to do any more screen pics to post up here but u can see some of the lighting shots on ash's spence and stews wall. on wensday we renderd out the basement i think. and thursday we renderd out the corrider and the study. all these are all renderd out now and they look superb.Spence started on the music for the basement bit and so far i think its done and in my eyes i think is is awesome and spence put alot of time in this. we had maya corruption on our main room so we had to load up some old files thanks of ashley for doing this we had to re import the study and corrider into the main room rdy for rendering which took a while to set up again as we had to do all the lights again. whenever we rednerd out the main room on our pc's at college of the main room they would always just stop which wasnt nice as i was rending some important frames.when it came friday when we knew we wouldnt make it jarred gave us an extenstion which was nice of him but i didnt see the point as we cant come into college on the weekend anyway to see if our rendering worked. so we kinda stuffed anyways. hopefully when we come in monday morning the render farm might of done it . me and ash but up alot of back up renders in render farm so if they dont do 1 or 2 there is still mine that might workworst case senario is we hand in just the study and basement and corrider in but we spent alot of time abd effort into our amazeing main room. it would be a shame not to include it and skip it. if all goes bad next yr ill render it out again just for the sake of our team and for our showreeklim exhasted and very upset the entire group feel the same way. its not nice when your render in render farm gets randomly killed for no reason. there are a few groups in the same situwation as us and they feel just as bad if not worse. what we could do to make our thing be ok would be ste play blasts the rest if the animation and we just import that in to fill in the blanks which isnt a bad idea wont look good but oh well for now it will still show our modeling skills and craftsmens ship of an detailed room.but monday is hand in day end of and i hope jarred can allow us to hand it in at the end of a normal college day or depending how the render farm gets on,i cannot say no more. as im not at college and none of us will never no if the render farm did ever render our final scenes its a real shame as honestly we have the nicest if not the best most detailed real life realistic enviorment i think anyone has ever done on maya at this college for this year.this will be my second to last update now. then this blog will probs be over for me depending on the project next yr depends as i do like writing on it lol. on monday hopefully ill post the final movie on here and a final conclusion.... see u monday team

Sorry Stewart lol

2008-12-11T02:55:00.000-08:00

Can you please spell my name right Ashley.....

2008-12-10T16:57:00.000-08:00

That will be all

Ta

Update on Rendering

2008-12-10T09:48:00.000-08:00

WE ARE RENDERING!...

But not on the Vanguard.

Reasons why we're not rendering on Vanguard:

Huge ques
Vanguard has been inconsistent with other groups renders
Vanguard does not always recognise all textures
Speed of rendering varies
No one has been able to finish a complete render on Vanguard
Have to reasign textures

So what are we using to render then?

Well, Spence and I have decided to render on the L Drive. The L Drive is proving to render faster and more consistently than the Vanguard at the moment. The good thing is that we don't need to waste time reassign textures again. The Marmalade group gave up on the Vanguard and are using the L Drive to render the last bit of their animation.

All together Stuwart worked out that it would take about 10-12 hours to render everything. The more computers we have rendering (4 of us) the faster we can cut that time down. We have 2 computers already.

As for the Lighting, texturing and stuff like that... It's DONE!

We just need to get the flames back onto the candles in the main room and then the main room is sorted and ready to render. The

Animation

Stuwart has ported his key frames into the Basement and it is rendering as I type.

Main priorities tomorow:

Grab a computer
Render as many frames as possible

I'm not going to put pictures up of the Mansion, you should know what it looks like by now.

please read!!! wensday 10th

2008-12-10T00:32:00.000-08:00

hey guys i just wanted to get these across. when we was working on the main room lighting, and you had the reflections on the floor of the banisters. Dont worry if they look pixalated its proberly just becuase of the render settings we had. on final render it will be set to production quliaty images so it should be alot more sharper.

also in the maian room the back arcs where the corrider is need to be removed. so that when stu imports the new seperate corrider with lights it will proberly import into its correct possition. if u look stu on the corrider that u did the lighting on you wll notice that it has the arcs with it. so just be carefull . remove arcs in joshmansion render.

and make sure ash or someone trys to update on here today i have net at work so i can check sometimes

Corridor lighting

2008-12-09T18:15:00.000-08:00

We also put the lights into the corridor today and after several amounts of time tweaking settings we finally got the above images. We learnt how to use volume lights more effectively from Alec which was a massive help, Spencer did a great job with the colour tints and a grande total of 4 subtle area lights are used in the scene. We took render shots as if it was where the camera is going to be in the animation. There is a shot going down the stairs, and looking down the corridor. But then catastrophe....some twonk forgot to save the scene so we spent a little time rebuilding the lights, colour tints and volume lights. We managed to get it back to how it looks in the images above which turned out to be well done in the end. all that is left to do now is the main room as we want this to be spot on as it is where most of our efforts have been this term and then its render time baby

Start of the main room lighting

2008-12-09T18:01:00.000-08:00

This was the initial stage of the lighting for the main room. More recent shots can be found on Spencer's blog but i thought id put these ones on the team blog. The first light that was put in was the fog light that comes through the windows. We turned the intensity up slightly more on this light to give the shadows of the windows and banisters coming through and gave it a colour tint to give a moonlight effect. There are still more lights to put in to light up the room more and we started that by putting a few infront of the picture frame going up the stairs. This i really like. Its a very subtle intensity but is effective. We need to put a candle or light above the frame because at the moment the brighter light is coming from nowhere lol. but its pretty much what we want. More lights will be put in tomorrow as well as the camera and hopefully we can send it to the render farm. Its almost there now and were well happy with the lighting as it really makes such a difference to our environment and makes it so much more spooky than it was from earlier render shots.

Speaking of rendering, it has been a problem for a while now that maya has been unable to do a render shot in our scene. We found a solution to this now. Because of all the textures weve got and objects in one scene, it proved to be too much for maya to handle. We tried exporting objects such as the study/basement and the corridor into seperate scenes to see if it would render. This then worked and we have decided to render seperate scenes when it comes to the render farm. Probably be 2 or 3 parts which are the main room with corridor. then the study then the basement. Well see what happens in the next few days

Another Shot of the Lighting

2008-12-04T11:52:00.000-08:00

Same lighting as the first, just a different position as the camera will be walking through and looking around.

Every thing has been textured in the main room apart from the shandalia and the window.

Not much to do for the study now. I'll finish the Grandfather clock tomorow.

Hopeful this has taken away some of the stress!

Study with some lighting

2008-12-04T11:48:00.000-08:00

I've put some lighting into the study we need to either make a new window or texture the this window so the light rays can travel through.

This shot is from the couch.

Managed to import some objects

2008-12-04T10:16:00.001-08:00

The bottles and cello are both in the study now and textured. Manged to put some oclusion in as well.

Window for study

2008-12-04T10:12:00.000-08:00

I'll delete the plane behind it and then put the glass in. Should do the trick.

What do you think guys?

Doors Texture

2008-11-25T09:42:00.000-08:00

Single Door and Double door textured.

Anyone for a Glass of Wine!

2008-11-25T09:17:00.001-08:00

Okay guys, I've battled with this one and its starting to pay off. Just need to put a lable on it then I need to sort out its shadows.

2008-11-20T05:00:00.000-08:00

http://dh-textures.deviantart.com/ nice texture site

creating fog

2008-11-19T07:48:00.000-08:00

This is just one image of testing creating a fog with a spot light. A really nice guy showed my how to create this effect. Its pretty simple getting it set up but requires alot of tweaking and playing with the spot light settings to get the right mood and atmosphere that you require for anything. It involves stuff like the intensity, distance and spread. To get this is simple, create the spot light and choose the cloud setting on the 3D options when adding a texture. I defo need to play around more with the settings to get used to the controls and effect. Also in this shot, the edges of the post on the right have been bevelled. This just simply gives off a better light effect from the object and adds some shine to the surface. Its an effect that is well worth concidering if the camera is close to any surface in any shot. When I've played around more with the settings ill post some pics up to show some different effects. But the fog effect is something we will be using in our project, probably more in the basement as it is the spookiest part and only a little if anything in the main room

Main Room Lighting

2008-11-17T13:28:00.000-08:00

I got two types of effective lighting for the main main room. I think the blue looks spooky and has alot of tension.

2008-11-09T12:58:00.000-08:00

This is the mansion entrance to date. Wicked

2008-11-09T12:48:00.000-08:00

This is what our mansion looks like upstairs after adding the banisters and pillars. Havent got much left to do for this room now but were happy with our progress as a team and how the room is shaping out. Safe.

Candles by the Stairs

2008-11-06T10:19:00.000-08:00

2008-11-04T06:50:00.000-08:00

I managed to get a photograph of the steps inside the house where it leads down to the basement. This is the sort of stairs that we want to lead down to the corridor. The brick walls and stone floor look grim and the fact that walls are so narrow creates a clostrophobic feeling which we wanted to incorporate.

whos in this tuesday?

2008-11-03T03:32:00.000-08:00

oi lads lol whos coming in to do some work tommrow?

ashley has work tommrow, but what about spence and stuwart? we really need atleast 2 of us in tommrow. Txt me if your gunna be in tommrow please or message back on here/ thanks

Cello for the Study

2008-10-31T09:21:00.001-07:00

I've made a Cello instead of a type writer because the type writer was a bit hard to make. The cello in the Study should help give it that CREEPY feel that we want, a bit like the piano in the Resident Evil Mansion.

Tell me what you think?

Vase

2008-10-30T10:01:00.000-07:00

Final Model

2008-10-29T21:31:00.000-07:00

This picture from Thief Deadly shadows is similar to the lighting atmosphere that could really work well for the study guys .

2008-10-29T21:17:00.001-07:00

Plan for now , will update it as we progress :)

StudyConcept

2008-10-28T09:59:00.000-07:00

Concept art for Study room based on various images

2008-10-27T19:18:00.000-07:00

Here’s an album cover from a really good metal band Opeth.
Has so much atmosphere to something so simple.

2008-10-27T19:01:00.000-07:00

Found a good image here. Thought this would be good for references .Based off of the author Anne Rice I believe, I’m not 100%.She writes Victorian , Georgian styled vampire typed books , that have also been made into films if I recall correctly .

2008-10-27T16:00:00.000-07:00

These are some current storyboard pictures I’ve done. I’ve tried to capture a similar style as the Dead Space comic ( http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=X3eeMdHO2ZA ) .Added note , photo manipulation has also been used in the picture containing the stairs.

2008-10-27T15:46:00.000-07:00

Themed painting of mine .The necklace and lighting is off, but I will eventually fix this and possibly use this inside the mansion as a fixed wall painting somewhere in the house(only if I can fix the current errors) .I’m currently working on other paintings for the mansion that will be more fitting to the theme and atmosphere .

2008-10-27T15:43:00.000-07:00

Fancy/study chair example

2008-10-27T15:42:00.000-07:00

Frame of a mirror

2008-10-24T09:16:00.001-07:00

start of hostel chair

2008-10-24T09:15:00.000-07:00

model of a book

outside mansion windows

2008-10-24T05:37:00.000-07:00

Outisde the Mansion Concept art

2008-10-24T03:50:00.000-07:00

2008-10-23T15:51:00.000-07:00

Harsh lighting with a blue tint gives this shot a cold and iscolated mood.

(From the game Resident Evil)

2008-10-23T15:44:00.000-07:00

(From the game Condemned 2)

Basement Inspiration

2008-10-23T15:40:00.001-07:00

Image says it all really...

(Hostel)

1st persn view mansion

2008-10-23T09:45:00.000-07:00

Scaned image from the Resident Evil Book

i just love its design, lighting and the atmosphere!

Resident Evil Main Room

2008-10-16T13:32:00.001-07:00