Interior Vis: Modelling

I keep on pushing myself with a variety of personal projects. In my second interior visualization in 3DS Max I'm coming towards the end of the modelling process. This involves modelling assets to populate the scene (consequently to make it look more interesting).  See below are a series of pictures of just some of the assets I've been modelling lately. In some of these assets such as the sofa I used Marvelous Designer to simulate realistic folds and bends in the fabrics which you simply couldn't achieve inside Max. 

Fig.1: A sofa asset featuring cushions simulated from Marvelous Designer.

Fig.2: A Lamp. Creating a VRay blend material of a lightmtl and a glassy plastic was key in producing this lit effect. 

Fig.4 The Room Step One

Fig.5: The Room Step two 

Fig.6

Fig.7

Fig.8

Interior Visualisations 02: Start Point

As a small side project I've assigned myself the task of creating another interior visualisation. This time we will be working with a swanky bedroom concept and I will be using VRay rather than Mental Ray to render and light the images. 

This post highlights that starting process for the 3DS Max scene, as you can see I've started to block in some basic shapes for the room. What you can't see is that I've carefully created layers for the walls, ceilings, lights and furnishings so that I can move through the scene as efficiently as possible. It pays to keep your scene tidy and maneuverable, especially when you have to hand it over to a colleague or artist. 

Secondly I've also worked with Marvelous Designer in this post to create some awesome bed sheets and pillows. This is a very easy to use program which involved exporting the bed frame to simulate and stitch a cloth over. The major advantage of MD is that it is easy to control the volume of the cloth (via elasticity and compression settings), as well as easily sewing parts of cloth together and making realistic cuts/welds and seams into the cloth.

Fig.1: Snap shot of the VRay Render in progress

Fig.2: Welding seams in Marvelous Designer

Fig.3: Importing the Cloth as an OBJ to Max

Fig.4: Creating volume inside a duvet by adding seams

Fig.5 Extra added elements to create a realistic feel to the bed

Fig.6: The starting point for the visualisation. 

Bourbon: Rigging Part 01

Back to Bourbon, my quirky military rabbit character, I've started to build an animated rig for the character. This took some careful consideration of joint placement, as to how he would move. I couldn't just Rig him as I would a homanoid character since this would restrict the movement of the pelvis.

Step one was simply adding all of the bones into the right orient and position and making sure they were 'linked' or parented into each other accordingly. (See the schematic view to the right hand side of fig.1). 

Fig.1 Adding bones/joints to our rig.

The second stop I started to look into the different kinds of IK chain solvers I could deploy for my rabbits rig. See here I've also introduced a knee and foot control to counter animate twists and bends in the IK. 

Fig.2 Adding IKsolvers to the legs

Digital Painting Process and Practice

It's been a while since I last had the opportunity to post my progress with you, as you can imagine work with the New Year has been absolutely mental. 

Never the less I have managed to get around to producing some digital paintings (this time around) during my free time. This is part of an effort to upgrade my existing skills and get to learn some cool new processes for digital painting inside photo shop. 

The general process was to produce an outline of a character, then to give the character a tonal range (orange colour) which we would then adapt into the kind of finish we wanted and add some lighting to. 

My first attempt I decided to pick a sculpture, so I could compare my 'value layer' [or tonal ranges] to the initial photo graph: as close to classic copy sketching as you can get on a digital tablet. 

I learnt that it would probably more beneficial to keep your brush block-like for an artistic and stylised effect, whereas the addition of an air brush sort of smokes the image out.  

Fig.1 silhouette starting point

Fig.2 Value layer (tonal range)

Fig.3 Added bounce light and shadow

My next attempt, I tackled an environment with exactly the same process. I feel this was much more successful partially because by this point  I was getting more used to the handling of my graphics tablet again but also because there is a continuity with the brush strokes and style of the image.
For these exercises I used a chalk brush at 20-50% opacities as well as a smudge brush.

Fig.4 Environment Concept

Bourbon: Texture Modification

Before I jumped into rigging I wanted to make some basic texture changes to my character, Bourbon. For starters the blue and yellow/cream fur diffuse was too punchy and bold. I opted to a paler shade of yellow and a still strong copper brown colour as I still wanted my character to reflect a stylised approach rather than realism. I also made some adjustments to the Nut texture on the helmet and pads. I'm fairly happy with his overall look now, although I think I will come in and tweak textures between the rigging process (the carrots for example could do with an SSS2 MTL and I would also like to add a logo to the chest plate). 

Fig.1 Bourbons fresh new colour range. 

Fig.2 The Raw output of the Complete Map 

Fig.2 displays a simple 'length map' for the VRay fur, which utilises monotones to determine a the length of a hair on the basis of 0-100% (black to white value). To produce such a map I used the 'render to texture' tool and rendered a complete map, placing a VRay Dirt MTL into the diffuse channel of a  100% self illuminated white standard 3DS Max shader. I then had to analyse the complete map and paint over a few sections (such as the nose) where I knew no hair would exist. The VRay dirt basically allowed me to bake an ambient occlusion channel across Bourbons UV texture space, meaning objects such as the bag straps and the military vest which previously were penetrated by the hair were now being shortened to a degree in which they were no longer. 

Bourbon: VRay_Fur and Block Texturing

After getting Bourbon modelled I've gone straight into UV/ Block texturing.The textures I have used so far are by no means the final look but a place holder for me to think upon before I come to the final render. 

To make Bourbon look more bunny like and friendly I've also used the VRay fur modifier. Whereby I toggled with the thickness and length until happy and also added an opacity map onto the chest and nose so that those details weren't occluded. 

Fig.1: VRay Fur Base

Fig.2 VRay Fur Toggling Presets 

Fig.3 Texture Blocking

Fig.4: Texture Blocking (Rear)

Fig.5 Texture Blocking Complete

Bourbon_Modelling Complete

It's been a while since I last posted, understandably the Christmas period is extremely busy with work. However bit by bit I've finally, finally managed to get Bourbon modelled!
I'm very happy with the progress, this is my first attempt at modelling a character inside Max and I managed it all without the aid of a single tutorial.
I'll be making a bunny gun for the little soldier too, (which shoots carrots, of course) but the next step is going to be looking into UV'ing and rigging him which as far as I can see looks completely different from what I'm used to in Maya. Game on!

Fig.1 Bourbon Mesh Front

Fig.2 Bourbon Mesh Rear